December 21 – On November 4, the case against a Newfane farm animal shelter owner accused of stealing a neighbor’s cows in 2022 was officially declared closed.
It was the deadline for Niagara County prosecutors to appeal the Wheatfield Town Court judge’s ruling, which deprived them of key evidence in the case. It affirmed the dismissal of the theft charge against Tracy Murphy by City Judge Gary Strenkoski.
“We have not filed an appeal, no further action will be taken in this case,” Niagara County District Attorney Brian Seaman said Monday afternoon. “It’s over.”
It was long before Murphy was charged with third-degree grand larceny, a misdemeanor, on August 2, 2022, after being indicted by a Niagara County grand jury. That charge was later reduced to petit larceny by prosecutors.
The charges against Murphy were unsealed on August 1, 2022, after troopers and New York State Police detectives executed a search warrant at the farm sanctuary and took custody of Blackie and Honee, two cattle that allegedly wandered into Murphy’s Asha’s Farm Sanctuary. Coomer Road in Newfane from a nearby neighbour’s property.
A key detail discovered just days before her trial derailed the prosecution’s entire case: the lead state police investigator who oversaw the execution of the warrant, the seizure of the livestock and Murphy’s arrest was the “brother-in-law from her neighbor’.
It was one of several mistakes in the execution of a search warrant at Murphy’s sanctuary.
Murphy’s attorneys also told Strenkoski that instead of using state police vehicles to transport the animals to a safe place, troopers and investigators allowed “a group of citizens” to load the livestock onto a private vehicle and trailer and take them directly back to her neighbor.
The neighbor, Scott Gregson, told a reporter at the time, “I was told by the state police that they were going to execute a search warrant on my livestock. The police asked me not to enter the property, so I sent someone else to help them. They asked me to contact someone familiar with livestock to assist in removing them from the property.”
Murphy’s defense argued to Strenkoski that the search warrant, signed by Niagara County Court Judge Caroline Wojtaszaek, called for the “return of the seized livestock” to the court. Instead, after getting the cattle back from state police, Murphy’s defense said Gregson “threw them away.”
Prosecutors had offered Murphy a deal to plead guilty to a single charge of disorderly conduct. In exchange for that plea, Murphy would have received a suspended sentence.
Murphy reportedly rejected the plea because it required her to admit that she violated New York law by refusing to return the cows. According to Murphy, that admission of guilt would be ‘unfair’.
One of Murphy’s attorneys, Louis Mussari, said his client is pleased with the district attorney’s decision not to appeal.
“Tracy and everyone at Asha’s who cares so wonderfully for these animals can finally say goodbye to this unfortunate experience,” Mussari said.
