Horse slaughter suspects not popular with residents

Scott Sonner

Friday, Oct. 1, 1999 | 10:41 a.m.

VIRGINIA CITY -- Lawyers defending three young men accused of slaughtering dozens of wild horses admitted to a bit of trepidation entering the 1876 courthouse where vigilantes once used the noose-end of a rope to dish out an Old West-brand of justice.

Their clients -- two ex-Marines and a former high-school buddy -- had been portrayed for months as trigger-happy riflemen who in the days after Christmas massacred free-roaming mustangs that Nevadans hold so dear to their hearts.

Emotions still were running high the day after Labor Day when the suspects finally went before a Storey County justice of the peace for a preliminary hearing on charges of theft, grand larceny and killing another person's animal.

The three defendants -- Anthony Merlino, 20, Darien Brock, 21, and Scott Brendle, 22 -- seemed to further antagonize locals by strolling the dusty, wooden sidewalks of the historic mining town during courtroom breaks in their black suits, dark sun glasses and smirks.

"Pukes!" one shop owner said as she watched them make their way past the Delta Saloon in front of the Territorial Enterprise where Mark Twain got his start as a newspaperman.

A local newspaper, the Comstock Chronicle, called the three suspects "morons" and reported that two of the defense lawyers "have spent so long with criminals that their own brains appear to have become addled with sleaze."

But as local prosecutors laid out the evidence and the hearing scheduled for three days stretched into five, it became clear this was anything but the open-and-shut case that investigators had portrayed.

And now that some of the charges have been dismissed, defense lawyers say they're growing more confident their clients eventually will go free. A trial is scheduled in the coming months in district court in Carson City.

"I hope we have turned the tide a little bit with how the public views these three individuals," said Scott Freeman, a lawyer for Merlino, a Reno construction worker.

"Everything points to the fact that they have the three individuals who did not commit this crime," he said.

Justice Annette Daniels ordered the three bound over to District Court last month for a trial on charges of maiming or killing another person's animal. She dismissed four other theft and larceny charges.

Even prosecutors admitted there was no physical evidence that directly linked the suspects to any of the dead horses.

"This is not a smoking gun case. It is based on circumstantial evidence," Deputy Storey County District Attorney Sharon Claassen said. She said prosecutors will have a stronger case when they get to trial.

All three men admit being in the area with guns the evening of Dec. 27, but they maintain somebody else shot the horses before they arrived.

Only Brendle has confessed to actually training the cross hairs of his rifle scope on a horse, squeezing the trigger and watching it buckle to the ground. And there was just the one, he said.

Merlino said he shot one wounded horse to put it out of its misery. Brock said he shot into a herd of horses and doesn't think he hit any, but may have hit just one.