Episode 45. The Fight for Animal Justice: Author Fred M. Kray

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Once a successful trial lawyer, he decides to turn his practice into animal law. Falling in love with the horse named Aladar when he once worked at a horse racing track in Nebraska, he starts to investigate what happens to him. The things that he finds out about the equestrian world can be shocking. So shocking that he wrote an excellent book about it. Join me as I talk to author. Fred.

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M. Cray on this episode of True Crime in Authors. Welcome to True Crime in Authors podcast, where we bring two passions together. The show that gives new meaning to the old adage, truth is stranger than fiction. Here's your host, David McClam. What's going on everybody? Welcome to another edition of True Crime in Authors. Of course, I'm your man.

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David McClam. Hey, if you guys haven't already, make sure you join us on all of our social medias. One link to a link tree will get you all of the links you need to have for the show. Today, I have a good one for you. This person falls above and beneath an extraordinary person, as well as an author. So let me introduce to you who we have today. He is a civil trial attorney who for the last 20 years has limited his practice to animal law.

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Whether rescuing a stolen Great Dane with a SWAT team or freeing innocent dogs from death row, it has always been his life's purpose to give animals a voice. He was introduced to horse racing working at a racetrack in Nebraska while attending law school. He fell in love with a horse named Aladar in Miami, watching him run in the Flamingo Steaks in the Florida Derby. Reintroduced to Aladar's story when he moved to Gainesville,

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He spent four years researching, interviewing, and writing about Aladar, producing a story that celebrates the horse's legacy, while at the same time exposing the greed and corruption behind the gates of Calumet. He is the author of the new book, Broken, The Suspicious Death of Aladar in the end of horse racing's golden age. Please welcome to the show, author Fred M. Cray. Hey Fred, welcome to the show. How are you doing today? I'm great, and I'm really happy to be on your show.

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Um, especially since it has to do with true crime, which, uh, my book is. Well, let me say, first of all, I never give people dates, but this is an important one. Happy pub day to you. Today is May 2nd. Your book just dropped. So I want to say, uh, congratulations on that. And I really appreciate that. Um, I started writing this book in 2018 and it's now 2023. So you can imagine the, the long and winding road.

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to the publication of this book. So very interesting book, interesting choices you made in your career. So let's kind of jump into it. What made you decide to limit your practice and go into animal law? I got burnt out of trial law. Trial laws are very intense and really life sucking sort of profession because you have to get everything right. There's no second chance. You've got

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the judge there, you've got the jury there, you've got your opponents there. I didn't ever sleep when I had a trial. It was a week long, I wouldn't sleep for a week. And when I got to be in my 40s, my body just said, hey, you can't do this anymore. So I really just quit. I burned out and I said, I can't do this anymore. People say, wow, you're really brave. It was really like you feel like you're a...

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on the edge of a building getting ready to jump off and your only choice was to quit in order to save yourself. So I quit. I really didn't do much for a couple of years, tried to do other things. And what happened was an incident. An incident happened when my dog, I got a notice in the mail that my dog wasn't licensed and I had to have a trial about it. And I thought, you know, okay, I'm a trial lawyer. I'll go down there.

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So I go down there and the guy from the county is there and he says, you need to have a license for your dog. But my dog had died before the license was due. So I brought the cremains of my dog and put them on a desk and said, here are the cremains of my dog. He was dead before the license was due. And the judge turned to the guy and he said, he's got you there. And the whole crowd in the audience laughed and applauded.

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And the guy from the county was livid. He said, we're gonna appeal. And he took the cremains and he went to copy them. And I was a trial lawyer, so I said to the judge, I said, listen, I'm a trial lawyer. There's nothing to appeal. This guy's reading off his computer. He doesn't have personal knowledge of anything. Why would the county waste their time and money to appeal this? And the judge said to me, well, they're not gonna appeal. He's just mad because he lost.

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And I went home that day and I thought to myself, this is no way to run animal control. Animal control is supposed to be for the animals. And I thought to myself, I could do this. I could represent animals, people that were put in these situations and do some good and help animals that don't have a voice. And so that was the day I decided to.

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start my animal law career. And it really saved my mental health because it gave me something I could do and do well. And it took me out of this depression I was in that was really severe. So since you started advocating for animals, what kind of things have you seen out there? I mean, one case that comes to mind, everybody knows it's been years ago, was the Michael Vick case, very, very widely published.

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Did you advocate for things like that or what kind of things did you see out in the field? Animal laws are a very broad area. I knew, I know the people who were involved in the Vic case. Rebecca Huss was the special master. And I will say this about this Michael Vick's case. Michael Vick unintentionally did more for fighting dogs than any other person alive. Because the fact that his dogs were able to be rehabilitated and put into homes.

