In September 2025, five dead goats turned up behind an Aldi off Mountain Creek Road in Hamilton County, Tennessee. Bone lab analysis found they had starved before they died. Investigators traced them to a property on Suck Creek Road, where they found roughly two dozen more goats, two horses and a donkey still wearing its auction tag. Thirteen of the goats were underweight.
The man living there did not own the property. David Russell Eck, 74, had been staying on it, and a neighbour named Lina Hart had spent four years calling the police, the county and the state about what was happening there before anybody filed a charge.
A grand jury has since indicted Eck on thirteen counts of animal cruelty and two of criminal trespassing. He has been arrested four times since the goats were found. His lawyer, Josh Weiss, says Eck denies the allegations of cruelty and abuse. He has been charged, not convicted…