Breeder offers clue in goat decapitations (see VIDEO)

HOLT — In a noisy farm at the end of a long dirt road on Draggin' Acres, a bleating Louis L'Amour is one of the lucky goats.

He still has his head.

So do the others: Aunt Jemima, Custer and the young Geronimo. In fact, all 75 of the pygmy and Nubian goats milling around on Brooke Broderick's farm appear safe because their owner keeps close watch.

"All you have to do is meet these little goats, and you will be angry," Broderick said as she walked among the herd.

She is fuming about the repeated goat decapitations in Fort Walton Beach. Nine headless goats have been left in the city's streets since Aug. 26, 2007. The case has stymied investigators.

Broderick is one of the larger goat breeders in Okaloosa County, but she said investigators haven't interviewed her.

She might have a clue, though: A strange phone call she reported to the Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office last March, about six months before the first decapitated goat was found.

A call history record from the Sheriff's Office lists a report from Broderick just before 7 a.m. on March 2, 2007, describing a bizarre call about an ad she placed.

‘Really weird' call

Broderick sells her animals through word-of-mouth and by postings on an Internet classifieds site, which is how the Northwest Florida Daily News found her. She describes the March phone call as "really weird."

"A man left a voicemail to me with an extremely eerie soundtrack, like jungle sounds," she said. "He wanted some of my little goats."

Broderick said she called the man back and noticed a heavy accent, perhaps Haitian.

"He said, ‘I've never owned goats, but my father owned goats -- but he's in jail because he had sex with goats.'

"That's why I called the deputy sheriff. It was probably a prankster, but you don't play with me with my goats."

The recording and its originating phone number are gone, Broderick said, but she recalls the call came from Crestview.

With multiple "Beware of Dog" signs hitched to the front gate of her property and a biting Great Pyrenees guard dog in its pen for the Daily News' visit, Broderick said she is sure she has accounted for the entire herd. She said she doesn't sell a goat without thoroughly screening the buyer and often stays in touch after the sale.

Investigators say there are hundreds of goat farms within a reasonable radius, and they have checked auctions as far away as Atlanta.

On Jan. 20, 2007, weeks before the strange message, a pregnant goat was found dead near the Okaloosa-Walton County line. It had been raped by a man, tests showed.

No one was arrested in the case after authorities said a DNA sample was contaminated, although Broderick said she knows the suspect's name.

Growing investigation

In Fort Walton Beach, the goat investigation has grown with each discovery. All the goats have been found on Sundays or Wednesdays.

Investigators have gone undercover to local auctions in Paxton to search for suspicious buyers but found none, said Dee Thompson, director of animal services for the Panhandle Animal Welfare Society.

Sources say one of two goats found early Wednesday had horns, while the rest did not. That goat, found in the intersection of Holmes Boulevard and Wright Parkway, appeared to have its head ripped off rather than cut.

There was no blood, said Josh Richardson, who lives nearby and was letting his dog out about 2 a.m. when he saw police inspecting the goat's body. Richardson is an employee of the Daily News, a sister paper of The News Herald.

Richardson said there was a "reddish half-walnut-shaped thing" left near the body, possibly an organ or perhaps just a nut. Police photographed it, he said.

The goat's head was a few feet from its body. It had a branch with green leaves in its mouth.

For Broderick, that gruesome scene is almost unimaginable. She struggles to see how someone could behead such a curious, trusting animal.

"They're like a child that never grew up," she said. "Everyone in the goat community is terribly upset about it."