(Editor’s note: This is the second in a three-part series on Kentucky’s animal abuse laws.)
By R.G. Dunlop
Special to NKyTribune
Brandon Lee Combs was sentenced to two years’ probation in October 2023 after Lexington-Fayette Animal Care & Control officers alleged that he had poured “an accelerant, possibly diesel fuel or gasoline” on his female pit bull, Lilah, and set her afire, on Christmas Eve in 2021.
Combs claimed to Animal Care & Control that Lilah had walked through diesel fuel he had spilled, and that she then came in contact with an extension cord running from a neighbor’s apartment and which caused the fuel to ignite. He also said Lilah had bitten him previously, and that he “no longer wanted to keep her.”
But a Lexington Fire Department arson investigator concluded that burn patterns on the dog “were not consistent” with what Combs described. Nor did security-camera footage show an extension cord in the area at the time, according to the arrest warrant.
A veterinarian who reviewed photos in the case said it was evident “what severe pain, trauma and disfigurement this dog has endured and will continue to endure as healing takes place.” The veterinarian said Lilah suffered injuries to her head, ears, neck, shoulders, and back as a result of the burning.
Combs entered an Alford plea in August 2023 to a felony charge of torturing a dog or cat resulting in serious physical injury or death. The plea allowed Combs, who was 37 years old at the time, to maintain his innocence while avoiding a jury trial and the possibility of a harsher sentence than the probation he received.
Had Combs chosen to stand trial, “he was looking at one to five years in prison” if convicted, his attorney, Chris Tracy of Lexington, said in an interview. “There was no direct evidence that he set the dog on fire; it was circumstantial.”
Asked about the belief of some animal-rights activists that Combs got off too lightly, Tracy said:
“I understand where they’re coming from, but it’s a felony conviction. And he was on supervised probation with a lot of things he had to do. If he didn’t take care of business, he would have had prison time to serve.”
Government employees and animal abuse
Of the more than 50 animal abuse and neglect criminal cases that were reviewed, at least seven defendants worked in government jobs, including in two Eastern Kentucky sheriffs’ offices, the Harlan County Detention Center, the state Transportation Cabinet, and – of all places – Louisville Metro Animal Services.
And several of those defendants came away with little or no punishment.
Among them was Jacklyn Johnson who, while a deputy in the Laurel County Sheriff’s office, also had an illegal side hustle – cockfighting.
The Bald Rock Chicken Pit in Laurel County that Johnson helped manage consisted of stadium-style seating, areas for storing live birds, an enclosed cock-fighting pit, additional side pits, a concession stand, an area for weighing birds, and a station for sharpening animal-fighting instruments, according to the February 24, 2022, federal indictment naming Johnson and seven other defendants, including her father, Rickie D. Johnson.
Bald Rock routinely drew participants from eastern Kentucky as well as from other states. At just one event at Bald Rock on July 10, 2021, approximately 80 spectators helped generate some $7,000 in revenue, according to the indictment.
Jacklyn Johnson’s involvement in Bald Rock cockfighting was hardly a one-night stand. She participated in animal-fighting ventures on a regular basis over a number of years, a memorandum filed by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Lexington alleged. And she sometimes hid her sheriff’s vehicle at cockfights so as not to deter fighters and spectators, according to a November 2024 U.S. Department of Justice journal article.
Before her scheduled trial date, Johnson and a codefendant approached a childhood friend of Johnson’s who was also present at the Bald Rock cockfight, the USDOJ journal article stated. The codefendant tried to get Johnson’s friend to testify at her trial that she was not involved in organizing the fights.
“As criminal enforcement of cockfighting increases, the potential for corruption, witness tampering, or other obstructive conduct further escalates,” according to the article.
But the criminal trial for Johnson, who resigned from the sheriff’s office on July 2, 2021, never occurred. Just eight days after her resignation, she pleaded guilty to conspiring to operate Bald Rock with her father and attending the event.
Federal prosecutors Andrea Mattingly Williams and Kate K. Smith recommended a prison sentence of 21 to 27 months for Jacklyn Johnson, contending that her “actions were that of a manager or supervisor and occurred over a number of years. She knew her conduct was illegal, and as a law enforcement officer, she continued to disregard, and disrespect, the law. Her sentence must deter her and others, and adequately promote respect for the law and reflect the seriousness of the offense.”
