One Step Behind
By Carol Hutchison
Though each Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association (TSCRA) special ranger covers multiple counties, and a mere 30 are spread all over Texas and Oklahoma, not much gets past them.
Cattle thieves frequent sale barns, ranches, and will even run in the same circles with true ranchers, looking to get something for nothing, oftentimes to pay for the drugs that consume them. But a close-knit law enforcement network is right behind them, just as that foot goes over the line.
In this case study, the TSCRA special rangers worked together with many law enforcement agencies. And we learned that counterfeit money, night-vision goggles, drugs, and jumping bail aren’t only in the movies.
It started with a hunch
Special Ranger Dean Bohannon, stationed in Lubbock, left no stone unturned when he got the call in February 2015 from Special Ranger Joe Roberts in Abilene. Roberts reported that a 32-foot triple-axle trailer with a light green, full canvas top had been stolen from his district.
After a lot of phone calls and putting several pieces of information together, Roberts suspected that Mason Georges and his accomplice girlfriend had taken it. “I spent the week trying to get everyone together who knew anything about Georges,” Roberts said. That’s when he called Bohannon.
“Joe Roberts asked if I would check with the trailer companies in my district to see if someone had brought in the trailer to be sold. So, I did, and I couldn’t find anything,” Bohannon said.
After learning about Georges’ outstanding felony warrants for cattle theft from some of the other districts, Bohannon called TSCRA Market Inspector Benny Parker at the Muleshoe Livestock Auction the following Saturday. “I told Benny about Georges and his girlfriend. I didn’t have a description of the vehicle they would be driving, but I had a good description and the VIN (vehicle identification number) on the trailer. I told him that if they came into that sale barn, I wished he’d give me a call,” Bohannon said.
The arrest
In just 2 hours, Parker grabbed the phone to call Bohannon. “They’re here, and they’re pulling the stolen trailer. It’s missing the canvas top, but it’s the same trailer,” he said.
Parker also works full-time as a lieutenant at the Muleshoe Police Department. TSCRA market inspectors aren’t always full-time law enforcement officers. They often work 1 or 2 days a week at livestock auction markets, inspecting cattle brands as the livestock are run through each sale barn, keeping records of every brand and matching it with each seller.
That information is sent to the TSCRA office in Fort Worth. The reports go into a database, which is an essential tool in cattle theft investigations.
Market inspectors such as Parker also serve as the extra eyes and ears for special rangers who may be stationed several miles from sale barns, and who may sometimes be hundreds of miles away working on other cases.
On that day, as Parker compared the VIN on the trailer to the VIN given by Bohannon, he changed from market inspector to police officer. “I saw Georges drive in and I kind of knew it was him. I waited until he came through to unload. I asked who the cattle belonged to. When he gave me his name, I went ahead and arrested him because of the outstanding warrants,” Parker said. A hold was placed on the cattle until they could sort out the ownership of the trailer and the nine head Georges had hauled in to be sold. One calf arrived dead in the trailer.
Parker separated the two suspects before taking them to the Muleshoe Police Department for questioning. Georges’ girlfriend was also found to have an outstanding felony warrant from another county.
“I’ve arrested them on the warrants, so start heading this way,” Parker told Bohannon over the phone.
In the meantime, Parker and another Muleshoe police officer began to inventory Georges’ truck and photograph the truck and trailer. Parker found a bag of methamphetamine, a considerable amount of counterfeit money and night-vision goggles in Georges’ pickup.
Because Roberts had checked TSCRA’s database at the beginning of his investigation, he knew that Georges had previously sold cattle at the Amarillo Livestock Auction and the Cattleman’s Livestock Commission Company in Dalhart.
With that information, Bohannon called in his colleague, Special Ranger Harold Dempsey, who is stationed in Amarillo. After an hour-and-a-half drive, Bohannon and Dempsey met at the Muleshoe Police Department, where Parker had taken the suspects for questioning. Georges and his accomplice had been placed in separate interview rooms.
The interviews
“First thing we do when we go into an interview — when he’s a suspect in a theft case — we Mirandize him. We read him his rights. He has a choice of visiting with us or lawyering up. If he lawyers up, it’s over with. But in this case, he didn’t lawyer up with us,” Bohannon explained.
After a fairly short interview with Georges, Bohannon came out of the room with a confession. “He was caught. He wasn’t going to tell us anything we didn’t know. He just confessed to what we already knew and what we had evidence for,” Bohannon said. Georges also confessed to a theft of seven head in Palo Pinto County.
After a fairly short interview with Georges, Bohannon came out of the room with a confession. “He was caught. He wasn’t going to tell us anything we didn’t know. He just confessed to what we already knew and what we had evidence for,” Bohannon said. Georges also confessed to a theft of seven head in Palo Pinto County.
Georges’ accomplice also cooperated during her interview but denied knowing anything about the stolen trailer. She wound up being charged with forgery for the possession of counterfeit money and possession of a controlled substance. Both suspects had a felony warrant in Special Ranger Marvin Wills’ district in Central Texas, as well as for a theft involving calves purchased with a bad check in Waco.
