Jump to content

Enumclaw horse sex case

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Enumclaw horse sex case
Enumclaw horse sex case is located in Washington (state)
Enumclaw horse sex case
Location of Enumclaw, Washington State
DateJuly 2, 2005; 18 years ago (2005-07-02)
LocationUnincorporated area in King County, Washington, United States (near Enumclaw)
TypeBestiality
CauseCause of death:
Acute peritonitis caused by traumatic perforation of the colon
Participants
OutcomeLaws passed criminalizing bestiality and zoophilic pornography in Washington state
Deaths1 (Pinyan)
ConvictedJames Michael Tait
VerdictTait:
Pleaded guilty
ConvictionsTait:
First-degree criminal trespass
SentenceTait:
One-year suspended sentence

The Enumclaw horse sex case happened in 2005 in Washington, USA. It involved some men who had sex with horses.


The Enumclaw horse sex case was a series of events in 2005 involving Kenneth D. Pinyan,[2][3] an engineer who worked for Boeing and lived in Gig Harbor, Washington; James Michael Tait, a truck driver; Douglas Spink; and other unknown men. Pinyan and Tait filmed and gave out zoophilic pornography showing Pinyan having anal sex from a stallion under the false name "Mr. Hands".[4][5] After doing this an unknown number of times, Pinyan received deadly internal injuries after another incident.

The story was reported in The Seattle Times and was one of that paper's most read stories of 2005.[6][7] Pinyan's death quickly started the creation of a bill by the Washington State Legislature that prohibits both sex with animals and the recording of such an act. Currently, Washington law marks bestiality as a Class C felony, where someone could get up to five years in prison.[8]

Because sex with animals was legal in Washington state at the time, Tait was found guilty of trespassing, and was given the punishment of a one-year suspended sentence.

Background[change | change source]

In the 1970s, many laws that had made certain sex acts in various U.S. states illegal were repealed, mostly because they had made some consensual sex acts between adult is illegal that were no longer considered appropriate to forbid (for example, criminalizing all oral and anal sex).[9][10] In Washington state, a law was repealed on July 1, 1976, that had said:

Every person who shall carnally know in any manner any animal or bird, or who shall carnally know any male or female person by the anus or with the mouth or tongue; or who shall voluntarily submit to such knowledge; or who shall attempt sexual intercourse with a dead body, shall be guilty of sodomy...

— 9.79.100 of the 1974 Revised Code of Washington[11]

Because of the repeal, bestiality had become legal again in the state of Washington.

Kenneth Pinyan had worked for Boeing for eight years.[2] Before, he had been married to a woman and had children with her. He had moved from Seattle to Oak Harbor, Washington.[12] Pinyan had been building a new house and a barn that he planned to keep a horse in, along the Key Peninsula Highway in Gig Harbor, Washington. He was about to begin making payments on the property.[2]

Pinyan could not feel some feelings after a motorcycle accident, and he started looking for more extreme sexual activities, like using very large dildos, fisting, and having sex with horses. In the early 2000s, he found a group of men online, nicknamed "zoos", who began meeting at a farm in King County, Washington, during the weekends. The group filmed each other having anal sex with horses and sometimes had sex with each other afterwards. They posted the videos online. The men trained the horses to have sex with them by taking off their clothes, applying a horse breeding pheromone, and bending over. The men had a sexual fixation on large penises "that may have had nothing to do with horses". It is also believed Pinyan did not truly love horses and was not a true zoophile, although Pinyan had a cast created of the penis of his favorite horse, Strut.[13][14]

Pinyan's death[change | change source]

The event that killed Pinyan Happened at a 40-acre (16 ha) farm located in King County, Washington,[15][16] 5 miles (8.0 km) northwest of the city of Enumclaw.[15] Sgt. John Urquhart of the Sheriff's Office said that "typically", men were having sex with a horse whose name was not shared with the public on the property of James Michael Tait, a truck driver who lived in a trailer next to the farm, "but on this particular night it is my understanding that horse wasn't particularly receptive".[17] Pinyan, Tait, and a third unknown man snuck into the barn of the Southeast 444th Street farm that night. Either Pinyan or the unidentified man recorded Tait having sex with a horse the men had referred to as "Big Dick". After finishing, Tait then filmed Pinyan being having sex with the same horse. During this event, Pinyan suffered internal injuries, including a perforated colon.[2][17]

