THE COURT: Okay, we’re back on the record on
MR. DUNGAN: James Henderson, Judge.
THE COURT: Step up, sir. Raise you right hand. Do you solemnly swear or affirm the testimony you will give in this matter will be the truth, so help you God?
MR. HENDERSON: I do.
THE COURT: Come on up, watch your step. That chair is on rollers, so be careful. And the microphone is not going to make you louder, so you’re going to have to make sure you speak up loudly and distinctly for us. Tell us your full name.
THE WITNESS: James Edward Henderson, Jr.
THE COURT: And Mr. Dungan?
JAMES EDWARD HENDERSON, JR.
Called at 4:59 p.m. by the Defense, sworn by the court, testified:
DIRECT EXAMINATION
BY MR. DUNGAN:
Q. Mr. Henderson, would you tell the court please your educational background?
A. I have a—-do you want me to go from my bachelors all the way… I mean, I have a masters in social work-—
Q. Start with your bachelors.
A.
Okay. I have a bachelors in
social work from
Q. You got that in what year please?
A. (No audible response)
Q. If your resume says 1993, does that sound right?
A. Okay, that would be correct. Correct.
Q. Okay.
A. I also have a special certification—-well, then after I, so then I finished my masters degree, specialized in family services and substance abuse, then when I was living in California I went back to school and got a certification in eating disorder therapy, then when I came back to Michigan I went into University of Michigan, graduated in the top five percent of my class in ’95.
Q. And that was a masters in?
A. Masters in social work. I have, my major is in interpersonal practice which would be therapy, and my minor is in administration and I’m also, was, completed all the course work to be a certified school social worker, but never actually did that.
Q. Okay. And you have a number of certifications related to those fields?
A.
Yeah. I’m a licensed drug and
alcohol counselor at the highest level for the state of
Q. Okay. I don’t want to take you through your entire employment history, but would you start please by telling the court how you’re employed right now?
A.
I work for the Fifteenth District Court, City of
Q. Okay. And you’re a domestic violence intensive supervision probation officer?
A. Correct.
Q. And have been so since January of 1999.
A. Correct. And I’ve worked at the courts longer than that. I mean I probably came into the courts in ’93 as part time temporary. Originally I was for, I was a social worker for the mentally ill and chronic substance abusers, so like if you were homeless and on probation if you had a chronic substance abuse problem, if you were mentally ill, you would come to me. So I took all the problem cases and when we were going to apply for a domestic violence grant the judge asked me to do that because I also worked, I mean, I had several jobs. I was working full time doing probation work, but I was also working full time every night of the week at Dawn Farms, a drug rehab in Ann Arbor, and then I also worked, I did five batterers intervention programs a week for a place called ETRS. I did two marathon weekends a month at a place called ETRS, so they knew that I had the clinical experience in dealing with domestic violence and asked me if I would carry that over to probation and so I agreed and transferred in ’99 to DV.
Q. Okay.
THE COURT: ETRS initials?
THE WITNESS: Yeah. Education Training and Research Services.
THE COURT: Okay.
THE WITNESS: And so I worked for them for several years.
THE COURT: Okay. Mr. Dungan?
BY MR. DUNGAN:
Q. So as far as what you’ve been up to fairly recently, you’ve been the DV intensive supervision probation officer since 1999 to the present, correct, and then you also had listed a program director for Accountable Choices, LLC?
A. Yes. And that was just a program that I was running and doing, domestic violence work at, for our court.
Q. And you’ve been doing that since October, 2002?
A. Yes.
Q. Still to the present. And then from, when you talked about being a residential aid at Dawn Farms, that was from May of 1992 through October, 2004?
A. That’s probably correct.
Q. All right. So you’ve been doing some running around.
A. Yeah. When I did that, I mean there was literally times where I worked almost twenty-four hours a day, I went from job to job to job.
Q. Now, you also apparently are a speaker that goes around states, goes around the country to give seminars?
A. Correct.
Q. And that’s apparently kept you fairly busy too?
A.
I’m gone usually anywhere from one to two weeks a month. And so what will happen is like let’s say I
may fly down to
Q. Did you write down for example the dates that you’ve been out of state attending conferences since say mid 2006?
A.
I did. I have, I wrote down
approximate dates here that I had, I also have a big calendar I brought in
here. When I’m at work I have a big wall
calendar, I’ll put like a highlighter through the days that I’m going to be out
of town, so if you call me and want me to come speak at your training I can
glance up at the wall fairly quickly and say, well, no, I’ll be in
Atlanta. And I’ve done that. I mean, I was in
Q. Well, do you have the dates written down for—-
A. Yeah, I have, I’ve got approximate dates here. They’re scratched off on my calendar. I didn’t go into and look, so it could be off by a day meaning like I had flown out the day before—-
Q. Sure.
A. –-the date that I have here.
Q. Okay. Just go back to like say summer of 2006 just so the judge has an idea of how often you’ve been out of town on these, from then until the present.
A.
All right. So let’s say if we go
into July. All right. July, July twelfth
through the fourteenth I was in
MS. LAMP: Your Honor, I’m going to object at this point. Just to the extent that if the purpose of this is to elicit the dates that Mr. Henderson was out of town, I don’t see the purpose that we need to know every single conference that he’s spoken at. I don’t see the relevance to that, quite frankly. He’s already testified--
THE COURT: Well, I’m kind of interested in it.
MS. LAMP: Okay.
THE COURT: Hearing it. I assume we’ll get through this in a timely fashion then.
MR. DUNGAN: Sure. That’s why I had him write them down quick.
THE
COURT: I appreciate
THE
WITNESS:
THE COURT: I’m sure you do. Go ahead, Mr. Henderson.
THE
WITNESS: Eight twenty-eight through
eight thirty I’m in
BY MR. DUNGAN:
Q. All right. Can you carry that into 2007 as well, at least through March?
A.
