OCALA — Mari Pritchard took a call at work four years ago, but didn’t have to hear the caller’s words.
She already knew in her gut when she saw the caller ID that her worst fear — images from her own haunting nightmares — had become reality.
After moving back to Ocala with her horse, Frosty, she’d been horrified by reports of horses in the area being stolen and butchered for their meat. Fear gripped her.
“Could it happen to Frosty?” she panicked. “Surely not,” she reassured herself.
But then came the phone call from the friend who was caring for the Quarter Horse mare.
“I knew,” her voice quivered recently as she recalled the memory. “It was a gut feeling. She never calls me at work.”
Thieves had come in the night, the friend told her in a halting voice as gently as possible. They’d cut the fence and slaughtered Frosty for her meat.
Pritchard is one of thousands of horse owners across the state of Florida who share the fear of losing their beloved equine. More than 7,400 Facebook users share information in the group Keeping Florida Horses Safe/Suspicious Activity about horse slaughter suspects and incidents. Their fears are fueled by each new report of a stolen equine.
They post about their worries: “Will I wake up to find my horses where they should be?” or “Will they have been butchered in the night for their meat?”
“Stay vigilant!” they often write when posting about sightings of people apparently casing their property. They also share updates about ongoing investigations involving missing horses.
Florida is the epicenter of the horse meat market in the United States, said Richard Couto, founder and president of Animal Recovery Mission. He estimates tens of thousands of slaughters happen each year because of the high demand for the illegal meat. Teams from his organization infiltrate illegal slaughter operations to gather information from the inside. They build a case of documentation to hand over to law enforcement in the hopes it will be used for prosecution. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn’t, he said.
But most of the crimes go unnoticed by law enforcement agencies, Couto said. Few police reports and even fewer convictions for the crime are issued.
And that’s why the crime of horse slaughter continues, he said. Law enforcement officials across the state aren’t communicating about the horse thefts and butcherings, he said. And many seem unconcerned of laws in the state that make horse slaughter a crime. That emboldens thieves to act more brazenly, according to Couto.
In Miami-Dade County, where demand for horse meat is thought to be greatest in the state, only a few cases of horse slaughter are reported each year by law enforcement. Two cases were reported by law enforcement in the county in 2024.
But sheriff’s officers told WUFT News off-camera that they agree that because of the covert nature of the crimes, it’s hard to know exactly how many cases are occurring.
Because the crimes usually happen in rural areas, “evidence of these crimes is very few and far between,” said Detective Andre Martin, a spokesman for the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office.
The crimes are taken seriously by their agency, he said. A team of forty agricultural patrol officers work to investigate crimes such as horse slaughter.
But they only can investigate the cases of which they’re aware. If illegal slaughter operations remain concealed to law enforcement or those who would report them to law enforcement, the undiscovered crimes continue
“These are just very, very difficult cases to solve,” he said. “It has a lot to do with the fact that there are little to no witnesses when it happens. And the horses are very difficult to identify once they're slaughtered.”
Some horse owners across the state report that when authorities are called after the incidents, they’ve not been willing to take a report, Couto said.
As a result of the lack of action by law enforcement, “the horse meat industry is thriving,” Couto said. “It’s possibly growing.”
The most demand for the black-market meat is in South Florida, but the problem is spreading farther north in the state, Couto said. He’s seen cases as far south as The Keys and as far north as Jacksonville.
Most of the killing seems to occur in illegal slaughterhouses involving horses that were bought legally from often-unsuspecting sellers. According to Couto, anyone offering a horse for sale for less than $20,000 could unknowingly be selling to someone planning to slaughter the animal for profit.
But to fill the demand for the meat, slaughterers increasingly are stealing and killing pet horses throughout the state, he said.
Recent convictions have sent some of the killers to prison. In 2023, Eladio Garcia-Gasca was sentenced to ten years in state prison. He butchered a pet show horse named Halo in 2019. Video cameras recorded him entering the Manatee County barn before leading the thoroughbred gelding across the street where he was killed.
The thefts usually follow a pattern, Couto said. Nighttime raiders identify a horse, then come back for it in the early hours of the morning.
They usually lead the horse a short distance from the property to kill it. It’s a cruel, bloody death, he said. Then, they set to butchering it. They take the meat and leave the remains.
Horses are rarely found with gunshot wounds to the head, which would indicate a speedy, more humane death, Martin said. When bodies are found, they only show signs of a knife being used, he said.
The process takes about two hours, and the meat from each horse is worth about $20,000, Couto said. Buyers are willing to pay between $20 and $40 per pound for what’s considered in some cultures as a delicacy with medical benefits, he said.
“They think that it cures side effects of chemotherapy, blood disorders, certain cancers,” he said. “When you have that, you have a certain desperation that surrounds that, which is why people are breaking onto properties and stealing horses.”
A Florida law passed in 2010 bans horse meat from being bought and sold in the state. Those who commit a violation of the law must be sentenced to “a minimum mandatory fine of $3,500 and a minimum mandatory period of incarceration of one year.”
According to Couto, installing cameras and having a dog that barks are the most effective ways to prevent theft of a horse.
Meg Weinberger, recently elected to represent District 94 in the Florida House, has felt the pain of horse theft and slaughter. War, a horse rehabilitated at her animal rescue and later rehomed, was stolen and found butchered.
She and Couto agree that a statewide task force is the best step toward stopping the crimes. But they said they haven’t seen the coordination needed to make it happen from the state’s top law enforcement officials.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the crimes.
Four years later, the pain of losing Frosty is still fresh for Pritchard.
“It don’t ever go away,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes.
“They took a part of me when they took her, and it’ll never come back.”