On July 2, 2005, Douglas Spink brought Pinyan to the Enumclaw Community Hospital.[15][18] Doctors brought Pinyan into an examination room before noticing he was dead.[15] According to the hospital, Pinyan, age 45, "died of acute peritonitis due to perforation of the colon",[15] and the death was considered an accident.[19]

Investigation[change | change source]

After Pinyan died, police used his driver's license to find family members and people he knew. Earlier news reports said that the police had used surveillance camera footage to find Pinyan's companion. Using the contacts, the authorities found the farm where it happened. The police found the rural farm, which was known in zoophile chat rooms as a place for people to have sex with livestock and seized 100 VHS tapes and DVDs containing hundreds of hours of video of men having sex with animals. One of the videotapes featured Kenneth Pinyan shortly before he died on July 2.[15][17]

Prosecutors later determined that the horse had not been hurt.[16][20]

It was only after Pinyan died, when law enforcement looked for one way to punish his associates, that the legality of bestiality in Washington State became an issue [...] The prosecutor's office wanted to charge Tait with animal abuse, but the police found no evidence of abused animals on the many videotapes they collected from his home. As there was no law against humanely fucking a horse, the prosecutors could only charge Tait with trespassing.

— Charles Mudede, The Stranger[2]

The prosecutor's office says no animal cruelty charges were filed because there was no evidence of injury to the horses.

— Associated Press in The Seattle Times[21]

Media reporting[change | change source]

Jennifer Sullivan, a Seattle Times reporter, said that at first the King County Sheriff's Department did not think the local newspapers would report on the event because of it was very shocking. However, after an Associated Press report said that the farm where the event happened brought in a large number of people who wanted to have sex with animals, the Times decided that it needed to write about the case because multiple people were involved.[22]

Criminal charges, guilty plea, and sentencing[change | change source]

The person taking the video in the case, 54-year-old James Michael Tait,[16] was found guilty of trespassing. The owners of the farm, not related to Tait, did not know that the men had entered the farm to have sex with animals. The third man was not found guilty because he was not seen in the videos taken by police.[2] On November 29, 2005, Tait entered an Alford plea, a type of guilty plea where the person says they are innocent but agrees that the evidence would probably make them found guilty, so they accept being convicted.[23] Judge David Christie gave him a one year sentence, a $300 fine, one day of community service, and said that Tait was never allowed to visit the farm again.[2]

Aftermath[change | change source]

Charles Mudede wrote that when the event happened, people living in Enumclaw were shocked and angered by the event. In 2015, ten years after the incident, he said that people living in Enumclaw were still not willing to accept what had happened.[12]

"2 Guys 1 Horse"[change | change source]

After Pinyan's death, a video spread on the Internet of Kenneth Pinyan having sex with a horse. The video was nicknamed "Mr. Hands" or "2 Guys 1 Horse". The video, originally made to sexually please the viewer, became one of the Internet's first viral shock videos and was featured in the documentary Zoo.[24]

Zoo[change | change source]

A documentary about the life and death of Pinyan, and the lives of the other people who went to the farm near Enumclaw, launched at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and was called Zoo. It was one of 16 winners out of 856 films for the festival,[25] and played at many festivals in the U.S. afterwards.[26] After Sundance, it was also selected as one of the best American films to be presented at the prestigious Directors Fortnight sidebar at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.[27]

James Michael Tait and later events of 2009–2010[change | change source]

