Received an email today from a lady who took great issue with the Snippy website – for now her name will be withheld, but she is fairly well know when it comes to these kind of matters. Because she has mentioned Snippy in her works before I emailed her a link to the site. Thought she might want to take a look at the pictures since I’m fairly sure that nobody has seen them before.
Anyway here is her email word for word:
“There is nothing factual in the website. I personally have the testimony of a pathologist/hematologist from Denver who examined Lady - not Snippy - the Pueblo Chieftain got the sex and name wrong. There were no bullet holes, no saw marks - this is total disinformation.”
My response was that since I have the skeleton in my possession I can say for a fact that there are saw marks and an opening in Snippy’s skull. I did admit that I don’t know if the holes are from bullets or not, but they are in the same location that the veterinarian who boiled & assembled the skeleton (back in 1967 or 1968) reported finding two bullet holes.
Also the site states very clearly that Lady was the horse’s real name and that she was female. All the info on the site comes from researching what I believe to be reliable sources... hey, maybe I’m wrong.
So what’s your take on it? I would love to hear any and all comments.
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19 comments:
Love the Snippy website. I just saw where there were UFO sightings on the Colorado/New Mexico border on October 1st. Kind of makes you wonder.
E. Decker
I love the website, i have been hearing little bits of information here and there about snippy since i was a kid eight years old in the valley around the year 1971. I think you did a great job bringing the story to those of us in the Valley that only knew bits and pieces of it. As a kid we traveled to Uracca Cemetary all the time to see the old gravestones. It isn't far from my home now. N. Ford
As the current Director of the Alamosa Chamber, my phone is ringing off the hook. Certain members of the Chamber believe ownership of Snippy was never transerred and the Chamber is still the rightful owner of the horse. The overwhelming sentiment is that this is a travesty to claim that this treasured artifact belongs to a deceased eccentric (who was a great friend to the Chamber, undoubtedly) simply because it was found in a shed. Snippy belongs in the valley where she can be displayed as a valuable piece of the San Luis Valley's history. "Take her off e-bay, you thieves!" it was said. I am committed to researching her rightful ownership.
Having researched the Snippy case in-depth I can recommend my book The Mysterious Valley which probably contains more information about the case than any other work. Included are two full-length interviews w/ Berle and Nelly Lewis. Until TMV the full story of Snippy had not been told and the case will go down in history as one of the most puzzling examples of an unusual animal death... cob@tmv.us
I was raised in Colorado, and I believe spirtualy that if death of a animal happens there on our sacred grounds then it should stay there, The San Luis Valley has a beautiful History that no other place has, also UFO's been a round for ages.Author Chris O Brien opened doors for us to be able to share our storys with the world. to lose Snippy is to give away part of your history! Judy has a great place at UFO watch tower that it could have a home forever.Sister Wolf Apache/ Spanish Storyteller, author, artist... threespiritwolf@netzero.net
I would also like to see Snippy stay in the San Luis Valley, but I think a better place for her to reside would be at the museum.
Snippy eBay Auction Halted!
Heeding legal counsel’s advice, the eBay auction has been placed on hold Due to potential controversy over who the actually owns Snippy.
I’ll update as I learn more.
this has been very interesting! a book should be published about Lady. good luck to everyone . Sister Wolf
I lived in the San Luis Valley when Snippy was found. My aunt Nettie was convienced that Snippy (Lady) was killed by aliens. I went out in the pasture and saw the horse after it had lain there a few days. The meat was all gone from its head. It was strange, as no animals would eat it and no bugs were around it. I hate to see it sold. It means a lot to the King family members and people of the San Luis Valley. Keep it in the Valley!
Coleen Hanes
Snippy Is In The News!!
The Valley Courier ran a story on Snippy
Click here to read it.
The Rocky Mountain News Also did a story.
Click here to read it.
Hello,
Nice blog site.
Good to see my hometown and the great town of the high school I graduated in is doing what they can to protect and keep a very important treasure.
1. In respect to Nellie and Mr. Lewis. Please realize Nellie was a very nice and respectful person as are all of the Lewis family.
