Horses Murdered for Money

The Overlook

By Tom Clavin

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At the end of last week’s column, I teased the so-called “Horse Show Murders.” This was a combination of crimes and, thus far, Wellington has not seen its like again – though it might, if owners and authorities are not vigilant. Horses are big money . . . even dead ones.

There were an unverified number of insurance fraud cases in the United States between the mid-1970s and the mid-1990s in which expensive horses, many of them show jumpers, were insured against death, accident, or disease, and then killed to collect the insurance money. Many of the killings involved racketeering and numerous perpetrators were convicted of crimes.

It is not known how many horses were killed in this manner, but the number is thought to be well over 50 and may have been as high as 100. In addition, in 1977, the heiress Helen Brach disappeared and was presumed by law enforcement agents to have been murdered by the perpetrators of these crimes because she threatened to report their criminal activity to authorities. Continuing investigations into Brach's death began to uncover the insurance fraud.

The scandal has been called "one of the biggest, most gruesome stories in sports" as well as "the biggest scandal in the history of equestrian sports." Thirty-six people were indicted and tried for insurance fraud, mail and wire fraud, obstruction of justice, extortion, racketeering, and animal cruelty in connection with the horse murders; all but one were convicted.

Over the 20-year period during which the horse murders took place, several different motivations led horse owners and trainers, often affluent and well-respected people, to become involved in what ultimately became a widespread conspiracy.

In some cases, the owner of a promising or even prize-winning horse was temporarily strapped for cash and decided to insure and then kill the animal. This was the situation in the 1982 murder of the show jumper Henry the Hawk. (More about this below.) Sometimes people bought over-valued horses. Rather than take a loss on a poor investment, these owners chose to finance their next horse purchase by defrauding the insurance company that had insured the unwanted horse.

Another aspect to the scandal went beyond insurance fraud and involved racketeering. This scheme consisted of bilking wealthy widows of their money by encouraging them to invest in horses. The animals were usually over-valued or under-performing, and the conspirators killed the animals to prevent the owners from uncovering how much they had overspent. In some cases, before the women invested, these non-performing animals were first "bid up" in value by the co-conspirators to make them seem more desirable to the purchasers. In other cases, a shill buyer would offer to co-purchase the horse from a conspiring owner or trainer, with each buyer putting up half the stated purchase price. The check from the shill buyer would be destroyed and the two con artists would deposit and split the money paid by the wealthy woman buyer. If she began to suspect that the horse she had purchased was relatively valueless, it would be killed for the insurance money, which would soothe her financially. If the conspirators still had her confidence, she would then be encouraged to invest in another co-owned horse, repeating the cycle. The men who worked this form of confidence game often acted as gigolos to the widows they bilked.

In 1981, 17-year-old Lisa Druck of Ocala, Florida, owned and rode a show horse named Henry the Hawk. Because Lisa was underage, her finances were controlled by her father, James Druck, an attorney and owner of Eagle Nest Farm. Druck's legal practice consisted of defending insurance companies against claims, and he knew that if a horse were electrocuted in a certain manner, it would be very difficult for a veterinary pathologist to find signs of foul play and the death would be chalked up to colic. According to ABC News, Lisa was "a prize-winning equestrian when her father was implicated in an insidious plot to electrocute horses for insurance money."

In the early 1990s, convicted horse-killer and FBI informant Tommy Burns told authorities and reporters that James Druck had first attempted to sell his daughter's horse for $150,000, but the highest offer he received was only $125,000. He then hired Burns and personally taught him how to electrocute horses, even going so far as to buy Burns's first set of electrocution tools. The first horse that Druck hired Burns to kill was Henry the Hawk, whose life insurance policy was worth $150,000. James Druck thus started Tommy Burns on a 10-year-long career as a "horse murderer.” Druck was the target of an FBI investigation when he died in 1990.

The wealthy socialite Helen Brach was a human victim. Brach was a millionaire candy company heiress and animal lover who vanished in 1977 at the age of 65. Investigators suspected that she was murdered because she threatened to reveal what she knew about the over-valuing of horses, which would have led authorities to the string of horse killings perpetrated by Richard Bailey, a man who was later indicted for a role in her murder.

Brach met Bailey in 1973 and they entered into a relationship. In 1975, Bailey's brother, Paul, sold her three horses for $98,000. Unknown to Brach, Bailey also participated in the sale, and the horses were worth less than $20,000. Additionally, Brach bought a group of expensive brood mares.