Yeah. In, well, February
twenty-one through the twenty-fourth I was in
Q. That’s far enough.
A.
Q. All right. And when you have to go to those seminars on weekdays Monday through Friday and you miss work, you have to make up those days at work?
A. Yeah. I flex my schedule as much as I can, so I don’t have to, or else I take vacation time. Because I’m not doing that on the court’s time. So because I’m doing home supervision with clients, they like the idea that I can work on weekends, check on people, I can work late. Like I work Monday nights till ten o’clock every Monday night. The victims know that’s when I’m going to call you. My clients know you call me to find out if you’re excused from court that day. And it’s fairly typical that you’ll find me at the court working quite late.
Q. All right. Tell the judge about your experience with horses and I want you to start at the beginning and describe it for us.
A.
I’ve probably, loved horses all my life, absolutely was enamored with
them, grew up in a poor family, could not afford horses. My aunt and uncle owned Grass Lake Arena and
Track which at one time was the largest privately owned horse, indoor horse
arena I think in the state of
Q.
Is that located in
A.
That’s in
Q. What do you mean by boarded?
A. Boarded, people brought their horses into our facility, paid a fee for us to take care of their animals for them.
Q. Okay.
A. And so I started being the primary caretaker for feed, not for medical things or anything like that, I was a kid, but that was my job. I got up in the morning before I went to school, I did chores, went through and fed everybody. Went to school on the bus, went back out and really my drug of choice, I mean kind of a joke, was horses. Everybody else was smoking pot and drinking. From the time I got home from school till eleven o’clock at night I was doing chores and riding and training horses. I did that at my aunt and uncle’s house up until about twenty.
Q. Till age twenty?
A.
Yeah. So probably from sixth
grade through, till I was around, nineteen, twenty, somewhere around that
age. At that time I left and I was in
Q. Can you tell us what year that was?
A.
Probably 1991. Yeah, I think,
1990, ’91 I moved back to
Q. So it would have been about the time you started your masters program?
A. I think I had to finish up a semester of undergrad work because I transferred to so many different schools and so I wanted to get the social work to get the advanced standing.
Q. Is the uncle you’re talking about the same one as you had lived with before?
A. Yeah, yeah. They’re actually, it’s my great aunt and uncle. It’s really my mom’s aunt and my grandma’s sister, so it’s my great aunt and uncle.
Q. Okay.
A. Both deceased now.
Q. Were they still involved with horses when you came back?
A. They were still involved with horses. My uncle had moved out, cut down significantly. You know, his wife had died, he’d remarried. They still had the boarding facility, the racetrack, they had cattle pennings out there, we had a bunch of cattle too. In fact, the property we have now we leased when I was a kid, we kept cattle there years ago. So I mean we always had, you know, about a hundred head of cattle back then.
Q.
When you moved back to
A. I went right back to the farm, correct. Except for I was going to school so I wasn’t like doing all the chores as much, I didn’t live out there, but I’d go out, I’d visit my uncle almost every day. That’s how I started talking to Matt again. I was smoking then, my uncle was dying of cancer, I did not want him to know I smoked. I would stop in at the store, get gum, breath mints, stupid stuff that I know don’t hide cigarette smell, but when you’re young you think it does. And then I’d go out to the farm, visit my uncle, help do some things. Then we sold half our farm. We sold the half with the indoor arena and the racetrack and all that because he was dying and he wanted to put that in estate, blah, blah, blah. I would be sitting in the house with him, Matt would be over there riding. He was boarding a horse at that facility now. And my uncle would see him riding and my uncle really liked Matt and his twin brother, used to bale hay for him and did a bunch of stuff and he just thought that, you know, it was a good family, and he would see him riding and he goes, you need to go out there and help that kid, I can see the state of Texas between his ass and the saddle. And you know, but just a hillbilly comment like that.
Q. Some kind of improper form of riding.
A. Yeah, yeah. So I started going over there and riding with him and so we, you know, would ride around, talk about horses or whatever. From there when my uncle died he willed-—
Q. In 1994?
A.
Yeah, in ’94 he died. He willed
me the horse
Q. Just one horse?
A. He, well, he willed me a horse, he willed my sister a horse. Yet I took care of it. I don’t know if my sister ever had physical, she had physical care of her for a little while, had her at her friend’s house, but we took care of her primarily. And my cousin kept a horse. The rest he sold before he passed. I mean he had time to kind of whittle things down. But I was still… So when he died I started boarding my mare over at the same place Matt was at because I was going to school, I was really too busy to be taking care of a horse, so I just paid somebody else to do it. I think I came and seen her once or twice a month. I might pop in on a Friday night during a cattle penning show or something like that when I was going to school and working. I mean, I was working, I was taking twenty-two credit hours a semester and working seventy hours a week. So, you know, I just didn’t have the time do that.
Q. Sure, okay.
A. Then so Matt and I were talking and I said, you know what, I got forty acres over here, a barn full of stalls. You’re paying, you know, a hundred fifty, two hundred bucks a month to keep your horse over there, I’m paying that to keep my horse over here. If you want to, you can take your horse over to my place and if you’ll do the chores--he literally lives one mile down the road, his parents’ house, we all live on the same street.
Q. Okay.
A. If you want to, you can keep your horse there if you’ll feed my horse, we’ll both save money and we’ll come out ahead. And so that’s kind of how that arrangement got started where he was taking care of the horses there.
Q. Started as a good old fashioned barter agreement.
A. Yeah. And he took care of them and then we even did the same thing, I bought the new truck, he bought a small trailer, and then we shared. I could use his trailer, he could use my truck. In the early days. From there--
Q. Now, this land you’re talking about is not Turn Three Ranch.
A.
No, no, no. It’s the
Q. Okay.
A.