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changed the whole context of what happens to dogs when they fight. Before his case, every fighting dog was euthanized. After his case, people tried to determine whether a fighting dog could be rehabilitated. And laws changed and, you know, it wasn't his intent, but it really shifted the welfare of fighting dogs. And to answer your question a little bit more broadly,

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Animal law is a very wide thing. It goes anywhere from saving a dog that's been wrongly accused of being dangerous. It goes to who gets the dog when people get divorced. It goes to you buy a puppy from a puppy place and it's effective. It has a heart murmur and you want to give it back, but you also want to have the surgery. There's litigation about that.

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There's also the issue of pit bulls being identified by some guy looking at them and saying, hey, you got a pit bull, we're either going to take it away from you or you have to give it away to someone else. And I actually went to federal court about that because, you know, the science really is that identifying a pit bull by looking at it is junk science. There's no way to replicate it. It's not accurate. And interestingly enough, Miami, which was one of the last places to have a pit bull

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overturned theirs in the last couple weeks, which I had tried for many years to get it overturned. But these are all things, the funniest case I had and you read it at the beginning was, I had to get a SWAT team to go out and reclaim a stolen Great Dane. And you think to yourself, you know, how does this happen? You know, what happened was the dog got loose, he was out, he was taken by animal control and after seven days, animal control has the right to

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takes the title to that dog and has the right to give it to a rescue. And that rescue was Great Dane Rescue. And so, they took the dog, put it in the, you know, had it in quarantine at a vet. And the original owner went there and stole it and then hid it. And so, they hired me to get the dog back. And of course, you know, what I didn't understand and now know is that if you're going to break into somebody's house to take a dog back,

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You need to hire special police that know how to use deadly force because somebody can come to the door and say, I'm not letting you in. And if you have a search warrant, you're allowed to go in there and break the door down and do all this. A person could get, you know, get out their gun and say, I'm like, so, you know, you have to hire special policemen, which costs like $5,000 because you can't just get the run-of-the-mill guy. And this was very exciting. You know, they had a staging area with four police cars.

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I had to be there to identify the Great Dane because you got to get the right one. And so we were in the staging area and we went to this guy's house with four police cars, all their sirens are on. The guy's got a fenced in area with a keypad and the cops get the guy to come out and he comes out and he says, what's this all about? Now, you know, all the cops are out there and all their police car sirens are on. Now all the neighbors are walking out. It's really a scene.

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And you think, you know, animal law is boring. No, it's not. So the guy comes out and he says, what's this all about? And the policeman says, look, you know, we have a search warrant for this Great Dane and the guy says, there's no Great Dane here. And the policeman says to him, well, I understand that you would say that, but you have to understand that we have a search warrant and we are not going to take your word for it now. Look, you know, and this guy who's telling him this is like Sylvester Stallone. He's got big muscles. He's bald headed. You know, his.

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bulging out and he's got all these people around. He says, you know, we can do this the easier, the hard way. You can either tell me he's not here and we'll take this battering ram and break down your doors and all your house looking for it, or you can just bring the dog out. It's up to you. Who do you think he did? Bring the brought the dog out. Yes. So they were very experienced. So these are the kinds of things, you know, another thing that I, that happened while is that we found out that.

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this place that sold dogs stole the veterinarian who was supposed to examine them's signature stamp and instead of him examining, just stamped his name on the piece of paper that you have to have to sell a dog. And so we took this guy's deposition and I said, well, you know, how many dogs have you examined? And he said, here's a pile of the dogs I've examined. And I said, well, here's the ones with your signature. And it's twice as big, you know, as the pile that he has. I said, so what do you think happened?

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He said, well, I think that they stole my signature stamp. I said, well, that's not a very good thing, is it? He said, no. I said, and you wouldn't let them do that apartment. So, you know, he denied it. But so now half those dogs that got sold were never seen by a vet and that's illegal in Florida. So these are the kinds of cases you get and it's never boring. It's always exciting and your client is always innocent.

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Well, thank you for that because you must have been reading my mind because that was actually my next question was, did you really take a SWAT team to get a great name? Cause I've never heard of that before. So that's a, that's an excellent story. Didn't even know there were special police that did things of that nature. Well, you can understand why with all the things that we've heard lately. Absolutely. You know, people going in and shooting and not announcing themselves. Now I know. I think that's a good system. So can you tell us what it's like to work at a horse ray track?