“Right after we interviewed them, I contacted an inspector from the New Mexico Livestock Board,” Bohannon said. Putting all the pieces together, it was confirmed that the cattle sold at the Dalhart sale and the Amarillo sale were all reported stolen in New Mexico.
Dempsey and an inspector with New Mexico Livestock Board found the cattle sold in Amarillo and Dalhart and got them identified and recovered for the victims.
“The New Mexico rancher even had a camera up and had a picture of the pickup and the trailer. It was the same pickup and trailer that we had seized at the Muleshoe Police Department. At some point they pulled the canvas top off to change the looks of it,” Bohannon said.
What about the cattle Georges and his girlfriend were caught with in Muleshoe? An inspector from the New Mexico Livestock Board confirmed they had been purchased from a dairyman in New Mexico with counterfeit money.
When Bohannon asked Georges about the night-vision goggles, the story was that they used them to watch for his girlfriend’s ex-husband. “We filed a seizure for them for being an instrument of the crime. We know what he was using them for. I’ve never caught anyone with night-vision goggles before. He didn’t confess to using them. But you know, and I know, and everyone else knows he was using those for watching pens and looking for cattle at night for his 3AM Cattle Company,” Bohannon said.
The methamphetamine found in Georges’ pickup is no surprise to special rangers. “The biggest majority of the subjects I arrest for thefts are stealing because they’re supporting their methamphetamine addiction,” Bohannon said, “Time means nothing to anyone on meth. They’ll run for days,” he added.
Advice from special rangers
With the cattle industry being so vast, it’s not always possible to know the person you’re doing business with, but Dempsey advises that it might be best. “If at all possible, do business with the people and the sale barns you know and have had a long relationship with. If you’re doing business with folks over the internet, and people you don’t really know face-to-face, there’s always a risk,” Dempsey said.
Since locks can be cut and cattle pens often sit next to a road so cattle can be hauled out, Bohannon likes to tell ranchers to check gates and locks every day. “Throw a good chain around the gate and use a good lock. If you checked yesterday and the chain and lock were there, and then you came by today and it was off, that gives us a timeframe as to when something happened,” Bohannon said.
Too often, gates and pastures aren’t even checked weekly, and cattle and equipment can be long gone by then. “So many of these cases are cold trails. I have cases that the cattle have been gone so long that they could have already been served at a steakhouse somewhere,” Bohannon said.
In this case, the suspects traveled a long way, from Belen, New Mexico, and all over Texas. “Sometimes victims say, ‘It must be my neighbor who stole my cattle.’ It doesn’t have to be a neighbor. Thieves make big circles. They can go anywhere they want to and take cattle anywhere they want to sell them. They can even be several states away by dark,” Dempsey said.
New Mexico authorities and the Secret Service
Special rangers work closely with other state agencies that border Texas. Cattlemen from Texas and New Mexico often buy cattle and transport them back and forth. The New Mexico Livestock Board is part of the oldest law enforcement agency in the state of New Mexico, with 26 inspectors state-wide.
“I work with different ones in New Mexico. They’re just like us. They have districts they work. The New Mexico Livestock Board is like TSCRA. They work crimes against the livestock industry. We know all of them across the border,” Bohannon said.
Market Inspector and Muleshoe Police Department Lt. Benny Parker called the U.S. Secret Service about the counterfeit money. “I knew it was counterfeit money just from my training. There are certain things that we look at that the average person wouldn’t know,” Parker said. Unfortunately, the suspects exercised their right to remain silent and refused to talk to the Secret Service about the cash. “The Secret Service agent said it was some pretty good counterfeit money and wished they could find out who was printing it,” Bohannon said. The agency decided against filing federal charges; however, possession of counterfeit money falls under the Texas state charge of forgery, which was the charge filed against both suspects in this case.
Running again
After the arrests, the two suspects were released on bond. Sometime after, Parker made a phone call to Bohannon to let him know that the bonding company filed a bond forfeiture on Mason Georges. He’d jumped bail and the search was on again.
But Bohannon was right behind him. “We were looking for him at different places. I happened to search his name on Facebook and I found him. He was advertising roping calves for sale in Belen. He even gave his phone number. So, I called the New Mexico authorities and Georges was arrested a few days later. They had him in custody over in Albuquerque,” Bohannon said. Georges was finally extradited to Texas where he answered for the charges against him.
A good outcome
In the case of the trailer in Muleshoe, Georges received two years in the Texas Department of Corrections, and another five years for cattle theft in Palo Pinto County.
“This is really how these cases ought to work — cooperation between the market inspectors, our special rangers, the New Mexico guys, and cooperation between us and sale barns — that’s really what made that a successful case. It was a team effort,” Dempsey said.
“We can’t make any of these cases without information, and without calls from people sending us in the right direction. It was a good outcome,” he added.
One Step Behind is excerpted from the June 2018 issue of The Cattleman magazine.