Notorious Tennessee Cockfighter Murders Three in Blount County, Tenn., and Burns Down Their Home

Nashville, TN — A notorious, twice-arrested Tennessee cockfighter murdered a family of three in Walland, Tenn., this weekend and then burned down their home, according to WBIR-TV in Knoxville.

Johnny Ray Wilburn, 56, had a history of animal cruelty crimes, including arrests for illegal cockfighting in Blount County in 2015 and in Union County in 2023. But in each case, Wilburn got nothing but a slap on the wrist in both cases, partly because of Tennessee’s anemic penalties for cockfighting. Even after the second arrest, Wilburn received only a $50 fine for participating in a cockfight droned by Showing Animals Respect and Kindness (SHARK) in January 2023 and reported to the Union County Sheriff.

Wilburn, 56, is now being held at a county jail on a bond of $750,000 after being accused of killing Cas Ivan Farley, 61, Delmar Marty Farley, 59, and Norma Kay Farley, 65, according to the affidavit of complaint. The victim’s bodies were found at 9 p.m. on Jan. 19, amidst the rubble and ash in a house Wilburn burned down.

“For two decades, we’ve been shouting from the rooftops that cockfighting is a crime of violence and that the people who participate in this activity are criminals who are a menace to society,” said Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action, which issued a report in 2020 about widespread illegal cockfighting in Tennessee and has been actively promoting legislation led by former Tennessee Senator Jon Lundberg, R-Bristol, to make the crime a felony-level offense.

“If Tennessee had adopted felony-level penalties for cockfighting, and if prosecutors held Wilburn accountable for his serial acts of animal cruelty, he would have been in a prison cell a week ago and not in a position to execute three people in cold blood,” added Pacelle. “How many more murders, mass shootings, bribery cases, and other serious offenses from cockfighters do we need to see before lawmakers wake up and treat this crime with the seriousness it deserves?”

For more than a decade, former Sen. Lundberg crusaded against cockfighting and presented a series of bills to state lawmakers to make cockfighting a felony.

“During my 18 years at the state capitol, I repeatedly alerted my colleagues to our very weak laws against cockfighting and pointed out that cockfighters are involved in cartels, drug trafficking, human violence, illegal gambling, and a wide range of other crimes,” said Lundberg. “If we’d followed the example of North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and other bordering states, maybe we could have prevented this murder by putting Wilburn behind bars and walling him off from innocent people and animals.”

Acting on a tip and drone surveillance from the animal welfare group SHARK, Union County Sheriff Billy Breeding and his deputies raided a cockfighting derby in progress in Maynardsville in January 2023, citing Wilburn and 97 other individuals with crimes related to cockfighting and preventing more fights that had been planned throughout the day at the major clandestine derby.

“Tennessee is one of just eight states without felony-level penalties for cockfighting,” said Steve Hindi, president of SHARK, which conducts extensive field work to uncover and document illegal cockfighting networks. “It’s gut-wrenching to see the crimes that cockfighters commit and to see some lawmakers and law enforcement standing aside as these people hurt people and animals and degrade the safety of our society.”

Hindi was violently assaulted by a cockfighter in Ohio. In Ohio in 2016, there were eight family members slain in a dispute over cockfighting.

In 2020, Animal Wellness Action announced that an investigation uncovered extensive involvement in cockfighting from a large number of individuals in Tennessee, including several who ship cockfighting birds to Mexico, the Philippines, Guam, and other distant locations. The groups allege that these individuals are also involved in fights at illegal pits in Tennessee, Kentucky, and other states. SHARK documented that dozens of people from out-of-state flocked to the Maynardsville cockfight, perhaps knowing that the laws are so weak that there’d be little chance of any serious law enforcement action against them.

“Cockfighting drives outbreaks of serious poultry and zoonotic diseases, especiallyvirulent Newcastle disease (vND) and highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses,” said Jim Keen, D.V.M, Ph.D., who is the director of veterinary sciences for the Center for a Humane Economy. He added that HPAI (“bird flu”) and vND are the two most high-impact diseases of poultry worldwide. Two years ago, Animal Wellness Action and the Center for Humane Economy released a comprehensive 63-page report on cockfighting links with avian influenza and virulent Newcastle Disease.
According to a new report from the Center for a Humane Economy, the 15 known introductions of vND into the United States since the first outbreak in 1950 have led to three devastating epidemics in 1971, 2002, and 2018 Ten of the 15 US vND outbreaks originated from illegally smuggled game fowl for cockfighting.

The current outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza has resulted in the depopulation of more than 135 million birds and is the most expensive zoonotic disease outbreak in United States’ history. A surge in egg prices, resulting from the depopulation of 100 million laying hens, has caused egg prices to soar by $2 per carton, producing $15 billion in extra costs to consumers for this staple.

WHAT TO DO

Animal Wellness Action is calling on Tennessee lawmakers to finally adopt felony-level penalties for animal fighting. And it is calling on Congress to stop delaying action on the Fighting Inhumane Gambling and High-Risk Trafficking (FIGHT) Act and to pass this strong anti-animal fighting law with the urgency it deserves. U.S. Senators John Kennedy, R-La., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., are leading the Senate bill, while Reps. Don Bacon, R-Neb., and Andrea Salinas, D-Ore.,, are leading the House bill. The FIGHT Act has 760 endorsers, including the Tennessee Sheriffs’ Association and the National Sheriffs’ Association.

In the organization’s endorsement of the FIGHT Act, Jeff Bledsoe, executive director of the TSA, noted that “animal fighting is not a minor or isolated concern for law enforcement; it is a form of organized crime that is intricately linked with other serious offenses, including illegal gambling, weapons possession, money laundering, and drug trafficking. These activities undermine the well-being of our communities, and they are vices we neither want nor need in Tennessee.”

Animal Wellness Action announced a $5,000 reward for information resulting in successful prosecution of any individual for violating the federal law (7 U.S.C. § 2156) or the state law (TCA Title 39) against animal fighting.

Anyone with information about illegal cockfighting activities can send information to [email protected]. Residents also can contact the appropriate U.S. attorneys, the state attorney general, or county sheriffs or district attorneys.