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And how did you actually get the job to do that? I was in law school and a friend of mine said, Hey, you know, the track is coming. This was in Lincoln, Nebraska. I don't know why I went to Lincoln, Nebraska for law school. I was from, uh, I went to school in Pennsylvania. That's another story, but I was working there in the summer and a friend of mine said, Hey, you can work at the track. Um, so I went to the track and I worked as a paramutual agent, which basically is somebody who takes your bets and pays you the money now back then.

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this wasn't electronic. You know, you took a ticket, you looked at his thing, you counted out the money and gave it back. So I worked there for, in the summer for three years and while I was there, I got to meet all the people. When you go to a horse race, you see two minutes of horses, you know, racing as fast as they can, but those horses are supported by an entire, what they call the backside of racing, which is the trainers, the hot walkers, the grooms.

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the exercise riders and that's a it's a whole other world. You know, if you go to the Kentucky Derby, there's a whole side of the track and it's people with all of the people that take care of the horses and you know, Churchill Downs, they actually have dorms, they have a medical place. They've tried very hard to help those people live a more middle-class lifestyle than they otherwise would because you know.

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You can't make a lot of money grooming a horse. So I met a lot of these people and inevitably what happens is you get into horse racing because the groom will come and say, hey, I got a hot tip. I watched so and so race running this morning. It was really good. You should bet on it. So you meet all the people and you meet the horses. And what you find is all the horses have different personalities. I mean, if you have pets, you already know this. But for some reason, you know, you...

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I didn't really realize it, you know, and I've always had a dog of some kind. You know, you have horses that are really mellow, you know, you have horses that are really nervous, you've got horses that are really dangerous, you've got horses that they're described as man-eaters. I mean, they may be great racing stallions, but they're hard to handle. You know, if they have a chance, they'll bite you and bite you bad. I just got interested in it because of that.

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talking to them every day, you know, getting hot tips. You know, I'd go to the barns and go into the barns and look in and, you know, give them carrots, you know, talk to them. And I felt like there was something special about horses. First of all, because there's an evolutionary link to man and horses. You know, when you think about horses, you think about they plowed our fields. They've ridden us on our back. They died.

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in battles they knew nothing about. And there's this quiet aura about horses that's labeled gravitas and you just feel like they have a lot of wisdom and they're noble. And I think a lot of people are drawn to them because if you've grown up in an environment where there's drama, you know, a lot of fiery tempers and all that, a horse is a very relaxing, very quiet.

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presence that you can feel relaxed around. I've asked a lot of people, you know, what it is about horses. Some of the people say, you know, what the horse will do for you when he trusts you. So these are the things that stuck with me. And the thing that stuck me was their majesty in running. You know, you see them in the stretch running, and you see them giving it everything they've got.

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and you see the musculature and you hear the rhythm of their hoofs beat and their breath coming out. I mean it's a magical thing and I don't know that you can really, if you've never experienced, I think you can't, a description won't do it for you, but for me it's a magical moment. And no matter how many times I see it, it's almost religious. Horses is definitely part of our nature and things that we love. Collagedale is the most popular horses ever from Budweiser.

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Uh, and it's just amazing to me, like my whole family, I think they did a commercial of the Superbowl and my wife was doing something in the kitchen. Oh my God, the Clyde Dales is on. They've actually brought them down here. I've actually passed by the Clyde Dales trailer going through California. Um, and just the prestige of the horses, the way they look. I agree with you. You can't get a more beautiful animal than a horse, especially if the horse is taken care of properly. And those Clyde Dales are huge. Yeah.

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So then you met Aladar, how did you come to meet Aladar and what about this particular horse was so special to you? I was, uh, in my trial phase as a lawyer back in 78, I was a pretty green lawyer and you get, you get, you know, so wrapped up in that you just, you have no life. I mean, so one day I just decided, you know what, I'm going to go to the races and, uh, so.

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I went down to, there are a lot of tracks in Miami, some of them have closed since, but I went to watch Aladar at the Flamingo Stakes in March of 78 and he's a big, big horse and his style of running is in itself exciting because he's a horse that

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runs from the rear. In other words, he doesn't go out to the front and stay in front the whole time. What he does is he waits until the last stretch run and then he just outruns everybody. In that sense, he's not a very versatile horse like Affirmed was. But Aladar was a strong horse. I saw him run in the Flamingo Stakes at Hylia Park and I just fell in love with him. He was his nobility and his determination. You could just see as he

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coming to pass the horses in the stretch, just how determined he was to win. And you thought to yourself, that is a crystal, that crystallizes competition in a way that is like Michael Jordan, or like anyone else who is the biggest competitor you've ever seen. And I was so impressed. And I don't know how you, it's another thing, you know, you're a fan and you're, you know, one of 20,000 in the audience, but I felt like I knew him.

