Murder of family horse still under investigation

Lacy and Jake Wolff recently moved to the Pactola area in hopes that their new home would “be a little sanctuary,” according to Lacy, but someone quickly turned it into a nightmare.

In the early morning hours of Oct. 9, the couple woke up to discover their beloved 15-year-old therapy horse, Cheyenne, had been brutally murdered in their own backyard. 

What they discovered that morning continues to haunt them. 

“Just huge piles of blood, three or four of them. An unimaginable amount. During deployments, everything—I’ve never seen anything like that,” recalled Wolff.

“Then, I saw her, and I just knew that she was gone,” she said.

Roughly 20 feet away from Cheyenne’s body investigators recovered a shovel with a broken handle. 

“The end was broken off into a sharp point and they sedated her and then sodomized and raped her so much that she had that much internal bleeding,” said Wolff.

“They had to have brought a sedative with them, because she didn’t have a halter on. There are no signs of struggle anywhere. You can’t just hold a horse and do that,” said Wolff.

The Pennington County Sheriff’s Office continues to investigate the case. According to Wolff, investigators believe the perpetrator(s) may be someone within the couple’s inner circle.

“We’d only been up here like two months with the horses, and you can’t see the pasture from anywhere but private property. So this person would have had to have seen them before or knew where it was,” Wolff said. “We have a bunch of dogs on the property, so it’s not like they could have just come up the driveway, which is the only way in. So they had to hike the Forest Service somewhere around the back way.”

Cheyenne had been with the family for six months before her death and served as a therapy horse for Wolff, who suffers from PTSD stemming from her time in the military.

“When I’m stressed out or anxious, I would just go sit with her, and she’d come put her head in my lap,” recalled Wolff. “Cheyenne was more than just a therapy horse, she was part of the family.”

The attack not only stole a piece of their family, it also took their peace of mind. Wolff said since the incident, she has been having nightmares and finds it hard to sleep.

“This was supposed to be our little sanctuary area, chickens, horses—we were going to have the good life. Then, you can’t even imagine,” said Wolff.

The Pennington County Sheriff’s Office is asking for the public’s assistance-reporting any unusual activity in the area that morning. The family is offering a $10,000 cash reward to anyone who provides information leading to the arrest of the person or persons responsible for the crime. 

“We are hoping to get answers, and it doesn’t feel like it is going anywhere,” said Wolff.

If you have any information, please contact Investigator Weston McPherson at 605-394-6115.

A GoFundMe page has been set up for the family at gofund.me/e655d9528.