And I even, I lived there off and on even after this time I lived there,
sometimes I lived in
Q. How did things progress then as far as you and Matt, you know, having this sort of partnership with horses?
A. Actually, I mean, it worked out really well. He was becoming a better and better rider and competing. I was not becoming a better rider because I wasn’t riding enough. You know, I mean I knew a lot about horses, but I, you’ve got to, to compete at the level that I like to compete at, you really, it’s kind of like if you want to compete at professional basketball, you’re going to practice all the time, you can’t just go out there once a month. So I got a little bit further behind and I wanted to breed some of my mares, I wanted to breed my sister’s mare and my mare. So we started breeding, you know, and Matt and I would go down to Kentucky and we might pick out a stud or we’d go down to Alabama, and it was just kind of a fun learning thing, see new horses, visit other people and trying to really research the breeding. From there we started growing a little bit, buying more horses. He wanted to compete at a professional level. He was doing so much work for me that I ended up purchasing a fairly expensive horse and actually then a mare, because one mare that they tried to move out of the farm that I got upset about, and let him ride the one stud for all the work he did and then I had the mare that I was going to ride and play with. So we continued breeding, trying to get better and better stock with breeding to some of the best horses in the nation, I mean, you know—-
Q. For barrel racing?
A. For barrel racing, yes. I always picked horses-—I like racing too and when I grew up we raced horses and we barrel raced, and because I was quite frankly getting a little fat to be barrel racing, and barrel racing, a lot of the top barrel racers are women who weigh a hundred and twenty pounds. You put a two hundred pound man on the same horse, it’s going to slow it down, and every hundredth of a second counts. So I started liking racing a little bit more, just because I could, I guess as a fat person going to sit there and watch my horse run and not (indiscernible) too much. Matt still really liked barrel racing so I bred to the best possible combination where a horse could be raced on a track and then from there we could judge its potential and decide if Matt wanted to play with it on barrels or if I really wanted to breed it or if we wanted to sell it. So it was really that kind of combination, that rich combination that allowed me to see him at the racetrack and allowed him to still compete.
Q. How did Turn Three Ranch come about?
A. You know, I had ideas for different names. Matt came up with the name. What it was, I bought, I went to horseshoeing school too, I’m a certified farrier as well. Matt was taking care of most of the things at the farm and the Turn Three Ranch, he came up with the name, I’m not sure where he got the name from, he just liked it and he thought it would be a good name.
Q. How did you guys even end up moving there? It sounded like you had a pretty good place to be there.
A. Well, it was at my cousin’s, and then he started renting a piece of that to some other people and they had a bunch of horses, a bunch of thoroughbreds and they had a bunch of thoroughbred studs and then we, so then we kind of outgrew that place. And so we had some horses at another friend of his house. I think we had some horses at his parents’ house and some horses at my place. And it was really a lot of work for him and then while you’re at one place, horses could be getting out at another place and so he found the place over there on Maute and he went and actually worked out the original lease, in fact, the electric bill is still in his name. And he said let’s go to this place, it’s close, it’s three miles away it’s centrally located, everything could be at the same place. So that’s how we ended up moving there.
Q. All right. Consolidated all the horses from the three different places to the one place?
A.
I still had horses spread around.
I had boughten the all time leading paint racing stud in history and still
holds the record today and he’s a leading sire of racehorses, and so I stood
him in
Q.
That was boarded in
A. Yeah, what happened is, it gets so cold here in Michigan and if Matt wanted to compete, the futurities start really early in the spring, so we might have to send a horse to a trainer down in Atlanta or a trainer down in Mississippi or, you know, different parts of the country who might work our horses in the winter for us when the ground was too hard here because we didn’t have an indoor arena.
Q. Make sure they’re in shape for when the season starts.
A. Make sure they’re in shape, and then I raced horses in Oklahoma at the Oklahoma race tracks and then I had, sometimes I had other people barrel futurity horse if Matt was, too much stuff was going on with him. Other times he would prefer to do it and I’d rather share my money with him if he was doing a lot of work with me, than pay another trainer to do it or something like that.
Q. Other than those couple of horses that you mentioned from, that are kept in other states--
A.
Most of our horses, any horse in
Q. Okay.
A. Correct. I mean, I still have, you know, horses up north or something like that.
Q. All right. That are boarded elsewhere.
A. Right.
Q. Tell me how the Turn Three Ranch kind of evolved from ’99 to the present.
A. I mean, in a sense of, can you clarify by what do you mean by evolved? I’m sorry.
Q. Well, how many horses did you have when you started in ’99?
A. I don’t know. We probably had fifteen to twenty maybe. I don’t know, when we moved there. We had enough where we couldn’t keep them all at one place, you know what I mean, so I don’t know, I’d have to go, if I went and looked at pictures at like his parents’ place I could count how many horses were there and I could figure it out.
Q. Just trying to get a feel for it.
A. Sixteen to thirty maybe. And I mean that’s a guess.
Q. And what was the plan for the ranch when you guys first started?
A. Well, we have now, we have the all time leading, I mean he’s the leading money earning stallion, he’s a leading sire racehorse with over a million dollars in winners, he’s a leading barrel horse sire, but here I got a stud who’s a leading racehorse sire for paints and a leading barrel horse sire, a world champion pole bending horses, I mean pole bending and barrels. So we started buying very well bred mares, sometimes mares that were, should have been way out of my price, like an example a horse that maybe should have been worth eighty, ninety thousand dollars I might buy for five thousand because she’s twenty-one years old.
Q. Okay.
A. What that means is that she could die before she gets bred and they know that, that’s why you can buy them, some of those horses, there was one three hundred thousand dollars-—
Q. So you’re kind of taking your chances on whether you get a foal or not.
A. It’s a gamble, it’s a gamble, and for a while we took that gamble. I bought several old mares knowing that I may only get one or two foals before I lost the mare, that she may colic and die, you know, anything can happen.
Q. And are you doing that with the intention to keep the foals and raise them--
A. Right.
Q. –-sell them and make money, or what?
A. All, all of the above. I mean, you know, horses depending on what year they are can really change in a price. You can have a horse worth six hundred fifty thousand dollars if you have the right combination. I don’t have that combination, but I should have had combinations that could have been worth anywhere from ten to thirty thousand dollars if they had the right foal out of the right mare.