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I felt we had a bond that is not explainable. And as a result of that, I knew he was going to run a month later in the Florida Derby and I went and saw him there and same thing. And I just, you know, he was, everybody has one horse they love, Aladar was that for me. And then I went back to work and I kind of, you know, I followed him in the Triple Crown, I followed him in the Travers and then, you know, I sort of lost track of it. And after, you know, I came up to Gainesville and started practicing animal law.

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I got back into horse racing a little bit because Ocala is right next to Gainesville. And Ocala is the second horse capital in the world. And one day I decided I wanted to go and find Dr. Fager's headstone. Dr. Fager is probably the fastest horse that ever ran back in those days. And he was named after Dr. Fager because the neurologist who saved the trainer's life was named Dr. Fager. And he said, I'm going to name a horse after you.

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So, his headstone is Ocala and so I decided to take a horse farm tour to find it. When I was on the horse farm tour, I was talking to this lady and she said, what's your favorite horse? I said, Aladar. She said, oh, well there's a lady here who was at Calumet Farm when Aladar was there. And I said, oh great, you know, so I said, I'd like to talk to her. So I went to talk to her. I said, listen, were you at Calumet when Aladar was there? She said, yes. I said, well, you know, what happened to him?

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And she said, everybody on the farm knows what happened to him. Um, you couldn't get within 50 feet of that barn without three guys coming out. They had security. I said, well, do you think JT Lundy killed Aladar? And she said, no, I think he aligned it. I said, well, uh, I'd like to talk to you about it. And she said, I won't talk to you about it because I'm afraid for my family and for my children. Now this is, you know, we're talking about now it's, it's 2018.

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and he died in 1990 and I'm thinking how is this possible that this woman is here and she's that afraid, you know. And I had read Wild Ride which is a book about Calumet and there were some inferences in that book that the mafia might have been involved. And I was thinking of that scene in The Godfather where the guy wakes up with a bloody horse head in his bed, you know, and I thought. So the lady would not talk to me. I said, listen, I like this. She said, no, I'm not talking to you.

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left. So with that introduction into Aladar's situation, you know, I went home and I started reading everything there was and I found out that there had been an FBI investigation and two trials about Aladar. And so I flew to Houston and got all the court transcripts. I read them and I thought, you know, I don't understand how this accident quote unquote happened. And so I decided

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Mainly from my own curiosity because I thought to myself, look, you've never written a book before. You don't have any connections in horse racing. There's been two trials. How could I possibly find out anything new? But I decided, hey, I'm gonna talk to some people and see. So I started interviewing. I ended up interviewing 25 people, which included the grooms, the farm hands, the insurance, the guys who investigated it for the insurance companies, the FBI agent.

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And after I did all that, I thought, you know what? This is a book. And that's how I wrote the book. Just let the audience know, I will happily link it down here, but there is a whole entire Wikipedia page just on Aladar along with a whole lot of other articles I have seen, but your book is the most comprehensive of all of those. You also have to go to my website because my website is the most comprehensive

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about information on my website. My website is meant to be used in conjunction with the book so that if you go on my website, you'll see the pictures that the insurance adjuster took the night of the incident, which those pictures are very important because that allows you to see what he saw. You know, it's not like, hey, I'm saying this doesn't look possible. You can look at the pictures that he took that night and all of his reports.

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and you can see the stallion bar where it happened. And if you're an Aladar fan, you can see all of his races, all of his trophies, his racing career. And so as you go through the book and read it, and I say, well, Tom Dixon wrote this report, you can go see the report. You can go on my website and say, I don't want to believe what Mr. Cray is saying. I want to see for myself. And you can read all of his reports that led to Lloyd's of London paying $36.5 million in 30 days.

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I mean, that struck me as wild in the first place. I've had cases for $5,000 that had more investigation than this case with Aladar. So all those things. And the thing is, after the insurance company paid, it was essentially over with. People said, okay, well, that's what the insurance company is not going to pay a total between the two of $40.5 million and not have done a good investigation. But that's really not the case.

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I'll give you two things to whet your appetite about why when I started investigating this, I didn't think it was an accident. The first is, and this was known when the insurance company did their investigation, although they didn't report on it, a week before Alathar died, somebody in the Calumet Crown Vic came up to the regular night watchman and said, hey, now this is court testimony. This isn't me talking. This is what was testified to by...