2.Due to personal reasons (divorce) my mother felt that the most responsible thing to do with this very bad condition pile of bones known as Snippy that believe it or not still had the original old pipe fitting stand that Dr. Leary made should be donated to Adams State College.
My mother even today is currently in correspondence with Kat Olance trying to figure out how Snippy got out of the Adams State Corral.
3. My father Herman Doty had Snippy. Even with his personal shortcomings and a disaster for our family when my mother and father divorced. The reason my father had Snippy in the first place is because the Alamosa Chamber of Commerce was going to get rid of Snippy. That I promise you is the truth. In the Chambers defense honestly Snippy was a very badly deteriorated pile of bones when I helped him go dig him out of the Chambers attic.
Very understandably why they were trying to do something with the bones. My father was a San Luis Valley loyalist to the end and due to his first hearing about the Snippy incident when he was handling nuclear cargo in the Air Force Reserve on a mission to England. He had an attachment and it made him feel close to home when a buddy showed him an article in the local Great Britain newspaper about Snippy.
4. There are many key witnesses still alive and I find it interesting and sad that a lot of hooey has been made up and put out as gospel truth at the expense of even going to the point of turning nice innocent Valley people into victims.
5. No matter what becomes of these bones please remember the sole intentions of my family especially my mother has been to keep "Snippy" in the valley and we even managed to get it to a place that did a wonderful restoration (Adams State) which we truly hoped would happen someday so I guess all the times I had to move that pile of bones to get to my bicycle or to our Christmas decorations was well worth it.
6. I dedicate this writing to a man I respected highly and a good friend of the family Mr. Ben Phillips. A one time Sheriff of Alamosa County who never carried a gun and had to deal with a very strange mass hysteria and did it magnificently.
7. I want to thank you Mr. Duran for being the brave one here and taking your time and effort to fueling a fire that will never be put out and shouldn't be anytime "Snippy" decides to leave the corral. I love the Valley, and the people of the Valley, as still does my entire family. The great people who have been business owners, Chamber of commerce members, Adams State College, the Hispanic people who have struggle year after year to keep their land and pride! Please always keep in mind Love of friends and family and historical truth are priceless. These are a few of my feeling of what keeps the Valley a rare treasure!
Good Luck!
Herman Doty Jr.
Somebody needs to track down Dr. Wallace Leary and find out if he obtained Snippy legally and get his story. that might shed some light on actual ownership.
Berle Lewis’ relatives stopped by on Wednesday (Dec. 6th, 2006) to see Snippy, at that time they said that Snippy (Lady) had been given to Dr. Leary.
And as I understand it, Snippy went from Dr. Leary to Hobie Dixon, a professor at Adams State College, then to the Alamosa Chamber, then Herman Doty Sr. saved her from being discarded, then Mrs. Doty donated her to the Luther Bean Museum at Adams State College, then Carl Helfin took possession after the museum no longer wanted/needed her. Since Carl passed away Snippy is now owned by his estate.
I have also heard that at one time a janitor at the college had taken Snippy and had her at his house for quite some time before she was discovered missing and he then returned her.
And now people are ready to fight over who owns her.
Amazing story from beginning to end.
We had some exiting days this month. I set up the “Snippy” and “Save Snippy” websites, put Snippy on MySpace, and started a Snippy Blog – all of which you probably already know.
From now on I’m going to try and update you at least once every few days.
The Alamosa Chamber of Commerce has created a lot of noise lately – some good – some not so good - but all of it has created publicity.
Chris O’Brien, the author of a couple of pocket books that included mention of Snippy, drove down from Sedona, Arizona to give a presentation on Why Snippy is Important.
Unfortunately, there were only about 25 - 30 people who showed up for this lecture – I really thought there would be a whole lot more.
Chris got on some far out tangents about the paranormal, which had absolutely nothing to do with Snippy. Just after the halfway point of his presentation a few audience members even walked out. See http://octabeck.livejournal.com/46376.html to read what someone else that was there has to say about Chris O’Brien’s presentation.