Q. Okay. What’s the arrangement that you have with Matt as far as who is to do what out there and who is to pay for what out there?
A. I’m primarily responsible for that. He, when I worked all my jobs, all the money went into a joint account that he had checks for and he had a credit card that he could use. Because I just wasn’t around, literally, I mean even, he lived at my house because I wasn’t there, I never slept there. I slept in a drug rehab every night of the week. So either there was a big empty house with no one living there, didn’t make sense for him to pay rent, so he got free room and board. The electric bills and all that would have been paid for by me. He never had to pay, contribute towards the house. He, most of the big entry fees I paid, like there would be shows that were a thousand dollars for entry fee and we might run, I mean this was times, I don’t know, our entry fees were probably seven, eight thousand dollars for the year, vet bills may have been twelve thousand for the year. Because you’re doing all this leg work and stuff on these high powered horses. So that would just come out of my account. When he needed money, he could just go get it. After a while when the checks ran out, I don’t think I ever made more checks. I left, there was always money in the house. Right now there’s probably five thousand dollars sitting in the house right now. But usually there’s like always a minimum of eight hundred dollars in emergency money there, it’s always there, so if I’m out of town and the crap hits the fan, he can go get that if he can’t get a hold of me and take care of something. There’s always a credit card there at the house that he can take. For a period of time he had a credit card in my name. He doesn’t anymore.
Q. So what, your primary role is bill payer?
A. Yeah. I primarily was bill payer and then I like to go to the racetrack if I’m around, I mean, I had one horse, he was a state champion running horse, he won six races in a row here in Michigan and I only got to see one of his races because I just was always at work and stuff, but my goal was if they were racing I might be able to go see it. Out of the since 1994 when we started getting horses, I ran horses, a few shows in like ’95, ’96, I quit barrel racing, you know, going to shows because I just never had time. I think the summer before last I think I went to two barrel shows.
Q. So what’s Matt’s role at Turn Three Ranch then?
A. Huh?
Q. What’s Matt’s role at Turn Three Ranch?
A. He does all the chores. He breeds all the mares. He meets the vets and works out any type of arrangements. If a mare is coming into heat, he may have a vet come in, palpate the mare, say when to ship semen if we’re shipping semen from out of state like from my studs, the one stud he’s never at our place so we got to have the semen shipped in. He, some of my younger stallions he collects. The one vet, what happened was, our vet kept missing our appointments to breed our mares because people would have emergencies, our horse would be down almost dying, he wouldn’t come out, by the time he came the horse would already ovulate and the semen would be no good, and I just lost a ton of money. And the vet said to Matt, he goes, you know what you’re doing, there’s no reason, why aren’t you going to school and doing this and then you don’t have to be so dependent on me. So I—-
Q.
That’s when he went to
A. I paid for him to go there and get that certification. He wanted the training, he really, he knows, I have a lot more experience with horses historically. He knows way, I don’t know anything about drugs, he knows everything about drugs and medications. I don’t know a whole lot about nutrition in the sense of I just would go to the mill and say make me up a good horse feed. I don’t know percentage or anything. Matt knows that kind of stuff. He remembers that, he likes that, that’s what his fancy is. We go to conference, he’ll go to that seminar, I would, for years we went to the equine affair every year and we would both take our video cameras. He would go one way, I would go another, so then we could hook up at the end and share our seminars with one another and say what we learned.
Q. So as far as the guy who’s taking care of your horses on a day to day basis, you were comfortable with him?
A.
Yeah. I think that he knew, he
knew what the horses needed, he knew what medical treatment they needed, he
knew the shots that were necessary, he knew because he traveled out of state
all the time, he knew what diseases were happening in other parts of the
country. Like, you know, what’s that,
West Nile before it got here to
Q. Okay. As we get to the fall of 2006, all right, how much time during 2006 did you actually spend out at the farm itself?
A. I try to go out there. You know, in the summer time you know maybe I’ll try to go out there and ride and stuff like that. It’s a little difficult because I travel so much and then when I’m home I’m working late hours. So like there’s no way I’d go out there on a Monday, I’m not going to go out there at night time, there’s nothing to do. Most of the time Matt has the chores done, he’s up earlier than I am, he has the chores done. By the time I get off work he has the chores done or I’ll call him and he’s at the barn finishing up.
Q. Well, why don’t we start backwards or start with March of 2007 and work backwards from there. Were you out at the farm at all before Animal Control took over in March?
A. No.
Q. In 2007?
A. I have not been out there at all in 2007. I’m trying to think, like I tried to wrack my brain was there ever a time I even stopped there to give him money, was there ever a time I stopped to get a credit card or to exchange something maybe he had that I needed or something that I had that he needed, and I can’t recall anything.
Q. Did you ever go out there that you can recall where it was your responsibility instead of his to take care of the horses’ daily needs for a day or so?
A. Not in 2007.
Q. All right. When’s the last time you were out there in 2006?
A.
We, I was out there I think the week between when I was in
Q. So were you just out there for the day then?
A. Yeah, he, Matt had broke his leg last summer and he had friends that came with him and stayed all summer at the barn and tried to help him take care of things and had done a lot of things. These young colts weren’t necessarily as halter broke as they have been in the past. So you couldn’t just catch them and worm them by yourself. You needed somebody else who knew horses well that could actually help get them in a corner, hold them correctly in a way that wouldn’t get either of us hurt and then I usually hold them because Matt’s better at giving medication, he’d get down their throat and he would be the one who actually wormed them.
Q. So the only reason that you really got there is there was a job that needed two people to be done.
A. Right. And that’s historically what will happen. If there’s a situation that he needs help, if he needs me to hold the horses while he trims their feet, if he needs me to help with worming to hold them. If they got loose obviously he’s going to call me and say hey, I need help catching these horses and I’m going to be out there helping to catch them if I’m in the state. If I’m not in the state, it might be my sister or another person who’s going to come and try to help him.
