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Thelma's wounds are healing now. And yet, when anyone comes close, she gets skittish and mean. Sometimes she'll even ram her head into Lori Wyman, the woman who has raised her since she was just a lamb.
The little red barn with the tin roof where Thelma lives has changed, too. There are extra lights to pierce the shadows and cameras overhead to capture any unusual activity.
Wyman says someone, with some frequency over the last year and a half, invaded her 20-acre property in rural Calhoun County and sexually assaulted Thelma and another sheep named Louise.
She blames one man. And today, in no small part to Wyman's efforts, Jeffrey S. Haynes, 42, is in prison. Haynes pleaded no contest to having sex with Thelma one cold winter night last year on Wyman's farm near Battle Creek.
In recent weeks, the case has gone from office-joke fodder to a cause celebre for animal rights activists. And it has ignited a legal debate that could extend to the Michigan Legislature over whether the judge properly consigned Haynes to the state's sex-offender registry upon his release.
At its heart, the search for Thelma's attacker is also a unique detective story.
Unraveling the mystery
Haynes was paroled from state prison in January 2004, after serving terms for home invasion and breaking and entering. He has relatives near Wyman's farm, and her pet sheep were visible in their pasture from a road that runs past.
Within months, Wyman said someone began invading her property and regularly trashing her sheep barns. When she discovered a rope and a rag near the sheep feeder, she became convinced someone was attacking her animals.
Wyman, a cop in a neighboring community, said she caught Haynes on her property late one night in January 2005 and held him for 40 minutes until Battle Creek police arrived.
Haynes initially told police he entered the farm to relieve himself, then said he had gone behind her barn to pet her sheep.
Wyman showed the officers fresh footprints in the knee-deep snow that went around the barn and urged them to examine Thelma, who appeared to Wyman to be injured.
Police declined to arrest Haynes, which Wyman took as a sign she was not being taken seriously. Undeterred, she called a veterinarian at 1 a.m. to swab the sheep for possible human DNA. Police shipped the specimen to the State Police crime laboratory in Lansing.
The next day, Detective Sarah Bush questioned Haynes, who was indignant.
"You're accusing me of ... doing something to a sheep?" he asked during the recorded interview.
Before he left, Haynes agreed to give a DNA sample, allowing a police sergeant to swab his mouth.
DNA testing is commonly used in rape cases involving humans, with analysts comparing semen or other fluids found on a victim with material taken from a suspect. State Police Capt. Michael Thomas, director of the forensic science division, said typical DNA analysis takes six months to complete. The Thelma tests took seven months and cost taxpayers about $1,000.
He called the sheep test "very rare, thank God."
Back at the farm, Wyman said strange things were still happening.
The night she caught Haynes, Wyman said she told him she would shoot him if he ever returned to her property. In the following months, she made other calls to police. Bush, the detective, visited the farm and saw a rope tied to a tree, with clumps of wool clinging to it.
In September, Bush met once again with Haynes, but this time she had the lab report linking his DNA to Thelma.
"Unless there's an alien that lives on Mars that came down here and ... has your DNA," Bush said, pausing, "do you understand what I'm saying?"
"Um hmm," Haynes acknowledged. He said later: "If I did do it, which I'm saying I'm not, that is a sick person, and if I did do it, I'm sick."
He was arrested and has been incarcerated ever since.
Since then, local morning DJs lampooned his case, which was publicized on newspaper wire services and on the Internet. Wyman said she heard jokes from family, Battle Creek police, strangers and coworkers -- and found none of them humorous.
After Haynes pleaded no contest to sodomy, Calhoun County Circuit Judge Conrad Sindt sentenced him on Feb. 13 to serve 2 1/2 to 20 years. Labeling Haynes "sexually perverted," Sindt also issued an almost unheard-of order: Haynes must register as a sex offender upon his release.
The judge accepted the view of the county prosecutor, John Hallacy, and animal rights groups, which wrote dozens of letters, arguing that Thelma's violation suggested Haynes also posed a risk to humans.
"He is a cruel monster," wrote an animal lover from Nevada. "Please stop him before his next victim is a child."
Even the late comedian Richard Pryor, a longtime animal activist, asked for the maximum punishment in a letter written two months before he died in December.
Actually, the few studies done on the subject have yielded no consensus on whether there is a link between animal sex abuse and sexual assaults on humans.
At sentencing, Haynes accepted "full responsibility" and said he was sorry, the Battle Creek Enquirer wrote. But he added, "I should not be treated as a child molester." He appealed the registry order.
Hallacy, the prosecutor, conceded this week that upon further review, the law is murky on whether Haynes belongs on the sex offender list. But he said he'll consider asking the Legislature to intervene if a judge reverses the decision.
Haynes' attorneys declined comment. But his ex-girlfriend, Cheryl Handyside, said she doubts Haynes belongs on the registry. But she acknowledged that "the time I was around him, I never thought he'd have sex with a sheep, either."
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Originally Posted by giffman
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