speculated, the bone would have been in pieces, not just the one fracture confirmed during the surgery.
To understand the uphill battle, the vets faced in trying to save Alydar, it helps to read the comments by Dr. Bramlage in his final report to me and the London underwriters:
His temperament, both resenting the maintenance of the sling, as well as wanting to move across the stall unrestricted, certainly contributed to this problem (the fall). We fully expected to lose the horse due to the severity of the injury, but I did not expect to lose him for this reason. In any case, it is disappointing because the majority of his treatment went so well and then we had to compromise what we would have liked to do, because of his temperament. It makes it frustrating when you’re trying to treat horses. Certainly who he was and the fact that he had things pretty much his own way was not helpful in his care, and though the prognosis for an open fracture of the cannon bone in an adult horse is extremely poor, we had been off to a good start until this point.
Our office sent out a total of 78 claim forms for the various policyholders and by December 7, 1990 all had been returned to our office. Most of the proceeds, if not all, for the interest of Calumet went to the banks holding liens on the property, leaving J.T. Lundy with nothing but a looming financial downfall. At the time of the horse’s demise none of what has been outlined in this dissertation was known.
Calumet Farm filed bankruptcy in July of 1991; the horses were sold at auction and in March of 1992 the farm was purchased by Henry DE Kwiatkowski for $19 million with all the farm equipment sold the next day in a separate auction.
End of story about Alydar? No way. Let’s move on to May of 1996, five years after the horse was put down.
I had gone on to handling other equine insurance claims and was preparing for my upcoming retirement when, much to my surprise, I was served with a subpoena on May 2, 1996, requiring I surrender all files and any other information regarding the death of Alydar. It took five accordion folders to hold all of the requested documents. That was the last I saw of my records, despite numerous requests for their return.
Two months later two FBI agents walked into my office unannounced. This is getting really serious, I thought. They wanted to know if I had any reason to believe or evidence to show Alydar had been killed for the insurance money. I said “No.” I had nothing to hide and answered every question. In retrospect, however, I learned that if a visitor from the FBI ever appears, one should call an attorney, no matter what. The agents did not record my remarks, and it makes for a tough argument later on if you disagree with their memories.
The following year, 1997, brought a judgment against J.T. Lundy when he failed to appear in a federal action. He was ordered to pay $67 million to unsecured creditors.
In August of the same season, I was called before a federal grand jury in Houston in reference to Alton Stone, who had been the Calumet night watchman in November of 1990 when Alydar was injured.
When called before a grand jury you cannot have an attorney and you are basically at the mercy of the prosecutor. I answered every question and reviewed my activities involving Alydar’s injury and subsequent surgery. After a few questions from the jury foreman and the assistant U.S. Attorney, I got the initial feeling they had some doubts about my testimony. A later Associated
Press article quoted the prosecutor as saying, “This was a cover-up from day one. He (Stone) lied because this was a cover-up that began in November 1990.”
Despite the conclusions of eminent veterinarians that Alydar had not been deliberately injured, it became obvious prosecutors and others believed differently. It was disturbing that my integrity was called into question.
She asked me if it was true that I had said the horse was killed for the insurance money. I was stunned by the question. I turned to the judge and told him that I had never said the horse was killed for insurance money.
The grand jury indicted Stone on two counts of perjury, and in June of 1998, more than seven years after Alydar’s death, his trial began.
Stone had a court-appointed attorney and did not testify at his trial. The attorney had worked with a very small budget but did make at least one trip to Lexington to interview witnesses. Stone also took a lie detector test, which he passed.
I had the feeling the government was trying to get some inside information from Stone in exchange for a reduced sentence. Actually, Stone did not know anything more than what he had told me in his recorded statement I had taken just a few days after Alydar’s injury. At the end of that interview
I asked him, “Is there anything I haven’t asked you that you think is important?” He answered, “No, sir.”
The government called more than 20 witnesses for Stone’s trial but not all testified. I testified as a government witness. My recorded statement, taken many years earlier, was read in open court and I was questioned by the assistant U.S. Attorney. As I was on the stand, she approached me with a yellow legal pad in her hand as though she was reading from it. She asked me if it was true that I had said the horse was killed for the insurance money. I was stunned by the question. I turned to the judge and told him that I had never said the horse was killed for insurance money. The assistant U.S. Attorney returned to her seat and asked me no further questions.
This was another instance where I felt the questioning was leading to some accusation that I was part of a conspiracy to collect the insurance money. I was not asked any follow-up questions, but felt the seed had been planted in the jurors’ minds.
It seemed like the logical person to have been called as a witness was J. T. Lundy. For some reason he could not be located, even though a publication at the time had published his Florida address and telephone number.
In November of 1998, Stone was convicted on the perjury charges and sentenced to several years in prison. The judge reduced the jury’s sentence to the minimum of five months in prison and five months of home confinement.
Just a few months later, in March of 1999, Lundy and his attorney, Gary Matthews, were indicted on federal charges that they intentionally and systematically had defrauded the First City National Bank of Houston of $65 million in loans to Calumet through bribery and deceit. The trial began in January of 2000. It concluded in February with a unanimous guilty verdict against both men. A sentencing hearing took place in October that year, but it soon digressed into a long series of questions centering on the circumstances surrounding Alydar’s death. It seemed the government attorneys still wanted to tie Lundy to the horse’s death in an effort to add to his sentence.
I was called to appear for questioning, along with the FBI agent handling the Alydar case and an expert hired by the government.
U.S. District Court Judge Sim Lake set the tone early in the proceedings. He stated the case did not involve Alydar’s death despite government inferences that Lundy had concocted a scheme that resulted in the horse’s demise to collect the insurance proceeds. The judge went on to say the government had obtained a conviction in the Stone perjury trial and was now “seeking through some sort of back door to hold Lundy criminally culpable for something that was not an issue in the fraud trial.”
FBI agent Rob Foster spent the better part of two hours testifying about the broken floor bracket from Alydar’s stall door, which the FBI labs and their metallurgist had examined. The agent admitted having no information as to the age of the bracket. He also was asked about photos he had taken but that were now missing. He remarked there was not enough evidence to implicate anyone in Alydar’s death and admitted his testimony conflicted with three well-regarded veterinarians who were on the scene the night of the injury and who all