Q. When’s the last time you were out there before December of 2006?
A. I think, I got to see how busy I was in November. I want to think I was out there in November but I don’t remember how often. It was, I know I was out there, maybe it was October, maybe it was the bonfire. He had a bonfire where a couple of his friends came out and I went out there just to kind of see how everybody was doing, say hello. Becky and Elana are two women that I know as well as he does. So I just wanted to kind of come out and visit everybody.
Q. More of a social gathering as opposed to working on the farm.
A. Yeah, I didn’t stay, I mean, Matt was living there still then, or at least I think he was. I know he stayed there that night, him and some friends. But I didn’t, you know, I just kind of came out for a while, hung out with everybody, and I left. In the fall or late summer I was out there a little bit more when the weather started cooling off. As Matt said, sometimes in the fall or late summer we will turn the horses out on the hayfield. Normally you want to get your first cutting off which, and then you get your second cutting off and then it will grow back up but it doesn’t necessarily grow up enough for a third cutting for us and when, so at the end we’ll turn them out there and I was out there, I’d go out there and turn them out there. We have to run them in at night because they could get out, you know, and so, and, you know, we’ve had problems with people coming on the property before, so we, even then we’d have them out in the hayfield here at night and then they would get thrown back into the pasture over here during the day. And of course this was not, this is really the shorter part, the bigger part of the farm is here. And so I would go out there then. Still he would be the chore person. I would just be out there either to help catch the horses, to help run them in if he was having difficulty or something like that, if he called me out there.
Q. What was the, I mean you’ve seen the pictures that have been admitted about the condition of the farm in March of this year, right? You saw those?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. All right. What was the condition of the farm like when you were there in October and December of ’06?
A. You know, in October I’m not even sure I ever went to the back part of the farm because I came out there at night, right, there was a bonfire. So I didn’t, I think, I don’t think I was out there during the day. I think I--
Q. What observations did you make in December then?
A. In December he had the place looking really nice. I was proud of him. I mean, he did some work there. He had put up all of this, these paddocks here were not traditionally there, all right, he went and he blocked these off and he had specific things that he knew was going to be the shelter as far as the trees, and he had with, this horse would be here and he had water things here, and he had still had a way that he had horses, automatic waterers and he’d get them to, where it’s going to be freezing up soon, and it looked really nice. I mean, like he had just had, people had been out there and he had cleaned it, picked up, you know, all the debris and stuff like that. So I, I thought it was quite impressive actually, I thought he had worked hard that summer.
Q. Okay. And then that was your last time out there until this Animal Control issue arose?
A. Yes.
Q. All right. And you heard about the horses in particular that everybody’s been concerned about throughout this trial.
A. Yes.
Q.
The two older horses along with the grulla,
A. I seen everybody because we were worming horses, you know what I mean? And he had wormed some older horses and we, the ones he needed help with were the young ones. So yes, I’d say yes, I did.
Q. All right. Anything about their condition strike you as a concern at that time?
A. No. I thought they all looked fine.
Q. Okay. And Elvis or who they call Lucky Seven, did he have an injury at that point?
A. No.
Q. And Ice, had he cut his leg at that point?
A. She had not.
MR. DUNGAN: All right. Thank you, Your Honor. I don’t have any other questions.
THE COURT: Okay. Mr. Henderson, Miss Lamp will have some questions for you. Miss Lamp?
MS. LAMP: Thank you, Your Honor.
CROSS-EXAMINATION (At 5:33 p.m.)
BY MS. LAMP:
Q. When did you first become aware of the injury on Ice?
A. You know, I don’t, I, I don’t know that I can tell you honestly. You know what I mean? If I knew. I knew that he was hurt and wasn’t getting better and that he was going to take her to a specialist. And he tends to use the leg specialist for any type of leg injuries that we’re concerned about and it was enough where he felt it should go to that type of vet, not to a traditional vet.
Q. What leg specialist do you usually use?
A.
We’ve used Sickle before and we used
Q. Okay. But you do know that as I understand from what you’re saying that it’s your plan together to go to a leg specialist in that kind of a case?
A. Yeah. We, I mean we’re barrel racers, right? I mean that’s, and racers, and no legs, no horse. You know what I mean? A crippled horse you can’t do anything with. I mean, you could breed it, but you can’t, you’re not going to win a barrel race on it, you’re not going to win a race on it. So our legs have to be taken care of. Our joints have to be taken care of. We have to go through and inject hocks, go have hocks looked at. If a horse is acting bad we’ll usually, before you think like it’s a mind problem, like some people think you have a crazy horse or a blown up horse, that’s not a lot of times the case. You might have a hurting horse. And so, and how do you tell that out, you really find that out not from your backyard vets who are good, I’m not talking bad about backyard vets, but if you’re talking about an injury that, that’s causing a horse to misbehave, the person that’s going to find that out is going to be your leg specialist.
Q. Okay. And, and that is part of your role as well to make that policy decision that you’re going to go to the leg specialist. Is that true, you and Matt have decided that together?
A. I think Matt’s probably the one that taught me and told me that. I mean, my uncle, like I said, I used to take care of horses when I was a kid. I didn’t make the medical decisions then. I just fed stuff. But they had used leg specialists too for our horses then, so I’m familiar with the concept of you treat your own horse as much as you can and, you know, we’re working folk, we fix our own cars, we don’t go to, you know, a mechanic all the time. We, so we also treat our own horses just like all old farmers do. And then there’s times when you say, you know what, this I might need to go to an expert for and I’m going to go to this leg specialist and he felt.. I would have to approve it because I’m going to pay for it, but he knows I’m going to pay for it and I trust his judgment that if he tells me the horse needs to go there I’m going to say yes, take it there.