All through the presentation Chris made it a point to try and ridicule me for marketing Snippy on eBay, and tried to antagonize me by using one of my copyrighted pictures in his presentation and on his DVD case.
I just ignored him. If being hostile toward me makes him look like a hero to his group of friends and helps him sell books, more power to him – except for stealing my picture! I need to do a little research on copyright laws to make sure that I’m correct, but I may be sending him a “cease and desist” order.
Erin Smith, the reporter for the Pueblo Chieftain, a paper in nearby Pueblo, Colorado wrote an article that appeared in the Sunday edition. Unfortunately the article had major errors. I was unhappy with the amount of information that was flat out wrong in her story and after talking with Chris O’Brien he agreed. (Guess that’s how you sell papers.)
Debra Goodman, the Chamber Manager for Alamosa, continues to tout that she is single-handedly running the “Save Snippy” fund and campaign. While she hasn’t come right out and said it, I get the feeling (and so do others) that she pretty well leads people to think that I am the enemy who she is fighting against.
This completely baffles me because we helped her get the Save Snippy movement started by giving her a 10 day free license to use our savesnippy.com website.
However, because she has repeatedly refused to disclose her ultimate goal for where Snippy would be housed if the funds were adequate to purchase the horse, or where any unused monies will go (if there is not enough to purchase Snippy or any left over after the purchase), I have now withdraw her use of the license.
I believe that anyone collecting money to “Save Snippy” should have some definite parameters of where and how the money will be used, and exactly what will be done with Snippy if she is purchased.
Mike Dunn, the SLV Museum director and a person who has real genuine love for museums, also believes that the SLV Museum is where Snippy and/or any unused funds should go. He believes that having Snippy in the SLV Museum will do the most good for Snippy and the Valley.
I completely agree with him. The SLV Museum would give the widest access to view Snippy and be the perfect place to use some cross-sell strategies to get visitors to other businesses and attractions throughout the Valley.
Debra claims she raised over $4,000 for the “Save Snippy” account this weekend. I question that figure, but maybe more important I question who is in control of the money? Debra claims that Chris O’Brien was so destitute and broke that she had to send him money for gas to get here. So did she also have to pay for his food and lodging during his stay here in the Valley? Where did the money for these expenditures come from?
Erin Smith, the Pueblo Chieftain reporter mentioned earlier, wrote that I “denied” Chris O’Brien access to view the Snippy Skeleton. This was completely incorrect, in fact Chris stopped by my office Monday morning (12-18-06), visited with my assistant Crystal and me for 10 minutes or so, and then viewed Snippy at his leisure.
Chris O’Brien’s videographer, Ronald James, called my assistant on Friday afternoon (12/15/06) and not only harassed her, but also threatened her with some “legal counsel” B.S. (Chris & James disagree with me on the nature of the call).
I had earlier advised Chris that his videographer was not welcome to view Snippy, but when James showed up with Chris at my office I let him in. He later apologized to my assistant for his rude behavior and after that I was okay with him viewing Snippy.
Now here’s something really interesting - I’ve now had a curse of sorts placed upon me, and even been threatened with exile.
During the closing of his presentation, Mr. O’Brien commented that anyone involved with moving Snippy out of the valley had better have an army of angels because bad things were going to happen. Wonder who he was referring to? And another lady, in a letter to the editor, has said that anyone involved in the sale of Snippy would be shunned.
All I can say is ‘WOW!” I’ve been called some things before, but this was definitely something new. Frankly (get it, Frankly…) I’m kind of flattered with all this attention, hope it doesn’t go to my head.
In closing, I want to remind you to go to the “Snippy Store”, there’s a link to it on Snippy.com, and order what I think will be collectable Snippy Items. I tried to make everything very “attention getting” by using the saying: “UFO’s SUCK” – Snippy the Horse.
We are also compiling a book of old and new photos, stories, and articles that we will be making available to all of the Snippy Update subscribers (that’s you) and to everyone who contributes pictures or stories for inclusion in the book. It’ll be a very limited run of books and they will be strictly on a first come, first served basis. If you have anything you would like to contribute to this book please contact me right away, I’m trying to wrap this up just as soon as possible.
