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Four Oklahoma State University fraternity members were arrested in connection with the longhorn carcass placed in front of another fraternity last month.
Bennett Fady, Luke Ackerley, Brody Shelby, and Andrew King were arrested on Wednesday and charged with misdemeanor unlawful removal/disposal of a carcass.
The dead longhorn was found on the front lawn of Oklahoma State's FarmHouse fraternity on Dec. 1, the day before the Big 12 Championship football game between the Oklahoma State Cowboys and the Texas Longhorns, in which the Longhorns won by a score of 49 to 21.
"F--- FH," was branded on the cow. The animal also had a yellow tie-down strap tied around the base of its horns, and it was fastened to a large concrete pillar on the FarmHouse fraternity porch. There was a large cut on the longhorn's abdomen with internal organs exposed.
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Bennett Fady, Luke Ackerley, Brody Shelby, and Andrew King were charged with misdemeanor unlawful removal/disposal of a carcass. (Payne County Jail)
Stillwater Police discovered from a necropsy report that the cow died of disease 36 hours before the incident and that it had not been killed to leave it on the FarmHouse fraternity lawn.
FarmHouse fraternity members told police they suspected rival fraternity Alpha Gamma Rho left the carcass amid an ongoing prank war between the two frat houses, an arrest warrant affidavit shows, according to Fox 4.
Police reviewed surveillance video from the FarmHouse fraternity and saw three people pull up in a white Ford F-150 with a trailer and dump the dead longhorn onto the property.
Investigators later learned that the Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity held a party at a member's uncle's house. Neighbors told investigators they typically saw three longhorns on the property, but only two remained after the prank, court documents showed.
Court documents show that police went to Alpha Gamma Rho to speak with members of the fraternity, and leadership and an advisor said they had identified fraternity members involved in the incident but "declined to provide the identification of those individuals."
The arrest warrant affidavit said investigators were told that Fady discussed a plan to drop a dead longhorn on the FarmHouse property, but was urged by fellow fraternity members not to carry out the prank. The four arrested then asked another member to borrow his truck to retrieve the cow, and the member confirmed to police he allowed Fady to use his truck.
A necropsy report showed that the longhorn died of disease 36 hours before the incident and that it had not been killed to leave it on the FarmHouse fraternity lawn. (Stillwater Police)
Police said the four suspects attempted to conceal the truck used in the incident by not immediately returning it to its owner after dumping the longhorn and instead parking it on the east side of the farm where the cow was picked and telling the owner where his vehicle was located, according to Fox 25. The truck was then driven to the owner's home in the middle of the night, at the "suggestion of the fraternity, to avoid detection," police said.
A review of video surveillance taken from the Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity house discovered a significant gap in the security video from the time before and after the incident, court documents show.
"There was a significant amount of collective lack of cooperation from the Alpha Gamma Rho organization, as it related to the investigation into the incident," an investigator said in court documents.
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Police also tried to interview the four suspects at police headquarters, but their lawyer told police none of his clients would participate in the interview.
The four arrested are members of Alpha Gamma Rho. All four were booked into the Payne County Jail and released on their own recognizance, and they have all pleaded not guilty.
"Oklahoma State expects all students to adhere to university codes of conduct, and appropriate action will be taken based on the outcome of an ongoing internal investigation," the university said in a statement to Fox 4.