Q. And if I understand you, that you were exposed to that need to go to a specialist from a younger age when you were dealing with your uncle’s horses at the farm when you were working there.
A.
If there was a horse that had a particular problem, usually that is like
a behavioral problem or something like that and you’re like, why is this horse,
my mare Dee for example,
Q. Okay. And like, you know, when we grow up in families, families teach us different things and as I’m understanding you, that’s what you were taught by your uncle.
A. I was taught on occasion that you may have to take a horse to a leg specialist, correct, that we can’t do everything ourselves.
Q. And when did you first become aware of the grulla mare’s condition?
A. I had known that she had gotten gas colic. I never knew she was this thin, although we’ve had another horse that got sand colic once that literally within two days dropped so much weight that I mean, I thought the mare was, I didn’t know if she was going to live. We had the vet come out and check her and she actually still carried the foal, still had the foal, but we had to put her up in a paddock, we had to feed her beet pulp every day to pump her full of food. In fact, we ended up loaning that horse out to a friend because we said she’s too high maintenance for me. You know, I mean if she eats sand, she gets sick and that is so much work to get her weight back up. We breed a lot of thoroughbred in our horses so your quarter horses are fat horses, they can keep weight. But when you put a lot of thoroughbred in them, and that mare was like more than, you know, like seven eights thoroughbred, and once she lost weight, getting weight back on her was difficult. And the same thing with this mare. There’s a lot of thoroughbred in her and quarter horse, so I didn’t know if she looked like that, but I know that that can happen because I seen it happen with that one mare and I would never have believed that in three days a horse could lose that much weight.
Q. What was the mare’s name?
A. I don’t even know what we called her. Mabel I think.
Q. Mabel? And do you still have her or did you give her away and she’s gone now?
A. She’s not with me now.
Q. Who did you give her to?
A. A friend of mine. I loaned her to a friend of mine.
Q. Which friend would that be?
A. Marlene.
Q. Marlene who?
A. I don’t know her last name to be honest with you.
Q. Was she local or—-
A. No, she’s not local. She’s way up north.
Q. Way up north? UP?
A. Yes. No, I don’t think she’s UP. I’m not even, I’ve never been to her place, to be honest with you. She’s the lady who bred horses, bred to my studs several times. Had borrowed some stuff, raced and she needed a horse to barrel race. And a lot of times in our industry and I grew up where like if your kid’s horse died or couldn’t be ridden anymore and you needed a horse, then we had a horse that my son quit riding but I wasn’t going to get rid of it because it’s a pet, I’d let you take my horse, you know, as long as you gave it back to me when you’re done, and so she called, wanted a horse to barrel race on. I said, well, here’s what I have, I’ve got this mare who’s a problem mare, but you’ll be great with her, because as long as you, you know, feed her separate, keep her different, you know,, and watch her, she’s a good little running mare and then I have this mare, she’s a little high strung, easy keeper, and let her choose and she chose it and she knows the horse is mine, that she can’t sell it without, you know, talking to me, but for all intents and purposes she can use her and she’s supposed to breed her to my stud which she didn’t breed her to my stud, she had some type of infection this year, so she didn’t get bred.
Q. Okay. And which stud would that be?
A. My Treasured stud.
Q. Okay. When did you first know about the injury on Elvis?
A. I think when Matt called me that night. He called me, probably when he called me about Animal Control being there.
Q. Do you know when that would have been?
A. I do not know the date, you know. And it seems like I was out of state, like I was in D.C. or something and then I looked, I’m like well, was I in D.C. on the--on the fourteenth I wasn’t in D.C. I don’t think, so it couldn’t have been on the fourteenth. I was there on the eighteenth to the twenty-first, so I’m not sure and probably, maybe when I went in before the eighteenth, maybe I went in the seventeenth and maybe that’s when he called me or something. Or maybe he called me on the eighteenth.
THE COURT: In your book where does it say you were on March fourteenth?
THE WITNESS: Nowhere. It doesn’t say I was gone.
THE COURT: You were somewhere, you had to be somewhere.
THE WITNESS: Yeah. It doesn’t say, it doesn’t say I was out of state.
THE COURT: Okay.
BY MS. LAMP:
Q. Do you recall whether you were out of state, even though your book doesn’t say it?
A. I don’t recall. I don’t really, no.
Q. Is the grulla mare, is that the one that is your prize mare?
A. Well, I always wanted a grulla horse and I’ve never owned one, you know, I have every other color in the world. I’ve got buckskins, paints and all this, and then I decided, you know--
THE COURT: Is that your prize horse? That’s what she asked.
THE WITNESS: I liked her a lot.
THE COURT: Okay.
THE WITNESS: Let’s put it that way. I mean, I wouldn’t say she’s my prize, no, there’s other horses I really have more of a history--
THE COURT: Is she your baby? Is she your baby?
THE WITNESS: Last--she was my baby last year. She was the one that I went out and I wanted to play with and nurture, so, yes.
THE COURT: Very good.
THE WITNESS: Red is more important to me right now.
THE COURT: Red.
THE WITNESS: Red. The one that, do you remember when I almost cried here when you guys were going to take that mare from my farm and put her in a place? That one is like, would just kill me if she was touched.
THE COURT: But you liked her a lot and she was your baby last year, but you switched.
THE WITNESS: Well, no, no, no. I always loved Red, she was my baby to play with. Red didn’t need to be played with, Red’s already trained, bred--
THE COURT: I’m just teasing you.
THE WITNESS: Okay. She’s like my new puppy. She’s my new puppy. You still love the old one, but you have a new puppy.
THE COURT: I got you.
THE WITNESS: Less of a history, but still love her.
BY MS. LAMP:
Q. The grulla mare, was she, was that the one that your uncle willed to you?
A. No, no.
Q. Okay. Which one was the one that your uncle willed to you?
A.
Q. Okay. And--
A.