Sometime after the events in Washington, James Michael Tait moved to Maury County, Tennessee, onto a farm owned by a man named Kenny Thomason. The farm had horses, pigs, goats and dogs. On October 13, 2009, a woman that was associated with them, Christy D. Morris, was arrested and charged with animal cruelty.[28] Two days later, an unknown person e-mailed investigators a photo of a man having sex with a Shetland pony from Thomason's farm; Tait and Thomason were arrested that same day. Tait was found guilty with three counts of felony animal cruelty, while Thomason was charged with two counts of animal cruelty. According to Tait's arrest warrant, he had been had sex with a stud horse for several months. Tait and Thomason admitted to having sex with a horse.[29][30] In January 2010, Tait pleaded guilty in court to having sex with animals and was put on probation.[31]

Section 16.52.205 of the Revised Code of Washington[change | change source]

After Pinyan died, a Washington state senator, Pam Roach, created a bill to ban sex with animals in Washington State.[22] Senate Bill 6417, which made having sex with animals a crime, passed on February 11, 2006. Mudede wrote "It was an almost comically easy law to pass";[2] having sex with animals had little political support in Washington, and no group in the state actively advocated for animal sex to be legal.[2] Mudede wrote that reading RCW 16.52.205 was "very much like reading hardcore porn".[2] The law prohibits "videotap[ing] a person engaged in a sexual act or sexual contact with an animal" that is "either alive or dead". Because of the rule against videotaping, Mudede stated that the law "points an angry finger directly at James Tait."[2] In 2015, Mudede said that he was unaware of any bestiality related arrests in Washington since the Pinyan incident.

Related Pages[change | change source]

  • List of horse accidents
  • List of unusual deaths
  • Clop (erotic fan art)

References[change | change source]

