Lakeside

A Lakeside man who admitted driving eight horses to their deaths off a cliff pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiring to defraud an insurance company that insured the horses.

Leonard Keith Autterson, 48, faces a maximum term of five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000, but a prosecutor said he will recommend a sentence of probation.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Patrick Coughlin said Autterson has agreed to cooperate with the government and testify at the trial of four co-defendants and before the federal grand jury, if necessary.

A second co-defendant, Bobby Griffin, 45, a horse trader from Lufkin, Tex., also pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiracy to defraud the Hartford Fire Insurance Co. through the use of the mail.

Griffin also faces the maximum five-year term, but Coughlin said his office will recommend he be placed on probation and be fined $1,000.

U.S. District Judge Gordon Thompson Jr. told both men the court was not bound by the prosecutor’s recommendation of probation. He set sentencing for May 23.

Autterson recently finished a one year county jail sentence after he pleaded guilty to cruelty to animals.

The staged “accident” took place May 16, 1983, off Interstate 8 about a mile east of the Inkopah exit near Jacumba. Seven of the eight horses died at the scene, and the eighth horse had to be shot.

The co-defendants, Martin Bailey of Santee; Raymond Paul of Keyes, Calif.; Rocky Beene of Junction, Tex., and Brent Beene of Vandervordt, Ark., are to appear in court Monday for setting of court dates. They have pleaded innocent.

Autterson, Griffin, and Paul are free on $5,000 bail. Bailey and Brent Beene are free on $25,000 bail, and Beene’s father, Rocky, remains in jail in lieu of $75,000 bail.