The lawman and the outlaw: How cattle rustling and drugs are roiling rural America
| Texhoma, Okla.
The first time Scout Thrasher stole two cows and hauled them across a state line and sold them, he was 17 years old. After he pocketed the cash and drove home, his stomach-churning fear of being caught in the act turned to euphoria. 鈥淎fter you make that much money that quick, [there鈥檚] really no other way to do it,鈥� he says.
Over time, Mr. Thrasher became convinced that he was invincible 鈥� that the law enforcement officials devoted to tracking down cattle rustlers in this state of farms and feedlots and ranches would never get him. Not Scout Thrasher. 鈥淚 had that mentality that I was bulletproof,鈥� says Thrasher. 鈥淭hey couldn鈥檛 catch me.鈥�
Jerry Flowers thought otherwise. Mr. Flowers is a veteran city police detective turned 鈥渃attle cop鈥� who looks as if he just stepped out of a Louis L鈥橝mour novel: He wears a bone-colored cowboy hat, cowboy boots, bluejeans, and a pinstriped vest with a badge pinned to it. His belt buckle is the size of a small hubcap. His white mustache droops from his upper lip like a horseshoe.
Flowers spent 36 years at the Oklahoma City Police Department battling every conceivable form of crime, including gang violence. In April 1995, he was one of the first officers to rush into the wreckage of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, where 168 people died in a truck bomb attack by Timothy McVeigh. Later he took a job as an investigator in a special state agricultural crimes unit. Working with eight field agents, he drives thousands of miles across Oklahoma each year probing reports of farm thefts and break-ins. That means trying to stop things like cattle rustling. That means trying to stop people like Scout Thrasher.
The trails of Flowers and Thrasher would eventually intersect at, of all places, a ranch owned by Thrasher鈥檚 grandfather. The younger Thrasher, desperate to raise money to support a drug habit, stole cattle from his grandfather Dean, the man who had raised him and taught him how to handle livestock, how to be a cowboy, how to be a man.聽
鈥淥nce you get so far gone on drugs, it doesn鈥檛 make a difference to you anymore,鈥� Thrasher says.
When Flowers finally arrested Thrasher for that heist in August 2014, it seemed like an open-and-shut case. But Thrasher鈥檚 outlaw career didn鈥檛 end there, nor did Flowers鈥檚 pursuit of him.聽
This is a story of two men 鈥� a lawman and an outlaw 鈥� and of promising lives shattered, of families betrayed, and, maybe, just maybe, of redemption. It is a story of a crime as old as the country (cattle rustling) and of a scourge as new as last night鈥檚 news (methamphetamine use). More than anything, it is a story of two men on opposite sides of an often overlooked drug epidemic that is roiling rural America.聽
To cross the Mississippi River going west is to cross a continental divide between towns hit by the opioid crisis and those where meth is the No. 1 drug threat. While opioid addiction and its dark trail of overdoses has preoccupied much of America 鈥� and understandably so 鈥� meth remains the drug of choice in large swaths of the rural heartland.
In popular culture, methamphetamine is portrayed as a backcountry drug, a homemade stimulant used by mostly white, working-class Americans. That socioeconomic status still applies, but the 鈥淏reaking Bad鈥� era of mass production is over. A decade ago, states began to restrict the over-the-counter sale of cold medicines used to cook meth 鈥� starting with Oklahoma in 2004 鈥� which resulted in a precipitous decline in backyard labs.
But even though the garage cook shops disappeared, the demand for meth didn鈥檛. Mexican cartels began producing crystal meth in bulk and supplying existing networks of dealers and users. Nearly all the meth trafficked across the United States can be traced to Mexican superlabs run by criminal organizations.
In 27 states, meth offenders now make up the largest number of drug offenders in federal prisons. Of the Drug Enforcement Administration鈥檚 21 mainland US field divisions, half reported in 2017 that meth was their greatest drug threat. 鈥淲e鈥檙e saturated in methamphetamine,鈥� says Richard Salter, the DEA鈥檚 assistant special agent in charge in Oklahoma.聽
Along with meth use goes crime to pay for the next fix. In rural towns like Texhoma in Oklahoma鈥檚 arid panhandle, that means agricultural theft, above all livestock. Every year, thousands of beef cattle are reported stolen, largely because rustling is so simple and lucrative. A stolen cow sold at the market price at an auction house is a big payoff for thieves.
鈥淚f they break into your house and steal your box of jewelry or your TV or your gun, they get pennies on the dollar,鈥� says Flowers, who is now chief of the Investigative Services Unit at the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food, and Forestry (ODAFF).