  1. ↑ Sokol, Zach (July 16, 2015). "The Strange, Sad Story of the Man Named Mr. Hands Who Died from Having Sex with a Horse". Vice. Archived from the original on February 8, 2016. Retrieved January 1, 2016.
  2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 Mudede, Charles (February 23, 2006). "The Animal In You". The Stranger. Archived from the original on April 11, 2006. Retrieved April 30, 2006. Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "thestranger" defined multiple times with different content
  3. ↑ "Kenneth D Pinyan, Washington Death Index, 1965-2014". FamilySearch. 2005-07-02.
  4. ↑ Lim, Dennis (April 1, 2007). "Zoo – Film". Archived from the original on May 8, 2019. Retrieved February 13, 2019 – via NYTimes.com.
  5. ↑ "Horse Riding Mr Hands, Washington". Archived from the original on September 26, 2018. Retrieved February 13, 2019.
  6. ↑ "Horse sex story was online hit". The Seattle Times. December 30, 2005. Archived from the original on March 15, 2016. Retrieved May 11, 2016.
  7. ↑ Macdonald, Moira (July 3, 2006). "Infamous Enumclaw horse sex case to be made into movie". The Seattle Times. Archived from the original on October 27, 2016. Retrieved May 11, 2016.
  8. ↑ State of Washington, Fifty-Ninth Legislature (March 8, 2006). "Animal cruelty in the first degree". RCW 16.52.205. Archived from the original on January 10, 2012. Retrieved January 17, 2015.
  9. ↑ Hay, Mark (March 7, 2014). "Nobody Wants to Talk About Bestiality Until Someone Fucks a Horse". Vice. Archived from the original on December 29, 2018. Retrieved December 29, 2018. And the offenses that were in place were stricken from the books in the 1970s, when "Crimes against Nature" laws that had lumped bestiality in with consensual sexual acts between adults once labeled as illegal—like sodomy—were deleted wholesale.
  10. ↑ "The History of Sodomy Laws in the United States – Washington". www.glapn.org. Archived from the original on November 18, 2019. Retrieved February 13, 2019.
  11. ↑ "9.79.100" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on August 27, 2016. Retrieved July 26, 2016.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Mudede, Charles (July 22, 2015). "Revisiting the Town of the Most Famous Horse Sex Death in Recorded History". The Stranger. Archived from the original on April 15, 2016. Retrieved April 11, 2016. Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "Mudededoesntwanttotalk" defined multiple times with different content
  13. ↑ "A stable relationship?". Evening Standard. May 29, 2008. Archived from the original on March 31, 2019. Retrieved February 13, 2019.
  14. ↑ Frater, Jamie (November 1, 2010). Listverse.com's Ultimate Book of Bizarre Lists: Fascinating Facts and Shocking Trivia on Movies, Music, Crime, Celebrities, History, and More. New York City: Ulysses Press. p. 107. Retrieved February 13, 2019 – via Internet Archive.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 15.3 15.4 15.5 Sullivan, Jennifer (July 15, 2005). "Videotapes show bestiality, Enumclaw police say". The Seattle Times. Archived from the original on August 24, 2015. Retrieved May 11, 2016. Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "seattle1" defined multiple times with different content
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 Anderson, Rick (November 9, 2005). "Closing the Barn Door". Seattle Weekly. Archived from the original on January 5, 2014. Retrieved May 11, 2016. Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "AndersonBarn1" defined multiple times with different content
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 Anderson, Rick (October 9, 2006). "Closing the Barn Door". Seattle Weekly. Archived from the original on October 16, 2019. Retrieved November 3, 2019. Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "Closing the Barn Door" defined multiple times with different content
  18. ↑ Keegan, Rebecca Winters (January 28, 2007). "Have You Seen the Horse Sex Movie?". Time. Archived from the original on February 2, 2007. Retrieved September 17, 2010.
  19. ↑ Sullivan, Jennifer (July 15, 2005). "Enumclaw-area animal-sex case investigated". The Seattle Times. Archived from the original on May 12, 2016. Retrieved May 11, 2016.
  20. ↑ Foundas, Scott (May 18, 2007). "Zoo". Variety. Archived from the original on August 19, 2010. Retrieved September 17, 2010.
  21. ↑ "Charge filed in connection with man who died having horse sex". The Seattle Times. Associated Press. October 18, 2005. Archived from the original on June 10, 2016. Retrieved May 11, 2016.
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 Messer, Lesley (July 18, 2005). "When a Man Dies in a Sex Act with a Horse – What's a Reporter to Do?". Editor & Publisher. Archived from the original on October 30, 2020. Retrieved May 11, 2016. Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "WhattodoMesser" defined multiple times with different content
  23. ↑ "Man in infamous Enumclaw horse-sex case faces new charges in Tennessee Archived February 16, 2016, at the Wayback Machine".
  24. ↑ Mick, David Glen; Pettigrew, Simone; Pechmann, Cornelia (Connie); Ozanne, Julie L. (January 26, 2012). Transformative Consumer Research for Personal and Collective Well-Being. Routledge. ISBN 9781136698743. Archived from the original on August 11, 2020. Retrieved February 13, 2019 – via Google Books.
  25. ↑ Westneat, Danny (December 3, 2006). "New movie is the spawn of horse sex". The Seattle Times. Archived from the original on June 9, 2016. Retrieved May 11, 2016.
  26. ↑ Dentler, Matt (May 4, 2007). "Matt Dentler's Blog: Cannes Countdown: Directors' Fortnight Lineup Impresses". Archived from the original on September 29, 2007. Retrieved October 28, 2010.
  27. ↑ Eugene Hernandez, "'07: Slate Set for 49th Directors' Fortnight Archived May 29, 2016, at the Wayback Machine", IndieWIRE, May 3, 2007.
  28. ↑ "3 accused of having sex with animals in Maury Co". WKRN. October 19, 2009. Archived from the original on June 5, 2016. Retrieved May 11, 2016.
  29. ↑ "Man in infamous Enumclaw horse-sex case faces new charges in Tennessee". October 20, 2009. Archived from the original on July 14, 2017. Retrieved June 11, 2017. James Tait, 58, was arrested and charged Thursday with three counts of felony animal cruelty in Maury County, Tenn.
  30. ↑ "US Farmer in horse-sex arrest". lite-news.com. Archived from the original on April 23, 2019. Retrieved February 13, 2019.
  31. ↑ Sullivan, Jennifer (April 16, 2010). "Felon accused of running animal-sex farm in Whatcom County". The Seattle Times. Archived from the original on April 30, 2016. Retrieved May 11, 2016.

Other Websites[change | change source]

Retrieved from "https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Enumclaw_horse_sex_case&oldid=9624205"