Q. Pardon?
A. She’s the grandmother or great grandmother of the farm.
Q. Okay. Who--
A. I raised her, we raced her dad, we raced her mom, we raced her grandparents. Her dad was a state champion, her mother was a top barrel horse in the country. Just old fashioned breeding, nothing that’s real popular nowadays. You know, if I showed you her papers you would not even bat an eye and think that’s great. She’s great to me, see what I mean?
Q. Who is your, who is your great uncle that you’re referring to?
A. Wilbur Cox.
Q. Wilbur Cox.
A. Mm-Hmm.
Q. And your great aunt?
A. Mona Cox.
Q. Okay. And your cousin that you talked about.
A. Steven Cox.
Q. And what is his relation to Wilbur and Mona?
A. He’s their son.
Q. He’s their son, okay.
A. Must less horse interested. He’s a non-horsy guy.
Q. So is Steven Cox then, I’m just trying to--
A. He’d be like my second cousin.
Q. Okay, all right. I got you. And you moved in with your aunt and uncle, great aunt and uncle in the fifth grade?
A. Right around there.
Q. And why was that?
A. I came from an abusive home. We were in and out of foster care and my aunt and uncle decided that I could stay there because the county wasn’t doing anything about it.
Q. What county was that?
A.
Q. And where were you living then before that? Was it with your mom?
A. Yeah, my mom.
Q. And your dad?
A. Step dad.
Q. Step dad?
A. Yes. Well, my mother would call the police and try to get help for us and it just wasn’t--
THE COURT: Mr. Henderson, that’s fine. I’ve heard all I need to about that.
BY MS. LAMP:
Q.
Mr. Henderson, you testified that you lived at
A. I have no clue.
Q. Could you give me an approximation?
A. (No audible response)
Q.
Let’s start with
A.
From fifth grade back and forth throughout high school. Sometimes I lived with my mom and I might
drive to, you know, the, I didn’t like
Q. And was, is that, that you live now?
A. 13570 Sager Road.
Q. 13570 Sager. Is there any other addresses that you live at?
A. I mean for a long time I lived at Dawn Farms because I slept there every night. It depends on how you define--I used to say, like I don’t live in Jackson County, I own a house there for storage, because literally I worked, and I did the same thing in graduate school, you know, I--
Q. Do you maintain any other residences?
A. No. I mean I’ve lived in Haiti, I’ve lived in Denmark, I’ve lived in Seattle, Washington, I’ve lived all over the country.
THE COURT: Right now though--
THE WITNESS: Right now, no.
MS. LAMP: I’m asking currently.
THE WITNESS: 13570 Sager Road.
THE COURT: Okay.
BY MS. LAMP:
Q. And where else do you have your horses?
A. Right now?
Q. Yes.
A.
Just in
THE COURT: What’s that? Morley?
THE WITNESS: Morley.
THE COURT: M-o-r-l-e-y?
THE WITNESS: You asked the wrong--I said, I watched you all week. I said he better never ask me to spell. I spell we, w-h-e. So, I mean I don’t, but I cannot spell.
THE COURT: Where’s Morley?
THE
WITNESS: Huh?
THE COURT: Where’s Morley? I never heard of it.
THE WITNESS: I don’t know either. I’ve been there like once. It’s like west--if Mount Pleasant, west of Mount Pleasant and north, close, kind of between Mount Pleasant and Traverse City, kind of west and south a little bit, somewhere in there.
THE
COURT: Do you know how to spell
THE WITNESS: No. I mean I could with paper probably and with spell check, but…
THE COURT: Okay. Miss Lamp?
BY MS. LAMP:
Q. Okay. And how many horses do you have there in Morley?
A. Right now? Define have. I mean, I, if I own a horse but it’s leased out, so legally it’s not, I don’t have any control over it---
Q. You could just explain the different types of ownership that you have of the horses there---
A. Well, I have Treasured who is my stud, he’s there, and then he’s under contract there so he stands there, they provide all medical care for him, I pay for it, they just, they bill my credit card, it’s billed to my credit card and they send me a bill for, they breed, they collect on him, they breed him, they feed him, they do everything with him. They shoe him. I don’t do anything. And then the other horse Jed they have as well. He’s actually leased to them, so I don’t pay any of his bills. I don’t get a bill for him. If he needs colic surgery tomorrow, it’s a hundred percent their bill, their problem, but they have to treat him. If it’s something that’s, you know, he has to be euthanized or something like that, they’re going to call me and tell me out of respect, but I mean basically he’s theirs, but he’s mine.
Q. So just the two horses?
A. Yes.
Q. Any other types of arrangements with any other horses in Morley?
A. No.
Q. Okay. And so just out of curiosity, when you lease the horse do you get like a rent check or something?
A. No, I don’t. Actually--
Q. Or is it just that loaning type thing that you explained to me?
A. It’s kind of like the loaning thing. I mean in the end what could happen, if there’s any profits done on breeding to him, the outside mares, I would get half the profits.
Q. Okay.
A. Is, that would happen if there’s any profits on him.
Q. So there’s still some benefit to you to have the horse, to be the owner of the horse, they just take care of it. So they get part of it and you get part of it.
A. Yeah. Essentially was it was, is we didn’t need another stud at the place. He’s a--
Q. At Turn Three.
A. Yeah. And he’s very well behaved, he’s very, very well bred, but he’s not race bred. I race horses, that’s what I like, I like a little bit faster. He’s more of a cow horse, he’s a working horse, so he’s small, he’s for cutting, he’s agile, and so he needs to go somewhere where they’ll love him and treat him well. They’ve got a heated barn, they, you know, they wash him three times a week. He gets treated like heaven and so it just turned out to be a good deal for the horse and got him off, out of my place and made it one less horse I had to worry about fighting with the other mares or something like that.
Q. And so when did, when did you get Jeb out of your place at Turn Three?
A. I have no clue.
Q. Do you know if it was 2006, 2007, 2005?
A. No, I rea--I mean Matt would be a better person to answer that than me. Because I don’t know that, Matt probably worked out some of that arrangement with them, you know what I mean? Like I would have okayed it, so I don’t really know when he left. I have no clue.