Flowers joined the unit in 2008, just as it was being overhauled to address a gap in law enforcement. Sheriffs and local police departments didn鈥檛 have sufficient time or resources to devote to agricultural crimes. Missing, too, was a deep familiarity with the industry, something that Flowers and his field agents, who all raise their own livestock and work as cowboys, have embedded in their DNA.聽
鈥淭hese guys aren鈥檛 all hat and no cattle,鈥� says Flowers, who talks in folksy clich茅s. He jokes about them, then spits out another. 鈥淲hen they walk onto a ranch or meet a livestock owner, they know how to walk the walk and talk the talk.鈥�
While Flowers and his agents have helped break up multistate theft rings that traffic in stolen farm equipment 鈥� tractors, trailers, trucks 鈥� much of their time is spent trying to recover pilfered cows. 鈥淚n the 1800s, you鈥檇 catch a cattle rustler out on the plains, [find] a good strong rope and a horse to set him on 鈥� and that problem is handled,鈥� he says.
Now it takes longer to put thieves away, and the wheels of justice don鈥檛 always turn smoothly.
Thrasher was 16 when he first smoked meth. A friend told him the stimulant would give him more energy 鈥� and it did.
He played tackle for the Red Devils, the high school football team in Texhoma, a town of 1,000 people and 10 churches that sits astride the state line with Texas, where the tallest building is a pockmarked grain elevator.
Thrasher was a middling student but took a particular interest in farming and ranching. He would travel with his agricultural science teacher, Ashley Harrison, to livestock shows on class field trips, and Mr. Harrison was impressed by Thrasher鈥檚 knowledge and passion. 鈥淪cout was a hardworking kid,鈥� he says. 鈥淗e was a good kid to have around.鈥�
But as time went on Harrison noticed the teen growing more distant.
Thrasher at first was spending $100 a week on his habit, but soon it became much more. What he didn鈥檛 put toward gas for his truck and feed for his horses went for meth. Eventually the horses went, too.聽
Going into his senior year, Thrasher was struggling with poor grades and asked Harrison for advice on how he might graduate. That was before the Thanksgiving break. Thrasher never came back to school, says Harrison.聽
Thrasher drifted between casual jobs at ranches and feedlots in Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas. Caught up in his addiction, he turned to cattle rustling to pay for his drugs. 鈥淚 grew up around cattle. I know cattle. I know how to load and haul them, where to take them,鈥� he says. 鈥淵ou get a lot more money than robbing convenience stores.鈥�
In cattle country, livestock and land are king, and the Thrasher family had both, giving Scout an advantage that poorer kids didn鈥檛 have. 鈥淗e鈥檚 a smart, good-looking kid,鈥� says Flowers. 鈥淗e鈥檚 healthy and could work to make a living. At some point in his life, his grandfather could set him up.鈥�
Instead, Thrasher fell in with other meth users, including a girl he was dating, and began involving more people in his heists.聽
On Aug. 16, 2014, Thrasher pulled a trailer of cows up to a small livestock auction in Geary, a four-hour drive from Texhoma. He unloaded 13 head of cattle, worth $21,000, and registered them as his own. After Thrasher left, the auction owner called an ODAFF agent to report her suspicions about the bona fides of the seller.
鈥淭here were red flags all over this,鈥� recalls Flowers.聽
It wasn鈥檛 just that Thrasher had driven so far to sell the cattle. The auction house had earlier received a specific warning by phone. 鈥淚f Scout Thrasher showed up at the sale barn to sell cattle, they were stolen,鈥� the caller had said. The tip came from Linda Pollock, a local rancher 鈥� and the grandmother of Thrasher鈥檚 girlfriend.聽
Flowers drove to Geary to check the sale documents and inspect the cattle. Branding isn鈥檛 mandatory in Oklahoma, but these cows had a distinctive T on their hips, which Flowers checked against a livestock database and came up with a name: Dean Thrasher.聽
The ODAFF agent, Paul Cornett, confirmed that the cattle had vanished the night before. And that wasn鈥檛 all that was missing: Scout Thrasher and two buddies were suspected of breaking into a house on the ranch rented to a family friend and taking off with his TV and guns. Within days, agents had recovered the stolen items and had Thrasher in custody after local police had pulled him over for a license plate violation.聽
At the jailhouse, Flowers and Mr. Cornett grilled Thrasher, who they figured was the ringleader. He claimed his grandfather had told him to sell the cattle on his behalf. But they pressed him on why he had the check from the auction house made out in his name and why he had picked up the cows at 2 a.m.