The prosecutors also argued that “cockfighting is organized, moneymaking, and cold-blooded entertainment at the expense of the animals involved. Cockfighting is an extreme form of cruelty to animals. Not only do the animals suffer grave injuries and frequently die during the fights, but they are also mistreated before and after the fights.”
But instead of imposing a penalty approaching what the government had recommended, U.S. District Judge Claria Horn Boom sentenced Johnson on November 14, 2023, to just one month of incarceration, followed by eight months of home detention and two years of supervised release (post-imprisonment oversight). Johnson also was fined $250.
Douglas Benge, the London, Kentucky, attorney who represented Johnson, said in an emailed response to questions: “Ms. Johnson is alive and doing well and has put that stage of her life behind her. She has not authorized me to discuss any of the details of her case with anyone.”
Laurel County Sheriff John Root did not respond to requests for an interview. Deputy Sheriff Gilbert Acciardo, the office’s spokesperson, said he could not discuss Johnson’s case.
Rickie Johnson received a sentence nearly as light as that imposed upon his daughter. After pleading guilty to a federal conspiracy charge for his participation in the Bald Rock cockfighting operation, Rickie Johnson was sentenced by Boom on September 20, 2022, to two months in prison, followed by eight months of home incarceration and two years of supervised release. He also was fined $1,000.
Federal prosecutors had recommended 30 months in custody, arguing to no avail that “by his own admissions, Rickie Johnson has been involved in the cockfighting industry for decades.”
“Rickie Johnson admitted that he had been running and operating Bald Rock for two months and had been involved in cockfighting for 55 years,” Mattingly Williams and Smith stated in a memorandum filed with the court. “Running this animal fighting venture required organization and coordination. Johnson—by his own admissions to law enforcement—performed those functions.
“He and his family have organized fights resulting in innumerable animals fighting to the death,” the prosecutors contended. “The Eastern District of Kentucky has become a veritable destination for this activity, with pits operating throughout the state, in flagrant disregard to the fact that it is a violation of state and federal law.”
In contrast to the prosecutors’ recommendation that Rickie Johnson receive a 30-month prison sentence, his attorney, Kelly Kirby Ridings of London, argued instead for five years’ probation, asserting that Johnson “suffers from chronic medical conditions that require medication and monthly monitoring.”
Ridings also said in a memorandum filed with the court: “Unfortunately, animal fighting ventures have become an Eastern Kentucky culture. Mr. Johnson was raised in a time where this type of behavior was acceptable, albeit illegal. He grew up seeing his grandparents and his parents engage in these animal fighting ventures.
“Often, drug trafficking is associated with animal fighting ventures and defrauding the government.” But in Rickie Johnson’s case, Ridings argued, “there is no evidence whatsoever of drug trafficking during the conspiracy.”
Sheriff’s deputies and lawbreaking
Beachel Collett and Lester Collett worked “at various times” for the Clay County sheriff’s office, according to a February 2022 federal indictment that accused the Colletts of conspiring to help organize and manage two December 2019 cockfights at the Riverside Game Club in Clay County.
From November 2018, until January 2020, during weekly fights at Riverside, the Collett brothers and others “organized the participants into various fights, cataloged the entry fees, the weight of the roosters, tracked the weapons used on the animals, arranged the fights, and tracked the wins and losses of the various participants,” the indictment asserted.
Those weekly fights “routinely drew participants from the Eastern District of Kentucky and other states,” according to the indictment.
The Colletts both pleaded guilty to conspiring to “knowingly sponsor and exhibit animals in an animal fighting venture,” and were sentenced by Judge Boom in December 2022 to one day in custody followed by 18 months of supervised release, including four months of home detention. They also were fined $400 apiece, court records show.
Clay County Sheriff Patrick Robinson, who was elected in November 2018 and was in office at the time of the two cockfights and others at Riverside, did not respond to messages left at his office.
Beachel Collett’s attorney, Thomas Paul Miceli of Barbourville, said in a brief telephone interview that he couldn’t recall whether his client had been employed in the sheriff’s office, but that he thought the sentence Beachel Collett received was “very fair” based on his lack of a criminal history.
Lester Collett’s attorney, Brandon Storm, who is also a state senator, did not respond to several emails and telephone messages left at his law office in London.