Have a great day,
Frank Duran
High Return Marketing
www.Snippy.com
www.SaveSnippy.com
I was able to attend the Save Snippy conference with Chris O’brien as guest speaker.
It is not my nature to say anything bad about anyone.
I truly love the valley I grew up in and its people. I hate to see people against people especially in a matter such as this. My family sincerely has no interest in how much the bones are worth or at this point quite honestly whether Snippy stays in the valley or not.
What we do care about is TRUTH and principles. Because of my father in the early 1970’s wanting to start his museum in the valley we managed to collect lots of very interesting artifacts and historical information. I became a very serious investigator and treasure hunter myself in later years when I had my Truck and Automotive shop in Alamosa near my house out on the COOP road by L&M body shop. My chance now to maybe apologize to those customers who found my shop doors locked. I was probably running around up in the San Juans or metal detecting around Summitville J. My mother and I currently still OWN many of these artifacts and documents like items that belonged to Baby Doe Tabor and gold nuggets found around the valley D&RGW items and documents and of course there was Snippy. Anyone that attended the huge auction we had just before I shut down my shop and moved to Arizona to work at the GM Desert Proving Grounds would have seen a huge auction but a very small part of what we had. Jim Heigel was the Auctioneer. My point here is the TRUTH and shame on me for waiting so many years to release the information I have saved about Snippy. I had to grow up with Snippy and cattle mutilations and looking back was very fortunate to have a little bit of a different upbringing. Imagine as a 13 year old you are riding your bike and when you get home there is a strange man in a lotus position in your driveway chanting Mantra’s and asking to see Snippy and telling you it cannot be understand unless you are from another dimension! Ok, enough of that. In closing, I am appalled that such a once great institution like Adams State College will acknowledge to my mother that we donated Snippy to the college but will not come forth with what should be a very simple answer as to why Snippy is not still owned by Adams State. We are still waiting for the answer. I can promise this, my mother base on this principle will be very tenacious in acquiring an answer. This should also be a heads up to anyone who would ever attempt to donate something to an institution or cause of any sort. I can assure you my mother will never donate anything again. With the documents and artifacts regarding Snippy that I now OWN I will be hopefully when the dust settles and other so called “truths” are printed I will release my own version of the truth without speculation about vortexes,UFOS or aliens just to make it sell. President Bush made a statement when asked about UFO’s “you don’t know the half of it”. I can say the same when asked about Snippy!
I apologize just one more blog, and thank you Mr. Duran for printing my blogs. This is probably the most important one!One of the few things that made sense to me and touched home that Christopher O’Brien mentioned ought to be done with Snippy and I agree wholeheartedly. Snippy does need to be checked for high radiation levels! The School of Mines in Golden I’m sure would be glad to help. I battled cancer in 1982! Contamination and radiation is nothing to fool around with! I truly doubt there will be any traces on Snippy for reasons I know of but simply to protect our little ones or pregnant mothers to be just in case. I’m not an alarmist but if nothing else it will cover the horses behind and of whoever is showing Snippy at this time. Just a suggestion.
Herman Doty Jr.
exqnfgIs it my imagination, or was 'Snippy' on display at Gibson's discount Center for a period of time in the late 60's?
I also grew up in the Valley, and had many experiences involving people who had traveled to Alamosa seeking (or believing they had already had) contact with UFOs.
It's been a while since I heard anything about Snippy - but my sister sent me a recent Denver Post clipping about what has been happening, which led me to your blog and more updated information.
More power to those invested in keeping Snippy in the Valley, and thank you for helping me prove - once and for all - that I wasn't lying when I talked about "the horse mutilated by aliens" in my hometown.
Brown Shoes
I would like to offer a donation in my grandmothers behalf Mrs. Pearl Mallon Nicholas.
E A Gard
I’m working on a really exciting partnership to really pump-up the efforts to Save Snippy, but it's not quite ready for announcement.
Please contact me through www.snippy.com or www.savesnippy.com so I can let you in on it.
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