Flowers then told him he had full confessions from his accomplices and showed him pictures of the stolen goods in their homes. 鈥淲hen Scout looked at the photographs ... he dropped his head and began to confess,鈥� according to Cornett鈥檚 investigation report.
Facing felony charges, Thrasher was released on bail. He then went on the run. It would be another year, and another string of cattle thefts in Oklahoma, before Flowers was back on the outlaw鈥檚 scent. In the fall of 2014, Thrasher spent four months at two drug treatment centers in Texas, getting clean. He says it worked, and in early 2015 he found steady work on a ranch near Lubbock, Texas, before getting hired on a gas-line crew.聽
鈥淭hen I fell off and started using drugs again,鈥� he says.聽
Thrasher鈥檚 experience isn鈥檛 unusual. In one study of a 90-day residential program in California, 80 percent of patients who finished the treatment went back to using meth within six months. Even in well-designed programs that address underlying behavioral problems, the risk of relapse with meth is high, says Richard Rawson, a professor emeritus of psychiatry and expert on substance abuse at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Part of the challenge for meth users is their social networks. 鈥淵ou need to have an alternative that doesn鈥檛 involve your old drug-using friends,鈥� he says.聽
Thrasher couldn鈥檛 lay off his old friends. By the summer of 2015, he was back in Oklahoma and getting high with his buddies. And he began rustling again, looking for more easy targets in cattle country.聽
One of those, say investigators, was Doug Barnes, an older rancher. That summer he had hired a local teenager to mind his herd while he recuperated at home from surgery. Months later, he ran into a neighbor who said 10 of his cows had disappeared, so Mr. Barnes drove out to his own ranch. 鈥淚 had a sinking feeling in my heart,鈥� he says.聽
Sure enough, 20 cows were missing, a third of his herd. When ODAFF agents eventually cracked the case, they determined that 63 cattle worth $69,000 had been stolen from properties in three counties. One of the victims was Ms. Pollock, who had called in the tip about Thrasher. Her daughter, Khristie Taylor, and granddaughter, Thrasher鈥檚 17-year-old girlfriend, were among seven arrested.
Thrasher himself was caught in October 2015 driving a stolen trailer through the same town where he鈥檇 been arrested the previous year. He was eventually convicted of five criminal felonies, including animal larceny and drug possession.
In jail, inmates would ask him how to steal cattle. He would tell them it鈥檚 easy if you know the ropes. 鈥淓verybody鈥檚 got a different way to do it,鈥� he says. But you have to watch your accomplices because they will let you down 鈥� 鈥渢hat鈥檚 how I got caught,鈥� he says.
Rustlers need to worry about more than unreliable co-
conspirators. As cattle theft has persisted, fueled in part by the meth epidemic, ranchers have become more savvy about protecting their livestock.
On a recent morning, Barnes shows Flowers the security cameras he鈥檚 rigged up to monitor the gate at his 800-acre ranch. It鈥檚 nearly winter, and the grass is stubbled. While it鈥檚 impossible to secure the open land on which Oklahoma鈥檚 2 million beef cattle roam, Flowers encourages ranchers to install cameras and reinforce locks on gates and pens to make it harder for rustlers.聽
Flowers lingers on the dirt road, swapping livestock lore with Barnes. Flowers raises his own cattle and loves to hunt deer 鈥� he shows off photos of his two young granddaughters on their first hunt 鈥� as well as feral hogs. He looks at ease, his thumbs tucked into his belt, hat tilted against the sun.聽
In past years, ODAFF has reported as many as 3,000 head of cattle stolen in Oklahoma, but Flowers reckons that number may fall to 1,400 for 2017, which could be a sign of farmers鈥� increased vigilance and declining prices for livestock. It may not hurt that Oklahoma lawmakers have tripled the amount of money that convicted rustlers must pay in restitution to owners. The Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, a private organization that has its own law enforcement agents in Texas and Oklahoma, says cattle thefts peaked in 2014, a year of record-high auction prices.聽
Still, it doesn鈥檛 take many stolen cows to mar the bank accounts of the people with calloused hands and sun-creased faces who work the area鈥檚 ranch lands. The thievery takes an emotional toll, too. Barnes suspects a former ranch hand tipped off the rustlers who took his livestock.
鈥淚t hurts to know someone that close to you would steal from you,鈥� he says.