Q. Who cares for the horses there?
A. They do.
Q. Who’s they?
A. Tanya.
Q. Tanya who?
A. Chapin.
Q. Is she part of some type of operation up there?
A. She’s the manager, the farm manager.
Q. Of what?
A. Slip Pine Acres.
Q. Slip Pine Acres? Is there somebody else that cares for the horse up there? You said they.
A. Well, I think she--well, I mean they being--
Q. That’s why I’m, I didn’t understand, I’m just asking.
A. The big guy, I mean they have an owner of the farm but I don’t think their owners ever go out to the barn and do, I mean they’re kind of like I can be an owner and I don’t go out to the barns, they’ve got owners, they don’t go out to the barns. Tanya does all their, she’s the one I, I don’t ever talk to the owners of the place. Even though--
Q. Who are the owners?
A. I don’t even know them. I don’t even know their names, to be honest with you. I mean I’ve heard the names. If I called there I would just say hi and talk to them and I’d say is Tonya there, because I always talk to Tonya, you know, but I know she’s not the real owner, she doesn’t own the property, she’s just--same thing, if people call about my horses they call Matt. He’s going to be able to tell them how they’re doing at riding, who’s broke, how much training they have, if they understand the pattern. I’m not going to be able to tell you that stuff. I can tell you the breeding backwards and forwards, how much their mama won, how much the grandfather won, where they stand in the ratings. I can’t tell you, if, you know, when’s the last time they had their shots, when’s the last time they got rode, how they did, if a kid rode them or an adult rode him. So I do all my dealings with Tonya.
Q. You mentioned that you might as well share your money with Matt. What is the arrangement that you have worked out with him?
A.
I don’t know that we have like an oral arrangement. I think it’s kind of more into him taking
care--you know, like I said, it started off way back in school where I said, hey,
if you want to bring your horse to my place, you know, it will save us both
money, and then it just kind of grew, you know, like it was like, well, watch
one more horse, watch one more horse, watch one more, you know, and then we’re
going to, you know, breed and sell. Like
prior to this, the group of stallions that were here were all going to be going
down to
Q. So you were already in the process of doing that?
A. Yeah. I had actually put a bid on the property the week before this happened. I had to withdraw my bid because I didn’t know--one, I didn’t want to have a place and walk out there every day and not have horses on it. What’s the use of having an indoor barn and indoor arena and a nice barn and all this stuff if it’s going to be empty, I’m not going to cry every day, you know, I didn’t want to see that.
Q. Were you switching to an indoor operation then?
A. It wasn’t switching. Matt found the place. It was just, it was a nice setup, had a nice office that could be organized easy, it had separate bedrooms where people could come over and stay the night if they needed to take care of the horses. Because he likes to travel and go to horse shows, I like to travel and do speaking engagements. We have to measure those against each other and you know, sometimes we might have to have a third person come in and take care of the animals or something, if they can stay at the place it’s just more convenient and safer for everybody. It was close to other friends of his, so it looked like it was going to be a nice location where he could ride and do the things he wanted to do, you know. In the winter, and it also looked like a smart investment for me. It was being sold a hundred thousand dollars under market value because the economy’s bad, so it was just good business sense all the way around.
Q.
This was in
A.
No, this is right here in Munith,
Q. Oh, in Munith, okay. Oh, so you were going to move all the horses over there?
A. Well, no. Legally I could only have seventeen horses there. So a whole group of, there were the six horses, six horses were going to go down to Mississippi, they were going to get trained and sold, all but the colts and some other young horses, they were all going down there. Some other horses, there would have been still some horses left there at that farm as we’re trying to sell, we’ll be able to sell them.
Q.
Okay. I’m sorry, how many were
you going you going to take down to
A. I think it was up to six. It was between six and seven. I don’t really quite remember.
Q. Okay.
A. I know there was a group of them--
Q. They were going to be trained and sold?
A. Correct.
Q. And you--
A.
A friend of mine had taken horses and has trained for me before and then
she’s also taken horses on consignment for me before when I said, you know, I
just need to, I got too many, I need to break down, and I can ship her four or
five horses, she can work them and she can get them sold pretty quickly down
there. And their spring’s much earlier
than our spring so you can move them quicker down there than you can move them
here. People don’t buy horses in
February in
Q. Who is this friend?
A. Tonya. Or no, Tiany.
Q. Can you spell that?
A. T-i-a-n-y maybe.
Q. T-i-a-n-y.
A. Yes.
Q. Tiany. Okay. And what’s her last name?
A. Schuster. S-c-h-u-s-t-e-r. I do think I got that right.
Q. Okay. And so then what were you doing to do do with the remainder of the horses?
A. Well, like I said, there was going to be a group that was going to go down to Tiany, the studs were all going to go up to Morley, Tonya said she could take them for me. Because--
Q. How many studs is that?
A. Well, it was just the two studs that was there. What was happening on my calendar, I was going to be gone like a lot and it was breeding season and I just thought, you know, this is going to be, there’s a lot of stuff that needs to be done. So I asked Tonya if she could take it because I wasn’t even going to be around to even help Matt collect, and there was other problems. We said, you know what, can you take these studs and take care of them so at least through this month or a couple months, and she said absolutely, there’s be no problem. So she was going to take them. And then all the riding horses were going to go over to the farm because Matt could ride in the indoor arena and the only thing that would be left here would be brood mares. And that, and so that was kind of the way that it was going to be worked out and then slowly cut those down.
Q. How many riding horses were there?
A. I have no idea.
Q. Can you approximate?
A. No.
Q.
So we’ve got forty-two horses left that are unaccounted for after the
studs, the seventeen to Munith and the eight to
A. The riding horses would be whatever Matt decided. These are the ones I want to ride. Anything from two years old to eight years old. All the geldings that are there,