Stolen Standardbreds from Lebanon Raceway March 26, 2004

Note: Two of the horses have brands and lip tattoos. Bud only has a lip tattoo. The numbers for Bullwinkle and Mike are on the site. Thanks to the Cincinnati Enquirer for this article!

Montana Mike Info - lip tattoo and brand under the mane on the neck: brand- V3755

Bullwinkle info - lip tattoo and brand under the mane on the neck: brand- VC120

Bud's No Wiser - Bud is a 9 year old Bay gelding. His lip tattoo number is P5217 

Please pass this notice to your friends and ask them to do the same. These owners need your eyes!

Debi Metcalfe
Stolen Horse International, Inc.
www.NetPosse.info
Home of NetPosse and Idaho Alerts for missing horses.

Monday, March 29, 2004
Horses apparently stolen

Cincinnati Enquirer Article: Three missing from stable at Lebanon Raceway

By Reid Forgrave
The Cincinnati Enquirer


LEBANON - Three standardbred racehorses were apparently stolen from a barn at Lebanon Raceway late Friday or early Saturday.

Montana Mike, a 5-year-old gelding, and two other Standardbred racehorses - 9-year-old gelding Bud's No Wiser and 5-year-old gelding RK's Bullwinkle - disappeared from their stalls at the Lebanon Raceway in Warren County according to trainers and reports filed with Lebanon police.

The 17 other horses in the barn at the time of the apparent theft were left untouched.

When the grandmother of RK's Bullwinkle's trainer, David Setser, went to the barn at the raceway on Broadway Street in Lebanon Saturday morning to feed the horse, she noticed three horses were missing. Trainers first assumed the horses had escaped into another part of the training area, but when they couldn't find any of the horses, they presumed they were stolen.

"(The thieves) must have somehow gotten past the security," Setser said of the training area of more than a dozen barns housing 20 horses apiece. It's guarded 24 hours a day. "I've just got a big headache over all this."

The three horses are all pacers, meaning they move both legs on the same side forward in unison when racing. The trainers are working with Stolen Horse International Inc., a North Carolina-based
nonprofit group that helps victims of horse thievery. The group sent out a global alert about the missing horses.

An estimated 40,000 to 55,000 horses in the United States go missing or are stolen each year, according to the group.

Setser said Sunday that the thief wasn't likely to race the horses because the branded horses easily could be spotted. But he worried the thief could take the horses to be slaughtered.

Montana Mike's trainer, Jeff Brewer of Morrow, said the horse's owner bought it a week ago for $3,000, hoping the gelding could regain his winning form from last year when Montana Mike won five races.

"We don't know how to handle this, really," Brewer said. "It's not something that happens real often."

Brewer's wife, Lynda, went to a livestock sale in Waynesville Saturday night to see if any of the three stolen horses were being auctioned. (No racehorses were at the livestock sale.)

"These horses are just like our pets, only they're our livelihood, too," Lynda Brewer said.

The horse owners don't have insurance on any of the horses, and they hope either the track or the Ohio Harness Horsemen's Association, an industry organization of more than 3,000 Standardbred owners,
trainers and drivers in Ohio, can help them recoup their losses if the horses aren't found.

Keith Nixon, general manager of Lebanon Raceway, did not return phone calls on Sunday. A raceway representative confirmed the horses had disappeared but said the raceway knew few details.

Lebanon police are investigating but had no suspects on Sunday.

RK's Bullwinkle's owner, Richard Graham of Bellefontaine, estimated his horse is worth about $10,000, and he said he had hoped to sell the horse in a month. RK's Bullwinkle has lifetime winnings of about $12,000, Graham said.

"He raced good this week, and when you're racing good that's when someone wants to buy," Graham said. "It's sad; you get pretty attached to a horse. I delivered him, broke him, put him on the track. I just hope someone at least is feeding him and taking care of him and not taking him to be killed."

Help finding horses

Anyone with information about the weekend horse theft in Lebanon should call Lebanon police at (513) 932-2010 or e-mail trainer Lynda Brewer at lbrewer@go-concepts.com.

Stolen Horse International Inc. online: www.NetPosse.info

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E-mail rforgrave@enquirer.com

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Owners/Trainers add to Reward:

The following is excerpted from a letter by Dan Kennedey, one of the owners victimized by a theft last weekend at Lebanon Raceway:

Last week, three racehorses were stolen from the grounds of Lebanon Raceway, presumably to be sold to killers, or, hopefully, the Amish or riding stable owners who do not require papers.

I previously owned and drove one of these horses, Montana Mike. Clair Umholtz, who trains my horses, and trained “Mike,” acted upon the news by organizing a reward fund, to which he has contributed $250, I’ve contributed $250, and others have contributed as well, a total of $1,250.

Anyone with information about this theft may be eligible for the reward, and should contact Amy Hollar, the horsemen’s representative at Northfield Park.

In addition to that reward, I will personally pay an additional $5,000 reward to anyone who provides sufficient information and assistance to recover these horses alive and which leads to the arrest, prosecution, and conviction of the thieves, plus an extra $1,000 for each year of jail time to which they are sentenced. You can reach me, on this matter, through Amy, too.

If the thieves are reading this, I would suggest you return these horses alive and well. If you want to do so without getting caught, take them to Lebanon or any nearby horse farm, or to Northfield PArk, in the dead of night, tie them to a fence or pole, and place a quick anonymous pay phone call to the police to tell them to come and get the horses.

If you do not, you better spend the few hundred dollars you may have gotten from this going far away, because the reward money being offered is very likely to bring forward people who can lead us to you. Somebody who knows about you will want between $1,250 and $6,250. If that doesn’t soon have results, I may hire private detectives to find you.

From now own, every time you are in a convenience store and see a police car pull up, every time a police car approaches you on the street, even any time you see someone in a suit eyeballing you from across a room, you’ll start sweating. You can never relax.

* "One source says 40,000 to 55,000 are stolen each year." - These numbers are based on a study done in the late 90's. There are no current numbers available.