The allegations that owners had been scamming insurance companies by cutting down horses came as no real surprise. One prosecutor last week called the racket the show-horse industry’s “dirty little secret.” One indicted horseman, cellular-phone heir George Lindemann Jr., was booed at horse shows after a 1992 Sports Illustrated piece identified him as a suspected horse killer. Although the two crimes aren’t directly related, authorities apparently pushed suspects in the insurance scam for information about Brach’s murder – and hit pay dirt when they found Tommy Burns, a self-proclaimed expert in electrocuting horses. The result is a tangled intrigue that could have been the plot line for a Dick Francis novel.
Brach’s disappearance has fascinated Chicagoans – and frustrated law-enforcement officials – for 17 years. Helen Vorhees met candy maker Frank Brach at a country club where she was a hostess and became his third wife in 1951. Widowed in 1970, she took comfort in her dogs, Candy and Sugar, whom she later buried in the family plot, and in supporting animal-rights causes. A few years before she was last seen, she took up with Bailey, a stable owner she had met through an acquaintance in the horse world. She told friends that Bailey had proposed marriage, but she wasn’t interested. Bailey did talk her into spending $300,000 on racehorses not worth a tenth of that, according to a court-appointed attorney for her estate. Brach, then 65, was last seen after a checkup at the Mayo Clinic in February 1977. Suspicion initially focused on Jack Matlick, the houseman at her 18-room mansion, who claimed he took her to the airport to catch a plane for Florida and who cashed three allegedly forged checks after her death. Matlick was never charged. Bailey reportedly refused to answer when questioned by Brach’s lawyers about her whereabouts. By the time she was declared dead in 1984, the trail had gone cold.
Five years later, federal agents in Chicago reopened the case, this time following a trail of fraud. According to the indictment, they discovered that Bailey had sold nags not only to Brach but to at least 12 other women in the Chicago area. He found his marks by running lonely-hearts ads in suburban papers, romancing the rich widows and divorcees long enough to sell them worthless horses at inflated prices, prosecutors charged. U.S. attorneys surmise that Brach had learned of Bailey’s con and that she may have been killed when she threatened to turn him in.
In the course of investigating Bailey, the Feds found an informant who also knew about the insurance scams and led them to Tommy Burns, who was known as “The Sandman” because of his rumored skill at killing horses in a way that made it look like their deaths were caused by colic. Authorities had Burns under surveillance one night in 1991 when he and an accomplice broke the leg of a show horse named Streetwise, owned by Donna Brown, wife of the respected trainer Buddy Brown. Caught red-handed, Burns started talking: Donna Brown paid him to cripple the horse so that she could collect on a $25,000 insurance policy, according to the indictment. Burns also led the Feds to other players who he said paid him to kill their horses to collect on inflated insurance policies or to cover their losses. According to the indictment, Lindemann paid Burns $25,000 to kill a show horse named Charisma. Paul Valliere, a top trainer from Rhode Island, is charged with hiring Burns to kill another show horse, Roseau Platiere, for $5,000. Valliere allegedly left a check for the first installment under the cushioned seat of a golf cart next to his stable in North Smithfield. Later that night the horse was dead.
Burns’s allegations will be weighed against his reputation as a criminal – and he himself faces charges in the death of Streetwise. Lindemann’s lawyer, Jay Goldberg, says his client is innocent – and charges that Burns once tried to extort money from Lindemann. Brown and Valliere could not be reached for comment. But another of those charged in the sweeping federal indictments told Newsweek, “I believe it all.” The source, who, fearing retribution, asked for anonymity, admitted having taken part in a scheme to have a horse killed. “To find the self-forgiveness for that has been a major thing in my life.”
To date, Bailey alone has been arrested, and he is charged only with conspiring to murder Brach, an allegation he denied last week. Federal authorities have yet to say who actually committed the murder, or reveal how it was done. More indictments are expected. Prosecutors still have to explain in court just how the seedy side of the horse world figured in the death of a lonely widow.