County jail employees and lawbreaking
Ronnie Bennett and his son, Levi Kyle Simpson, fared even better in the legal system than did the Colletts, ultimately walking away scot-free from state criminal charges.
Bennett, an official at the Harlan County Detention Center, and Simpson, a one-time employee there, were involved in cockfighting, according to a 2019 investigation by the Kentucky State Police. Bennett and Simpson both were charged with the misdemeanor offense of second-degree animal cruelty.
The two men denied participating in cockfights. But KSP Trooper Benjamine Graves, concluded that they operated the Cuttin’ Up Game Farm, and that Facebook posts and message comments indicated that Bennett and Simpson “were involved in cockfighting.”
“I located several screenshots of photos, posts, and message comments that were taken from the Facebook profiles of Kyle Simpson, Ronnie Bennett, and Cuttin’ Up Game Farm,” Graves wrote in a September 2019 investigative report.
“Cuttin’ Up Game Farm was determined through the screenshots to be a game farm operated by Simpson and Bennett where they raise and sell chickens. While reviewing the screenshots, I located several posts and message comments that would indicate Simpson, Bennett as well as others were involved in cockfighting.”
Bennett and Simpson both acknowledged to Graves that they had attended cockfights in McCreary and Clay counties. But they said they did so only to enhance Bennett’s opportunities to sell beef jerky from a business he owned, and not to participate in the cockfights.
The charges against Bennett and Simpson were dismissed in Clay County District Court on December 20, 2021, at the request of Harlan attorney Russell Alred, who represented both men.
In his motions to dismiss the two cases, Alred argued that KSP “did not witness” Bennett or Simpson at a chicken fight, nor did KSP have “any video or any other evidence” of Bennett or Simpson fighting chickens.
Bennett and Simpson “made it clear” that they “never fought chickens,” Alred asserted. He also argued that “the only evidence” KSP offered was “altered alleged copies of facebook posts. These documents have been obviously cut and pasted and often have text narratives superimposed upon them. The altered alleged posts came from an out-of-state third party.”
KSP “seems to have relied solely on these third party manufactured documents,” Alred contended. “Clearly there is no evidence that (Bennett or Simpson) ever engaged in any type of animal cruelty.”
In his rulings dismissing the two cases, Clay District Judge Allen B. Roberts agreed with Alred that the state police “did not personally witness the defendant(s) at a chicken fight, and that the officer does not have video or any other evidence of the defendant(s) fighting chickens.
“The only evidence which has been provided…is alleged copies of Facebook posts which were made by a third party, which are admittedly cut and pasted with text messages superimposed upon them,” the judge asserted in his ruling.
The Clay County Attorney’s office was represented in court when the cases were dismissed, according to Roberts’s ruling. But there is no evidence in the ruling that anyone from the county attorney’s office argued for convictions.
A woman who answered a call to the county attorney’s office said – before being told the reason for the call – “We have no comment.” Then she hung up. Another employee at the office took two messages seeking comment, but they generated no response.
The “third party” to which Alred and Roberts referred was SHARK, or Showing Animals Respect and Kindness, the Geneva, Illinois-based animal rights organization. For more than two decades, SHARK has fought to address and abolish various types of animal abuse, and in September 2019 it brought to the attention of state police the alleged involvement of Bennett and Simpson in cockfighting.
After being provided by this reporter with copies of the court documents involving the dismissals of the two criminal cases, along with Alred’s assertions about them, SHARK President Steve Hindi responded in an email:
“We did not ‘manufacture’ anything for the authorities. We gave them screenshots of pages posted by the accused, which were subsequently deleted or made private by the accused. Had the police or prosecutors contacted us with any apparent issues, we would have explained everything. The problem is that once we hand items over to the police, be it video, screenshots or whatever, the police typically cut us out of the process going forward.”
“I have to laugh at the statement, ‘…Bennett made it clear he had never fought chickens…,’” Hindi said. “Cockfighters always deny involvement. We’ve gotten video of individuals in a cockfight pit handling roosters, and have had them try to deny it. Cockfighters will always lie.”
Hindi added in his email that “the only reason information comes from an ‘out of state third party’ is that the KSP has largely ignored cockfighting, except for rare instances when an individual in the KSP takes action to execute his or her duty.”
