The skull of a cow killed by drought.
YURI CORTEZ/AFP via Getty Images
In April 2023, a rancher in Madison County made a grim discovery: A cow lying on her side, tongue cleanly removed along the jawline, face partially exposed. The cut had been made, according to authorities, with what appeared to be surgical precision — no ragged edges, no struggle, no blood. Strangely, not a single scavenger had touched the body, leaving it to decay untouched for several weeks before anyone found her.
That report to the Madison County Sheriff’s Office unraveled into something far stranger. Law enforcement soon discovered five more dead cattle in neighboring Brazos and Robertson counties. All were found in near-identical condition. Two had their genitalia removed with the same eerie cleanliness. None had blood spilled nearby. And for all six, investigators found no footprints, no tire tracks, no disturbed grass; nothing to indicate anyone or anything had been there at all.
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Three years later, no one has been charged. No suspect has been named. And the case remains open.
“At this time, no definitive cause or responsible party has been identified,” Investigator Carly Foster of the Madison County Sheriff’s Department says to MySA. “We are carefully reviewing all information, including environmental, natural, and potential human-related factors.” Foster confirms that investigative photographs do exist, but as part of an active case file, they’re not available for public release. The ranchers involved have also requested full anonymity.
Foster adds that tips still come in. “We still receive occasional tips and leads, all of which are reviewed and followed up on as appropriate.”
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What makes this case so difficult — and so captivating — is that the details don’t fit neatly into any known explanation. When asked about the unusual circumstances, Foster doesn’t shy away from the strangeness of it.
“The reported conditions are consistent with what was observed,” she says, noting that similar findings have been documented in livestock death investigations across the country.
Farming, field and cattle in portrait, countryside and dairy industry for sustainability, agriculture or ecology.
Jacob Wackerhausen/Getty Images
Three years ago when the case first broke, the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) took notice. The national nonprofit, whose mission is to protect the interests of animals through the legal system, offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever was responsible. David Rosengard, an attorney with the organization, got involved and has spent years thinking about what might have happened.
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“While the circumstances may appear unusual,” and unusual is an understatement here, the bigger mystery, Rosengard says, lies in the timeline. In many cattle mutilation cases, what looks like surgical precision can eventually be explained: Birds with sharp beaks, dehydration causing skin to pull tight, blood dispersing into the ground over time. But the Texas cases moved too fast for those explanations to hold.
“The cases that are in particular mysteries are where the timeline doesn’t seem to allow for that kind of work to be done,” Rosengard says. “I’ve seen cattle mutilation cases where a rancher will say, well, I saw this cow a day and a half ago, cow is fine, I found the cow out on the range, the cow is mysteriously dead.”
In cases like that, he says, the best available explanation involves a combination of intentional human harm followed by weather and scavenging activity that obscures what actually happened — a “perfect storm,” as he puts it, of conditions conspiring to make something look more mysterious than it is. But even that theory has its limits.
“That still leaves, like, as we saw in some of these Texas cases, that strange sliver of scenarios where you’re like, but there just wasn’t time for that to occur,” he added.
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So… aliens? It might sound absurd to some, until you start pulling the thread. Cattle mutilation has carried extraterrestrial connotations for decades. In the 1970s, hundreds of cases were reported across Colorado alone, with carcasses found drained of blood, missing soft tissue, and showing no signs of predation — patterns nearly identical to what turned up in Texas.
Filmmaker and researcher Linda Moulton Howe spent years investigating over a thousand such cases, earning an Emmy for those efforts in her 1980 documentary A Strange Harvest. In her follow-up book, Howe listed UFO sightings near mutilation sites, unidentified aircraft and the consistent removal of tongues and genitals, leading her to conclude extraterrestrials were likely involved.
Whether it was alien or human bad actors, three years on and these Texas ranchers — whoever they may be — still don’t have answers. Though the commenters on this Facebook post from Madison County Sheriff’s Office seem to have some theories.
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MySA has reached out to Brazos and Robertson County Sheriff’s Departments as well. If you have information, contact investigator Carly Foster with the Madison County Sheriff’s Department at 936-348-2755.