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the people who were involved in court. So Cowboy Kip was the regular night watchman. A week before this incident, somebody in the Calumet vehicle came up and said, hey, Cowboy, we're worried you're burning out. You need to take a night off. And he said, listen, I never take a night off. I'm not interested in taking a night off. I like my job. I've already taken my vacation. I don't really need a night off. What's all this burning out? I've been working here for five years and you've never asked me this before. And so...

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That person said to him, look, we want you to take the night off. And he took that as take the night off and shut up. So, he said okay. And he said, okay, well, I'll take the night off. What night do you want me to take off? And they said Tuesday night. Now, that means that a substitute night watchman who was Alton Stone replaced him on that night and that's the night that Aladar was injured. The second thing that will give you a taste of why I.

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didn't think it was an accident, was okay, you have an accident on November 13th, an insurance adjuster goes out and take pictures that night. Well, the second insurance company adjuster for Golden Eagle, Lloyd's was the 36 and a half and Golden Eagle had five. So the insurance adjuster for Golden Eagle calls the morning after at nine o'clock and says look, I want to come over and take pictures of the stall and talk to everybody involved. And so...

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They say, well, you're not allowed to come. And he says, what? I'm the adjuster. And they said, well, we're not letting you on. So he goes back and calls his boss, and his boss calls Calumet and says, listen, we've got a $5 million policy, and you have to cooperate under the insurance policy, and if you don't let us in, we're not gonna pay. So they say, okay, we'll let him in. So the guy from Golden Eagle, Terry McVeigh is his name, goes over there the day after the incident.

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and they let him in and he goes to look at the stall and it's been repaired. And everything that, all the bolts that have been broken off, they're gone. And Terry McVeigh says, what happened? And he said, well, you know, we fixed it. And so the question is, why wouldn't they let him in at nine o'clock? Because they were fixing it. And how do I know that? Because the guy who fixed it testified in trial that at nine o'clock that morning,

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Calumet management told him, and he's the maintenance guy, you want that fixed now. Now here we have, think about it, we have a $40.5 million insurance claim and you're fixing the evidence so that it can't be, it's not there. It's not like Calumet never had an insurance claim and didn't know. So these two facts alone are enough to start to raise questions. Wow.

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So I guess the question I have too is, as you said earlier, the lady you spoke to didn't want to speak about it because she was afraid for her life. If there's other people that are afraid of their life, what made you go ahead with the investigation and want to write the book? Well, because I thought as I investigated, I first investigated the mafia angle. And after I investigated, it was my conclusion. And after I talked to the FBI agent, I didn't think that mafia had anything to do with it. While it's clear that

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Calumet Farm did business with a farm in Ocala that was run by some mafia people. I think the mafia didn't have anything. So I wasn't afraid of that, really. I'll tell you what I was afraid of. This is kind of the comic relief in the book. So one of the guys who came to see Aladar after the injury, his name was Keid Hiley. And so I wanted to interview him, and I went on his Facebook page.

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You know, he was a survivalist. He had, you know, gun rights, you know, gun ownership. And so I was afraid to go interview him in his small town in Kentucky because I was afraid maybe, you know, he was armed. So I called a private investigator and I said, listen, I'm afraid I want somebody to go with me with this guy. You're a private investigator. You can bring a gun and I don't want to be, you know, I don't know. I mean, I just, I want to have some protection. And, you know.

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me, City Slicker, going into a small town in Kentucky, you know, it's a small town. You're in there five seconds and everybody knows you're there. You know, things get around in a small town. So, I go pick up the private investigator, we're on the way to interview this guy, and I say to the guy, did you bring your gun? And he goes, no. And you know, I'm in the car with him and I'm thinking, I'm thinking to myself, do I still want to go through with this? You know?

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And like we're halfway there. So I think, well, you know, we're going to go through with it. Uh, and it turned out we couldn't get, we couldn't find him. He, you know, he wouldn't answer the phone. He wouldn't let us in. So it turned out to be nothing, but you know, it was, it was a funny moment at the time. It was not funny. I mean, it wasn't funny at the time, but it's funny now. So part of your book, you said that you are exposing the greed and corruption behind the gates of Calumet. Those who know horse racing knows Calumet very well.

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Does this thing go deeper beyond Aladar? Is these things that happens all the time that we just don't see? Well, there's a lot of corruption in horse racing. I think anytime you have money and people, you have corruption. I mean, I don't think it's just in horse racing, but one interview that I had, my very first interview that I had was in Lexington on a radio show. The guy who runs it, he's his name was Urkel Echols.

