A senior Defense Department official is being charged with a running dogfighting ring where he would use jumper cables to execute animals injured in the fights.
Frederick Douglass Moorefield Jr., the Pentagon’s deputy chief information officer for command, control, and communications, was arrested on Thursday on charges of “promoting and furthering animal fighting venture,” the Maryland US Attorney’s Office announced Monday.
The investigation into Moorefield began in 2018 when Anne Arundel County Animal Control discovered the bodies of two dogs wrapped in plastic bags. The bags included mail that was addressed to Moorefield’s home, according to a recently unsealed affidavit.
“The distribution and number of recent and healed dog bite wounds (scars) present on both dogs was consistent with organized dogfighting,” an FBI agent wrote in the affidavit.
“Based on this information, I believe that Moorefield sponsored each of these dogs in a dogfight.”
Moorefield and his co-defendant Mario Blythe were arrested Thursday after a September 6 search of their Maryland residences found 12 dogs, veterinary steroids, training schedules, a carpet apparently stained with blood, and jumper cables which were allegedly used to electrocute wounded animals.
Moorefield is no longer working at the Pentagon as of his arrest, defense department officials confirmed. “We are aware of the criminal complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland,” Pentagon spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Tim Gorman told The Hill. “We can confirm that the individual is no longer in the workplace, but we cannot comment further on an individual personnel matter.”
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