Murder in Massachusetts

The Horse Did It

Pittsfield, Massachusetts

Located in the eastern region of Massachusetts, quite close to the border of New York, Lanesborough is part of Berkshire County. The Pittsfield metro area is due south. With just under 3,000 residents, Lanesborough median household income comes in at about $46,000, five thousand more than the national average. Lanesborough is not considered a mecca for crime. In fact, the last time a murder occurred in the town was in 1980, some 23 years before Neil Olsen's death. Lanesborough residents, one could say, are used to going about their business without the thought of being accosted or bothered with the kind of crime that has beleaguered other Berkshire towns. Murder rates—that is, violent crime of any sort—were so low that between 1980 and 2000, on top of the one murder, there were only nine rapes and four robberies in town.

So when the alarm bells rang at the L.P.D., announcing an untimely death had occurred out at the Olsen place, it's not that the L.P.D. were unprepared, it's just that it was the last thing they would have expected.

Neil Olsen, victim

Patricia was convinced Neil had been trampled to death by Hannah, his beloved 31-year-old former trotter race horse; at least that was her early impression when L.P.D. chief Mark Bashara arrived on that chilly morning moments after Patricia called 911.

"We believed at the time," Bashara said later, describing the crime scene in open court, "that Neil Olsen was actually killed by the horse."

Inside the sturdy barn where Neil housed Hannah, Bashara walked into a bloody mess, the likes of which he had never seen in his decades of law enforcement experience. The horse, undoubtedly spooked, was making snorting sounds, running wild inside the barn. The horse had blood all over her.

Patricia was "distraught," Bashara added later. She was sitting at the kitchen table in the house when he first arrived: smoking, speaking in broken sentences. She couldn't believe what had happened. Of all the things, Neil, who had so much adored his beautiful Hannah, had supposedly been trampled to death by the animal. How traumatic. How rare for an animal to turn on its owner, snap, and kill him.

Yet as Patricia thought about it later, Hannah killing Neil didn't seem all that surprising to her.

"[She] is a thirty-one-year-old miserable bitch," was how Patricia described the horse to police. "We've had her here for, I think, three years. We got her from some friend of Neil ... I say Hannah is miserable because she doesn't let anyone ride her. Neil bought me a saddle a couple of years ago. I wanted a horse to ride. At night, he always let the horse in because she won't listen to me. ... The routine is to bring her in and give her a can of grain." Patricia had put the horse in the barn only "once," she claimed. "Even if Neil fell asleep before 11:00, he would get up and bring Hannah in at around 11:30."

After speaking briefly with Patricia, Bashara entered Neil's sign shop, which was just beyond the breezeway, and walked into the barn from there. As he approached Neil's body, he could see there wasn't much left to his head. In horror, the veteran chief looked down and noticed that Neil's face was gone, his head nothing but an unrecognizable slush of blood and brain, smashed to bits as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to a melon. Perhaps just as equally disturbing to Bashara while he stood there looking at Neil was that he had once hired Neil to letter some of the police cruisers.

After Bashara had a look at Neil's remains, he immediately called in one of his coworkers, Officer Jim Rathbun.