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He started out the interview saying to me, well, your book is about horses being killed for the insurance money. I said, yeah, I said, look, I don't want to start out the interview like that. He looked at me dead in the face and he said, well, you wrote about it, so you might as well talk about it. You know, the book isn't all about that, but there are three pages in the book where I catalog all of the ways that horses have been killed for the insurance money. It's terrible.

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And one of the people I interviewed for this book is named Tommy Burns, and he killed 15 horses for the insurance money in the equestrian world. It's done. And it can be done for $5,000. And your horse could be worth $25,000. It's mind-boggling that, at least for Tommy Burns, the people that were having their equestrian horses killed were, in many cases, millionaires.

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and they didn't need the money. What was found out after this, go back and say, at the time Aladar was injured, nobody knew except the insiders, like the people who managed Calumet. The Calumet was in debt, terrible, terrible debt that they were not going to get out of. And if you look at the financial situation, none of it came out.

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when the insurance companies did their thing and paid their money, they had no idea about Calumet's financial situation. It wasn't until the bank that Calumet declared bankruptcy and people got access to Calumet's records. And when John Ward took over, you know, Calumet after JT Lundy left, he found out there were $120 million in debt. Aladar's money, $40.5 million, was not going to save them.

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but it would pay off maybe 80% of their loan to First City National Bank of Houston. So when the FBI got involved after this, they brought all this to light, all this financial stuff. When that bank, First City National Bank, went out of business, the FDIC took over. They started finding out that Aladar was collateral for many, many, too many loans, and that all the loans of First City went bad.

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And so that's when they started to investigate what happened to Aladar. And so that's when they started talking to people. And the first person they talked to was Alton Stone, who was the night watchman, the substitute night watchman. And he made some statements that were inconsistent in front of the grand jury, so they arrested him for lying to the grand jury. And their hope was that he would turn on Lundy and give them information so that they could prove that Lundy did it.

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Unfortunately, he didn't know anything. So he could never tell him anything. He went to trial and was convicted. And then they went after Lundy for fraud because the statute of limitations had run out for them to prove that he had something to do with Aladar's death. They hired a guy named Pratt, who was an MIT engineer, and they tried to use his idea of how the horse was injured.

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and his report is on my website. But they were not able to persuade the judge that Lundy was the one who did it. And so that's why my investigation into the 25 other people was necessary to try to get information that was not information that either the FBI or the trials were able to find. Part of my book is also a courtroom drama because I take all those court cases and...

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go through them and show you what the testimony was in those cases under oath, because that's important, and give the reader an idea of how complicated those trials were and how a lawyer would analyze the testimony and what was not said and what was not covered. The crazy thing that you think about when you look at these two trials is the prosecution never had a theory of...

35:07
how Aladar intentionally injured his leg. When you look at the evidence and you read the book, you'll see that there's two camps. There's the camp of the doctors who are coming in after the accident, the incident, and declaring it an accident because there's a lot of pressure on horse racing. I mean, you're gonna come in and say, somebody killed Aladar for the insurance money. That's a bomb that they don't want to go off. I'm not saying that the doctors came in, Dr. Bramledge and Dr.

35:36
Baker and Dr. Rhodes and they were wanting to find an accident and that's what they found. They did it in a way that they think made sense to them but I go back to you look at that stall door that night and you tell me that a horse who kicked it and broke his cannon bone which can withstand 7,000 pounds of force and not leave a mark on that door, I don't believe it. And so, the horsemen, you know, the grooms, the people who

36:06
you know, who are with horses every day, they all brought that up. And the grand jury brought it up. They said, where's the mark on the door? And Tom Dixon investigated it. He doesn't deny there wasn't a mark on it. So, you've got the doctor saying one thing, you've got the horseman saying another, and you've got lawyers who really were unable in Alton Stone's case to get someone that made sense about how he was intentionally injured. And that's what my investigation showed.

36:36
how that could happen. Well, I'm glad that you got to interview Tommy Burns. I don't know what you got from him, but as you may know, in 2021, Netflix had a documentary called Bad Sport, which was all about horse killing scheme. Tommy Burns was your lead man in that. And from me, my wife and I both watched it. By the time it was over, I was in tears because looking at this man, he did wrong, but you knew he was sorry. And then he goes into stories about how.

37:02
certain things that's happened to him over life and in health, and he feels like it's karma coming back to what he did. So I don't take up for any criminal, but when I looked at him, you could see in his eyes just that he was immensely sorry. Well, let me tell you about Tommy Burns. I interviewed him, and I tell his story in the book. This is a guy who, you know, left the house at 15, got involved in drugs and alcohol, and was mentored by a guy.