Alred refused to be interviewed, saying in a brief telephone conversation that he doesn’t discuss his clients’ cases “with anyone. You have a nice day and God bless you,” he concluded. Then he hung up.
Neither Bennett nor Simpson could be reached for comment. B. J. Burkhart, the Harlan County jailer, did not respond to several requests for comment.
Hall, the Kentucky Justice & Public Safety Cabinet’s spokeswoman, did not reply to a request to discuss Bennett’s and Simpson’s cases.
Road work and cockfighting
When he wasn’t working as a highway technician for the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, Timothy Sizemore kept busy running illegal cockfighting operations in Pike and Clay counties. He even traveled to Mexico to administer a cockfight, according to the November 2024 U.S. Department of Justice article.
“Thousands of birds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal gambling were involved in the years Sizemore spent organizing cockfighting,” according to the USDOJ article, which also referred to the “exceptional scale on which Sizemore sponsored animal fighting in Kentucky.”
Sizemore left the Transportation Cabinet effective March 1, 2023, according to documents provided by the state. After pleading guilty to two counts of conspiring to defraud the United States, he had been sentenced by Judge Boom on January 10, 2023, to 26 months in federal prison, plus two years of supervised release and a $1,000 fine. The judgment was for Sizemore’s role in running the Riverside cockfighting pit in Clay County and the Blackberry pit in Pike County.
Federal prosecutors had tried, unsuccessfully, to have Sizemore sentenced to 40 months in prison.
“Sizemore operated nearly weekly fights at Riverside and then Blackberry, resulting in animal fighting on an exceptional scale in terms of length of time involved and sheer number of birds involved in the fighting,” according to a December 30, 2022, motion filed by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Lexington arguing for the longer prison sentence.
“By any conservative estimation, Sizemore’s animal fighting ventures involved thousands of roosters, just in the time frame charged,” the motion stated. “In a single year, Sizemore easily sponsored animal fighting involving thousands of birds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal gambling.
“Timothy Sizemore has been a state employee since 2000. Despite this reliable, legitimate employment, he also worked as an organizer of cockfights for many years. According to the investigation, his Facebook records document him promoting animal fighting events going back as far as 2014,” federal prosecutors Smith and Mattingly Williams asserted.
Sizemore, now 47 years old, ran the cockfighting pit at Riverside for four years, and at the same time ran the Laurel Creek pit in Clay County, according to the motion. Confronted by law enforcement in January 2020 and told to shut down the Riverside pit, Sizemore “almost immediately” began organizing the Blackberry pit in Pike County, and ran it until December 2021, Smith and Mattingly Williams stated in their motion.
“In each venture, Sizemore coordinated the fights, including collecting the fees from participants, hiring the referees, and matching the birds. For this, he received half of the gate proceeds and profits from the concession stand.”
The prosecutors argued to no avail that Sizemore’s sentence should “reflect the seriousness of this offense, promote respect for the law, and provide just punishment. Given the extensive degree to which he sponsored animal fighting, involving potentially tens of thousands of birds just in the time frame charged, an above guideline sentence of 40 months would be sufficient but not greater than necessary to fulfill these aims.”
Sizemore was directed by the court to begin serving his sentence “No earlier than March 14, 2023.” But not only did he not receive a 40-month sentence prosecutors wanted imposed, he was not in BOP custody as of July 3, 2024 – less than 18 months after Boom sentenced him in January 2023, according to federal Bureau of Prisons records.
Federal inmates typically serve an average of 85 percent of their court-imposed sentences which, in Sizemore’s case, would have been about 22 months.
Mattingly Williams and Smith did not respond in detail to a request to discuss Sizemore’s sentencing and prison release date. Smith said in an email only that the inquiry had been forwarded to Gabrielle Dudgeon, media representative for the U.S. attorney’s office in Lexington. Dudgeon did not reply to the request to discuss Sizemore’s case.
Whether Sizemore resigned from his state job on March 1, 2023, or was fired, is unclear. A Transportation Cabinet document states: “Separation – Personal Conflict.” Another states “Resign – Personal Conflict.”
The cabinet did not reply to questions about the circumstances surrounding Sizemore’s departure, when it became aware of his involvement in cockfighting, and what if anything it did upon learning of that involvement.
Sizemore could not be reached for comment, despite a half-dozen attempts.
Tomorrow: Part 3 – Animal abuse
Previous: Part I – Animal abuse