that must have been awkward as fuck interviewing them hicks.

Why would anyone want to revisit this? Let's bring up the child abuse case in Wenatchee too.

Oh, my god, Charles, we get it. You want to fuck a horse. But get over it, please. Or at least get over talking about this horse fucking case over and over and over again. We're so tired of it!

/goddamn, does Charles really want to fuck a horse.

Why in hell would you want to mention that they don't lock the cafe doors? Now some asshat will probably break in there! Nice going.
Oddly, I was talking about this last week with my bf.

I know we're in the age of the internet and all, but reading Charles' questions to that poor young woman give me the impression of a "urban city type" micro-assaulting someone who might have barely been a teenager when the incident occurred about how they can live in a town called "horse-fucker-ville".

Townfolk probably have a life, so it's not surprising they haven't spent the rest of their lives talking about the horsefucking incident.

Charles, on the other hand ...

For someone so smart, you sure can be a blithering idiot.

I thought this a great piece of writing and a fine piece of journalism. A commenter was offended that you asked potentially unsettling questions of a 'poor woman'. ??? I say keep asking.

...and then, there's the movie Zoo...

Someone needs to make a comedy skit featuring Charles Mudede on the phone as he tries and tries to convince country ladies to talk about horse-fucking and perforated colons. "But you must be thinking and talking in your restaurant about your memory of this incident all the time, why don't you think and talk about it all the time?!"

Eh, Mudede you sound so ignorant. Enumclaw is, after all, only about 45 minutes out of town, and is a gateway to some very beautiful country that includes Crystal Mountain and Mt. Rainier National Park. You should get out a little more.

I think I'd prefer well-armed Enumclaw-ians to to well-armed South Enders.

Charles has too much time. Maybe go back to school? Exercise more?

What a great opportunity to use the F word over and over and over and over -- and with no editor or space limitations, permission to drone on ad nauseum. I quit reading half way through this piece.

There have been a lot of stupid articles in The Stranger over the years, but this one just might take the cake.

What a stinking pile of horseshit.

well that was dumb

damn, you guys are fierce, i was going to give him credit for not writing on his usual limited subject of race. He's about as far away from that topic as you can get.

To me this is indicative of Charles Mudede's condescending, look down his nose attitudes toward small rural towns and peoples. It seems to show up whenever he's outside Seattle's urban core. Maybe he should climb down off his high horse-pun intended.

20 or more years ago I was required to attend a sexual preference/diversity indoctrination training class. The instructor was a well known local PhD psychologist. I asked him about people who prefer dogs. He replied, "The dogs don't object." Probably not . . . my first dog would have screwed a telephone pole if he could have gotten his front legs around it.

So the obvious question, "did the horse object?" If it was a consenting adult and a consenting horse why should anyone who reads The Stranger care?

Speaking of armed civilians, 7 people shot overnight in Baltimore.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/marylan…

"We now have laws against bestiality in Washington State. We now have a black president".

And those two things are in some way connected...?

(Then again, maybe there IS cause-and-effect there).

To Charles and Kelly O, Thank you for this badass article. You both are incredible thinkers and Seattle is lucky to have you. Keep pushing and forget about these bizarre comments (which come from fear of the subject itself). Much respect for you both -- watching your work with zest and gratitude.

Mostly, they don't want to talk about it, since many knew, it was a fake story-The death was real, the case was not (the person, telling the cops, that the victim dies from having horse sex, wasn't even there-he was passed out drunk, 20 miles away). The was an agenda, pushed through, by a well funded special interest group, who is passing this anti-bestiality legislation, worldwide and of course, since out public officials are all legal whores, prostitute themselves, to the highest bidders (it's how all government works, they are not there for us, but for them selves, and those with the very deep pockets) and to provide fodder to all of those, that engage in yellow dog journalism (hey,, it sells advertising-income is more important to the general media than facts). IE, you said there was goats, sheep and chickens at that farm, yet, no one has ever seen any there. The victim's job, had nothing to do with airplanes. Your influence of the docudrama ZOO, made it more fiction than truth. There is a long list of fallacious claims here, made by both the public officals and the general media.

What, again??? Way tl;dr the first time around.

At least he died doing what he loved.

Upon reflection, perhaps "Horse Opera" would be a better title.

I like "Equifux."