37:33
Barney Ward, he's the one who would get clients for Tommy Burns to kill the horses for. And what happened to him was, you know, he was caught in Gainesville breaking a horse's leg with a crowbar. He didn't do it, but Arlo did it. And so he turned state's evidence and his karma was that he, when you saw it in the show, was to go and convict all these people. He had to put up with the cross-examination of these lawyers about how he's a liar and how he did all these things.

38:02
But he was the one who helped convict those people. And in his mind, that's his penance. And he wanted to protect what he considered to be his father, Barney Ward. So he didn't give him up to the FBI. And then the FBI came to him and sat him in a room and said, hey, I want you to hear this. And they played a tape where Barney Ward said, I'm going to take you out before you can talk. And I'm telling you that when we talked about that, he cried.

38:31
saw deeply. And I could tell that this thing that Barney Ward did to him is a deep scar that hurts as much now as it did then. And I too had reservations about how I would feel about talking to him. And I say in the book, you know, I spent the afternoon with him, you know, he had three farm dogs, we had dogs all around us, he has horses.

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And it's funny because we heard a hoof kick while I was there and he goes, now that's a hoof kick. You come away from him knowing that he feels bad for what he did and he spent his life trying to make it right. And I'm not the only one who... He's a charismatic guy in the fact that he's telling you all arson, theft, you know, all these things he did. And you're getting a glimpse into a criminal life.

39:27
from a safe spot that you would never get otherwise. I feel like he's done more good than he's done bad. And I'm not the only one. The FBI agent who was involved with his case picked him up in jail and they're friends. Yeah, because I watched it with the ward thing. I think at the end he was like, why am I protecting people that's not protecting me? And I'm sitting here, I'm just like yelling at the TV. I'm like, dude, just turn them in. They don't care about you. But yeah, that was-

39:55
I'll link that documentary too in the show notes guys. You guys need to check it out. Cause it goes, I think it goes hand in hand with your book and now that you've interviewed them, people can get more of a glimpse of him than what we got from the documentary. Yeah. He was a, he was a very interesting guy. I think he's smart. Uh, you know, and we went over the evidence in this case, in Aladar's case. I said, look, you've done this. You did this for a living. Here's the stall door. Here's the bracket. Here's the, you know, here's the layout.

40:25
What do you think happened? Now, the end part of your book says the end of horse racing's golden age. Can you tell us why you feel like that it was? Well, you know, it's funny because I'm not saying that the book title doesn't mean that Aladar's death was the end of horse racing's golden age. Horse racing's golden age was the 70s. And the reason that is, is because we had three triple crown winners, Secretariat, Seattle slew and affirmed.

40:55
horses that won the Triple Crown in the 70s. That shows you what a great year that was. It was also a great decade. It was also a great decade because in the decade of the 70s when Aladar and a firm raced, they were racing when farms owned horses and trained horses. So, Calumet owned Aladar, he was born on the farm, he was raised on the farm, he was trained on the farm.

41:25
and he was raced by the farm. Same thing with a firm. The firm was owned by Lewis Wilson. He was owned by him, raced by him, and there was a much more personal relationship between the farm and the horse. Now, farms will send their horse to Wayne Lucas, and there's no connection. It's just money changing hands. So many people think that that was the golden age of horse racing because of that link.

41:53
and the difference in how horses were owned and trained. And as I've been on Twitter, which if you want to find me, that's where I am. I'm on there. That's my place, at FM Cray. Some veterinarians have come on and said the reason the 70s are the golden age is because it was before Lasix was allowed and performance enhancing drugs became used in horse racing. I didn't know that, but now that they've said that and they know what they're talking about, that's true.

42:21
The end of horse racing golden age is in the title is really meant to say that the end of Aladar's racing career was the end of horse racing's golden age. What is it that you want readers to take away from the book? Well, first of all, I want readers to know it's a true crime book. It's not a horse book. It wasn't written in the parlance of horse racing. If you pick up this book and know nothing about horse racing, you will be really surprised at all those behind the scenes stuff that goes on.

42:50
But I don't talk about odds and betting and this horse has this much weight and all that. It's written in a style for lay people who know nothing about horse racing, can enjoy the mystery of what happened to Aladar, follow the FBI investigation, follow the courtroom drama and then follow my investigation of all the people. And then at the end, they can decide for themselves what happened and fill out the verdict form on my website.