On New Year's Eve 1976, Brach and Bailey danced the night away at New York's Waldorf-Astoria, but their relationship soon began to deteriorate. Early in 1977, Bailey and a co-conspirator arranged an extensive showing for Brach, hoping to persuade her to invest $150,000 in more horses. But Brach left in less than an hour. Further, an appraiser Brach hired recommended she invest nothing in training one of her original three purchases, contrary to the $50,000 estimate of the trainer recommended by Bailey.

Around this time Brach also visited her breeding stock. After viewing the mares, she went into a rage, screaming about being cheated and informing anyone within earshot that she was going to the district attorney's office. Subsequently, she told a close friend that she was disturbed about her purchase of horses from a younger man whom she had been seeing (Bailey), and after hearing that her friend knew state prosecutors, she agreed to visit the State's Attorney's office after she returned from her upcoming visit to the Mayo Clinic.

Brach departed from the Mayo Clinic on February 17, 1977. She was never seen again and her body has never been found. Bailey was interviewed in connection with her disappearance but no charges were filed at the time. In 1984, seven years after she disappeared, Helen Brach was declared legally dead.

Tommy "The Sandman" Burns earned his nickname because he put horses to sleep. He traveled the show circuit, visiting stables with an athletic bag full of electrocution equipment. For fees ranging from $5,000 to $40,000 -- generally for 10 percent of the insurance price on the horse—he would kill horses for their owners, who would then pay him off from the money obtained by defrauding the insurers. Burns justified his destruction of the animals on the grounds that electrocution was quick and painless.

Burns was arrested in 1991 and confessed to all his crimes in a plea deal. In 1992, the investigative reporters William Nack and Lester Munson, writing for Sports Illustrated, interviewed Burns, who told them a great deal about how the conspiracy operated, including what James Druck had taught him: How to slice an extension cord down the middle into two strands of wire; how to attach a pair of alligator clips to the bare end of each wire; and how to attach the clips to the horse—one to its ear, the other to its rectum. All he had to do then, said Burns, was plug the cord into a standard wall socket and step back.

Another example: Burns was hired to kill a show jumper named Streetwise. This horse was owned by Donna Brown, the ex-wife of former U.S. Olympic rider Buddy Brown, who had once been a trainer at Paul Valliere's farm in Rhode Island. Because the animal had already suffered from colic and thus could not be insured against that disease, electrocution was ruled out as a method of murder. Donna Brown insisted that Burns break the animal's leg and make it look like an accident so that the horse would have to be put down by a vet. Burns decided to sub-contract the deed to a man named Harlow Arlie, who was willing to cripple the horse with a crowbar.

By this time, the FBI had Burns under surveillance. Agents were too late to prevent the fatal injury to Streetwise but they were able to capture Burns and Arlie after a short chase, on February 2, 1991. The two men confessed to the crime, and Burns, in retaliation for being left without legal aid by his powerful former employers, turned FBI informant and revealed the names of dozens of people who had hired him. As a result of his confession, 36 people were arrested for animal cruelty and insurance fraud, of whom 35 were convicted.

After testifying before the federal grand jury in Chicago investigating insurance fraud in the horse show industry, Harlow Arlie served eight months in jail for breaking Streetwise's leg. Burns was sentenced to only a year in jail for his crimes, including breaking Streetwise's leg, and he served six months. Reportedly, he still resides in Florida, where under an assumed name he sells auto parts for a living.

Not only electrocution and leg-breaking were employed as methods to kill insured horses. When arson looked profitable, an entire stable could be burned to the ground to collect on the building insurance as well as the horse insurance.

Back to Richard Bailey: He pleaded guilty to racketeering, mail and wire fraud, and money laundering in 1995 and was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the murder of Helen Brach. He has since been released and also lives in Florida. A book he authored to maintain his innocence, Golden Tongue, was published in 2022.

This week, the high season of show horses has gotten underway in Wellington. Hopefully, it will be a happy and healthy one for those beautiful animals. And for their owners too, whatever their foibles.

Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 25 books. His latest book, Bandit Heaven, was published by St. Martin’s Press last October. Please go to your local bookstore or to Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, BN.com, or tomclavin.com to purchase a copy.