How does Mudede still get to have a job with The Stranger? I broke my "never read an article with Charles Meudede's name in the byline" rule because I could not believe that he was allowed to re-visit this story 10 years after the fact and given the feature spot in the paper. What the fuck could have been so important about a story that affects exactly no one anymore that he had to go back and check out the scene of the crime again?

Well, I found out: Not a damn thing. Maybe if he'd done what a journalist does and saved the names and contact info of the people he spoke to the first time around (10 years ago!) and got back in touch with them, he might have found something out about how the community ha moved on. Instead we have a lot of Charles-typical, poorly written prose that pertains to nothing about the actual story (if there even is one anymore) and a couple of "interviews" with people who are not even tangentially related to the original event.

This is not art. This is not journalism. This is not human interest. This is just a pseudo-intellectual given a job at an alternative weekly that seems to think it needs someone on staff who writes think pieces to make the publication "important." If that is the case, please find a new one because Charles has never been a good writer. He just uses big words and puts together confusing sentences so that he seems smarter than the rest of us.

We're on to you though, Charles. You're not that smart. You're not a good writer. And you've got nothing original or important to say. You just like the idea that people know your name. We know it. We're sick of what gets printed underneath it. Please, spare us any further blather and go write some impenetrable 1,000-word piece of crap book that only other pseudo intellectuals will buy. It can be about whatever you want because no one will ever actually read it.

Finally, I'll say that my strong feelings are not of the "if the writer/piece engenders such strong feelings then it's having an effect and that's the point" type. It simply drives me crazy that a paper/site that I have a new-found respect for still seems to also respect the junk that Charles puts out there. He's pulled a fast one on y'all. He doesn't add anything to the paper or the site. If anything, he detracts from its value because as soon as I see his name, I turn away. And I can't possibly be the only one who does that.

You are not the only one that avoids reading an article when the Mudede name is on the byline @33, but like you I was roped in. Like you I have a renewed appreciation for why I, you and countless others avoid Mudede's "journalism" like the plague. Just absolute drivel.

Tim... Dan... Come on, now. With the writing losses you've taken in the last 2-3 years (don't make me list them), why oh why is CM still here?

We now have laws against bestiality in Washington State. We now have a black president. Our troops in Iraq have come home. We have been through the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. A tsunami resulted in the meltdown of three nuclear reactors in Japan. Bill Cosby is no longer America's father but an alleged serial rapist. The climate is really changing.

I don't think I've ever read a paragraph that summed up the past decade quite like this. I like having Bill Cosby and the bestiality laws in there with the tsunami and whatnot. And the "we now have a black president" cliche is just right. I think Charles has proven that it can be inserted into any context whatsoever and fit perfectly. So funny.

What were you trying to accomplish here dude? It looks like you went to this town and harassed a lot of people who had nothing to do with the incident and then tried to blame it on, of all things, Global Warming.

I mean if you were really interested in how the people moved on why not talk to this man's family, you know the people who were actually affected by what happened? I don't see how talking to a waitress who may not have even known the guy, and a hospital worker who worked at hospital he didn't even go to, could help.

Pretentious, incohesive, and bereft of substance. Sorry. Nothing personal. I just want better writing from the Stranger than this.

Going by the title alone, it would seem Mr. Mudede has never heard of St. Petersburg, Russia.

Charles, I hate to pile on, but this was a really dumb story. Even if your intentions were pure - and I don't think they were - some reporter from Seattle coming to a small town and asking about a particularly bizarre death that happened years ago, and which very few residents had any first-hand knowledge of, smacks of condescension. Plus, it makes you seem like a pervy creep. I'm surprised no one bounced you out on your tail.

i heart you charles, but next time, actually get out of the car IN enumscratch. or man up and interview bikers at the yella beak.

It's a pretty inconsequential story, except for the bizarre subject matter and that you decided to make a documentary out of it. You act as if it's Enumclaw's 9/11 and everyone should know where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news.

In neighboring town of Bonney Lake we do things old school. It might not make world wide news......but it's not BBBAAAAAAADDDDDD

if you have a more clever comment, goat head and post it. Fair warning though.....sometimes it's hard to get them little buggers to release !

Pointless article that seems to take perverse pleasure in recounting a fatal act of animal cruelty. Mr. Mudede, this one was a waste of time, your skills are better applied elsewhere.