43:20
The second thing that I wanted to come away with is that Aladar had a legacy other than being second to a firm in the 1978 Triple Crown. That's what he's known for. You say Aladar, people say, oh, he came in second to a firm in 1978. He was a beautiful horse. He had a great personality. You'll hear some great behind the scenes things in the book about Aladar meeting the Queen of England.

43:49
Aladar's friends, Aladar's quirks. He liked to watch TV. I mean, there's all these personal stories about him that were told by the grooms who lived with him, essentially. And you'll love Aladar when you're finished with this book because you'll get to know him in a way that's different than any other way that you, because you get to know the people that were around him and the horses that were with him. And the third thing is,

44:18
You know, the mystery's not entirely solved. And I believe there are people out there that know something. And I'm hoping that the publication of the book and the people out there... I've already had people on my Twitter come and say, hey, I would like to talk to you about this. And I'm open to talking to anybody. If you were at Calumet, I know, and people say, I work at Calumet. I'd like to talk to you. I'm hoping that in five years that I can write...

44:47
you know, an ending about exactly what happened. And that's another reason that I wrote this book, was to shake some information out with people that are out there. And you know, the true crime community is known for that. You look at, you know, some of the cases, I think the best one that's known is the Laura Patino case. You know, the lady who was in a van, and you know, they found the car. There was all kinds of things that social media was allowed, was able to do.

45:17
And you know, there's nothing that can happen to anybody now. All the criminal statute limitations is run and it's just a question of, you know, and I'm still running up some important leads that I won't talk about now. And I'm not going to stop until I run out of things to look at. In closing, is there anything you'd like to say to any of the readers and your fans out there? Well, I would say that this book is unique in that. I guess it's repetitive, but it's unique in that you as a reader can take part.

45:47
in solving this mystery. It's written as a mystery. You'll see it develop in time. You'll be able, when I say, hey, Tom Dixon took photographs, you'll be able to go on my website and look at those photographs and say to yourself, do I think that? Forget what Tom Dixon says. Forget what Tommy Burns says. I can see how the stall is laid out. I can see all of the hardware, how the door is held in. Do I think that's

46:16
So do I agree with that? You can see the statement of Alton Stone. You can see Dr. Pratt's report, and you can see why did the insurance companies pay their money? You can see all the reports that were set by Tom Dixon. So I don't know of any other book that does that. And again, you can go at the end. I've had people already fill out the verdict form. And you go on there, you get this code from the book, you get a verdict form just like you do in trial. When I was in trial, I'd get out the verdict form and say, hey.

46:46
Question number one, you answer this. Question number two, you answer this. And then you send it, and that's your verdict. Well, Fred, I thank you for coming on the show. It has been enlightening. This is gonna be one heck of a book. I'm getting my copy today as it is pub day. I did start reading your website, by the way, and I stopped because I wanted the book to go along with it because of what it was getting into. And that's what I'll say to the audience. Don't just go read his website. Get his book, then go to the website. Use those two as a companion.

47:16
Because the website, it's just cold evidence without really any context to it. So, all right. So I thank you for coming on, man. Anytime you want to come back. Well, I really appreciate you having me on and I hope we can talk again. And I hope that the True Crime guys and your fans will take a look at the book. And it's now out on Amazon and Amazon allows you to read like the preface in the first chapter. Read it.

47:46
See if it doesn't interest you and fascinate you to wanna know more. Well, I thank you for coming on. Anytime you wanna come back, you know how to get a hold of me. You're always welcome to come back. I tweeted at you. I saw that.

48:03
All right guys, that was the remarkable Fred M. Cray. You can get your copy of Broken, the Suspicious Death of Aladar and the end of Horse Racing's Golden Age right now on Amazon. After about a time you hear this is already dropped because today, May 2nd was published day for Fred. Also make sure you go and visit his website, which will also be linked in the show notes description and anything else that you want to know about Fred will be attached. Do you have any?

48:32
knowledge of what happened to Aladar. His Twitter is right there. Be sure to reach out to him. He would love to talk to you about it. All right guys, once again, thank you for tuning in. I know you have many choices in True Crime Podcast and I'm grateful that you are tuned in here. I hope you guys are being good and safe. And always remember, always stay humble. An act of kindness can make someone's day. A little love and compassion can go a long way. And this

49:02
It's the podcast where two passions becomes one. I'll catch you guys in the next one. Thank you for listening to True Crime and Authors. Don't forget to rate, comment, and subscribe. Join us on social media, on Facebook at True Crime and Authors, on Twitter at Authors True, on YouTube and TikTok at True Crime and Authors, and email at truecrimeandauthors at gmail.com.

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