The sun slides behind low hills as Thrasher, now out of prison, drives along an unpaved road on his grandfather鈥檚 ranch. He pulls up at a dun-colored house, where two young girls, bundled in fleece jackets and wearing hats, are playing inside a fenced-off yard along with a limping goat. 鈥淒addy! Daddy!鈥� the girls chant, hopscotching toward the fence.聽
Thrasher is stocky and six feet tall. He has short brown hair and a goatee, and wears a green western shirt and jeans, along with a baseball cap, which he swaps for another when he goes inside. 鈥淭hat other one smelled too much of pig,鈥� he says. In conversation, he鈥檚 polite and attentive, and open about his crimes, though vague on some details, in part because of ongoing civil litigation (Barnes is suing him and other gang members for allegedly stealing his cattle. Thrasher denies being involved in that heist.)
On Jan. 18, 2017, Thrasher was released from prison, after 15 months behind bars, and now faces five years of probation for his crimes. Since then, he鈥檚 gotten married, had a baby, found a full-time job at a pig farm, and turned 22. 鈥淚鈥檝e got some years to put it back together again,鈥� he says.
The two-bedroom house he鈥檚 living in on his grandfather鈥檚 ranch is the one he helped burglarize in 2014 during the late-night cattle theft. Now he lives there with his wife, Morghin, two stepdaughters, and Stetson, their baby, who was born in November.
He鈥檚 made amends with his family, including his father, who lives in another property on the ranch, and with Dean. Thrasher does volunteer work with a youth group at church, where Dean is an elder. He knows some people crack jokes about his criminal past. But that鈥檚 not who he is today, he insists. 鈥淵ou make some bad choices. It doesn鈥檛 make you a bad person.鈥�
鈥淗e just got with the wrong people,鈥� says Dean of his grandson. 鈥淚 ain鈥檛 given up on him yet.鈥�
Morghin, herself a former meth addict who quit a year ago, began visiting Thrasher in jail, while she was divorcing her previous husband. Two months after his release, they got married.聽
鈥淚 gained two stepdaughters. They call me 鈥楧ad鈥� now, and that鈥檚 pretty special to me,鈥� says Thrasher, as he cradles Stetson on a dark leather sofa under a large painting of a bull.聽
Outside, the howls of coyotes echo in the night. Thrasher tells Rhylie, his older stepdaughter, to help her sister put away their toys. 鈥淲e can鈥檛. The coyotes are out there,鈥� she replies. Thrasher keeps his voice low. 鈥淗ow are the coyotes going to stop you from cleaning your playroom? Come on, honey.鈥�
Thrasher is saving money with the hope of buying a few head of cattle of his own so he can one day help pay for his children鈥檚 education. He also wants to acquaint them with the cowboy lifestyle. Perhaps they鈥檒l want to rodeo, he muses. More than anything, he wants them to learn from his errors 鈥� stay away from drugs.
Thrasher says he sometimes thinks about meth; he knows it鈥檚 easy to score in town. When temptation beckons, he tries to focus on his new family. 鈥淚 know if I ever got in trouble again it would be a long time [in jail] and the kids don鈥檛 deserve that,鈥� he says.聽
Flowers knows what addiction does to a family, too. His stepson Cody became a meth user after college while working on an oil rig. He lost his home, his job, and his wife, and stole from his mother and Flowers. 鈥淚t totally destroyed him,鈥� says the lawman. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 what meth does.鈥澛�
One day, Flowers caught Cody raiding his medicine cabinet and called the cops. It was Christmas Eve. 鈥淚 put my own stepson in jail and it saved his life,鈥� he says. Today his stepson is clean and recently moved out of their house.
While Flowers considers addiction a disease, he doesn鈥檛 think that absolves drug users like Cody or Scout of responsibility for their actions. In his eyes, they鈥檙e not victims. A victim is a rancher whose cows are stolen while he recuperates from surgery. 鈥淭hey made their choices, and you have to live with those choices,鈥� he says.
Flowers鈥檚 role in this morality tale on the wind-swept plains of Oklahoma is simple: Put the bad guys in jail 鈥� a role he relishes. One evening he and Cornett slide into a booth at a Tex-Mex steakhouse in Guymon. They are in town for a court hearing for one of Thrasher鈥檚 accomplices who also went on the run after the 2014 theft.
Flowers keeps his cellphone on the table. His team is on a sting operation in southeastern Oklahoma, waiting to catch a suspect in the act of stealing 24 cows for a buyer who is actually an ODAFF agent, and he鈥檚 awaiting updates. It鈥檚 another inside job: a ranch hand rustling his employer鈥檚 cattle. Flowers devours his steak, bristling with anticipation.
At 8:36, his phone buzzes. 鈥淚T鈥橲 FIXIN TO GO DOWN,鈥� reads the message. An hour later, the suspect is in custody. Two days later, Flowers and the sting operation are on the evening news in Oklahoma City.
Another accused rustler is behind bars.
