Giacomo Bologna

GBOLOGNA@NEWS-LEADER.COM

A man believed to be the most prolific cattle rustler in southwest Missouri died Tuesday night in a prison north of Kansas City.

Experts believe Howard Lee Perryman stole hundreds of heads of cattle — possibly more than a thousand — over his long career.

“I think he was the best cattle rustler in southwest Missouri,” said a Barry County detective who helped bring him to justice. “Nobody stole cattle like Howard did.”

Perryman was 67.

One story goes that Perryman would cut the voice boxes out of dogs so when he rustled cattle in the middle of the night his dogs wouldn’t wake the farmers.

That story was told to Eldon Cole, a livestock expert with University of Missouri Extension in Mount Vernon.

Cole said cattlemen were attending Perryman's court hearings right up until the end.

“He certainly had a reputation,” Cole said. “I would have loved to have gone on a midnight ride with him … and seen how he pulled this off.”

When Perryman was caught for the last time in 2013, some cops and farmers were stunned to see he was a small, sickly, old man.

It had taken more than a year for a collaborative investigation involving several local and state law enforcement agencies, hours of surveillance, about two dozen victims and multiple GPS trackers to arrest Perryman.

And he might have gotten away if it hadn't been for a crumpled-up paper towel left at a farm north of Ash Grove.

One day in May 2012, Bob Darrow saw a gate on his property had swung open and the tall grass nearby was tramped down.

There were tire tracks, and farther down the fence line someone had snipped his barbed wire, apparently for an escape route.

Darrow counted the cows and came up 13 short — about $17,000 worth of cattle.

“It makes you feel empty,” Darrow said of the theft. “My wife got really upset.”

Darrow said his wife names every single cow they own.

According to a police report, Perryman took Buttercup and a dozen other cows, but left behind a paper towel.

Darrow said he knew enough not to disturb what could be evidence, so he waited for a Greene County Sheriff’s deputy to carefully place the paper towel into a plastic bag with tweezers.

But no arrest was made, and Darrow said his wife still wonders where her cows were taken.

It seemed like the investigation was at a dead end.

So Darrow said he and about seven or eight of his neighbors started a nighttime watch and would chase suspected criminals through the roads of northwest Greene County.

Was the night watch deputized by any law enforcement agency?

"No, but we all carried shotguns,” Darrow said. "If things are real serious, we have to take things in our own hands because it takes so long for the sheriff to get out here."

The night watch went on for about a year and a half, Darrow said, though they never caught a cattle rustler and interest gradually petered out.

What Darrow didn’t know is that midway through that time, the Missouri State Highway Patrol started building a case around the paper towel.

Nearly a year passed before a laboratory could confirm the DNA was Perryman’s. That's when the surveillance began.

A case summary from the highway patrol broke down how they did it:

Investigators went to the house of Perryman's granddaughter in Monett.

She told them her grandfather would stay with her from time to time and use a 1995 purple pickup truck registered to her and her husband.

Investigators put a GPS tracker on the purple pickup truck.

Then they waited.

They found that on four occasions between May and June of 2013, he would park the purple pickup truck at a trucking company in Springfield where it remained overnight.

From that parking lot, Perryman would drive away in one of two stolen trucks he kept there.

So GPS trackers were placed on those trucks, too.

Investigators also found that Perryman had driven the purple pickup truck to an unoccupied residence in a field near Seymour.

At the Seymour property were two trailers.

Perryman's game started to become obvious.

Then on June 13, investigators received two tips: There was a reported cattle theft in the area; and one of the two trailers had been taken from and returned to the property in Seymour.

When authorities arrived at the Seymour property, there were no cows, but “there was a clear odor of fresh cow manure coming from the trailer.”

Sometime in early July, Greene County Sheriff Jim Arnott said his deputies chased Perryman to an area near Bois D'Arc.

According to Arnott, Perryman drove a stolen truck so deep into some brush that not even troopers flying overhead in a helicopter were able to see where the car had gone.

About seven or eight deputies set up a perimeter and began to scour the area, but couldn't find Perryman, Arnott said.

How did the cattle rustler get away?

Arnott, who was involved in the search, said an informant later told them Perryman hid in a creek bed "for at least a day."

"For him with his age and his medical conditions — to be able to hang out in a creek bed all night — he was a dedicated thief," Arnott said.

According to the highway patrol's case summary, on July 10, one of the GPS trackers sent a signal from Lawrence County and authorities made their move.

Perryman was seen driving a stolen truck towing stolen trailer carrying a stolen all-terrain vehicle.

Troopers attempted a traffic stop, but Perryman took off, the trailer broke free from his truck, and he fled to an area near Bois D'Arc.

This time, however, Greene County Sheriff's Deputies caught Perryman.

Authorities slapped a $1 million bond on him and he has stayed in police custody or prison ever since.

According to court documents, Perryman racked up 60 felony charges in his lifetime and was convicted of committing more than 30 of them.

Those felonies stretched at least as early as 1973 and included receiving stolen property, tampering with a motor vehicle, money laundering, stealing livestock and more.

He did stints in state and federal prison.

Perryman's arrest in 2013 was announced at a press conference held by the Missouri State Highway Patrol and attended by a handful of county sheriffs.

At the time, authorities believed there was a larger ring of rustlers still out there.

“We had a heck of mess from about 2010 until 2013,” Cole said.

About one set of cattle — typically a group of eight to 15 cows — was stolen every week or so, he said,

But since Perryman's arrest, Cole said cattle theft in southwest Missouri has plummeted.

However, there's no hard data on that.

"It shocked me the law enforcement people didn't keep track of it," Cole said.

Most believed Perryman had accomplices who helped him rustle the cows and sold the stolen cattle on his behalf.

But it doesn’t appear he ever gave any of them up.

Perryman had agreed to talk with the News-Leader about his cattle rustling, and an interview at a state prison had been scheduled for Thursday.

But his death Tuesday means several questions will go unanswered.

Foremost, why did he choose the life of a cattle rustler?

Arnott, the Greene County Sheriff, has a simple explanation.

“He’s just a generation of a thief. That’s all he’s ever done. That’s what he’ll be known for,” Arnott said. “Easier to steal than to work for it."

Doug Henry, the chief detective for Barry County, investigated Perryman for years and described the cattle rustler as polite.

Perryman was never flashy or arrogant about his feats, Henry said, but maybe stealing was something he couldn't stay away from.

“Here’s the deal. There’s no more Robin Hoods left in the world,” Henry said. "You could almost say it was a challenge or an addiction for him."

Darrow, who owned the farm north of Ash Grove, wondered if Perryman rustled cattle because he didn't fear — and maybe welcomed — going back to prison.

"Maybe in the back of his mind, he wasn't afraid of going back to jail," Darrow said. "Howard Perryman, in and out prison, they get accustomed to that life."

His granddaughter spoke to the News-Leader Wednesday, the day after Perryman died.

“He meant everything to me,” she said. “He was a good man.”

She declined to comment further.

Just a couple of days before Perryman's death, 16 cows were stolen in Barry County.

Henry is working the case.

Henry said there were no immediate leads, but it's clear it wasn't the work of a professional cattle rustler, say a "Howard Perryman."

When Cole heard about the cattle theft, he said he thought of one man.

"Do you reckon Howard Lee is out of jail?"