In August 1995, workers at the Luxor spent hours trying to lift Stoney, a 22-year-old elephant, to his feet as he showed up to be hoisted onto a trailer.
The trailer was to take him to an Arkansas stable to recover from a leg injury sustained nearly a year earlier, when he tore the tendon in his right hind leg.
The injury occurred while his longtime trainer, James Michael LaTorres, was having him rehearse the animal’s one hind leg stance for the show “Winds of the Gods” at Pharaoh’s Theater in Luxor.
A team of crane operators had to wait for Stoney to stand up on his own before they could load him onto the trailer. But he couldn’t lift his hind legs, according to the 2013 book “Elephants Among Us: Two Performing Elephants in 20th Century America” by M. Jaynes.
“The elephant was lying on the ground as if moaning in pain,” said a crane technician quoted in the book. “The tamer entered the door and the elephant began to chirp and call to him; then he extended his trunk towards the man as if he wanted to touch him. The man said, ‘Leave it, Stoney,’ and moved the trunk away. The elephant sighed and died.
Stoney’s story is one of the most infamous, and well-documented, examples of animal neglect. His late owner, LaTorres, did not renew his federal license and in 1997 he was fined by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) for 15 willful violations of the United States Animal Welfare Act in his treatment of an elephant he had kept. Owned for most of his life.
Stoney was an Asian elephant born “in captivity” – never living in the wild – at a Portland, Oregon, zoo in June 1973, according to Jaynes’ book. When he was two years old, he was sold to an animal exchange that sent him to a children’s zoo and, in turn, bought by “Mike” LaTorres and his wife, Sally, who used the animal as an attraction at many circuses and events in the South. and the Midwestern United States and in Canada until the 1990s.
It was evident, according to Jaynes, that Stoney liked to give children rides and appear at renaissance fairs where people would pet him as he walked. He didn’t seem to like the hind leg raising trick that Mike LaTorres had taught him to perform. In fact, Mike and Sally were informed that Stoney’s father had bone problems and the hind foot number was not a good idea, according to Jaynes.
Shows up in Las Vegas and gets injured
LaTorres and Stoney arrived in Las Vegas in March 1994, a year after the Luxor opened on the Strip, standing in for another elephant in the hotel’s “Winds of the Gods” show.
Nearly a year and many shows later, Stoney was performing his hind leg hops up to twice a night.
By August 1995, Circus Circus Enterprises Inc, the Luxor’s parent company, had spent about $100,000 on Stoney’s care. Still, a vet said Stoney’s diet – LaTorres’s responsibility – lacked fresh vegetables and was “well underweight for him.”
On August 27, 1995, with a crane nearby to help pull him out, LaTorres and other workers tried to get Stoney to his feet, but disaster struck when he fell and injured his right hind leg, leaving him unable to stand. His cries of pain could be heard outside the open door of the warehouse.
USDA required that, in order for him to get in and out of the trailer, he first had to get up and stand on his own. But that didn’t happen.
Animal rights protesters from the PAWS group were outside the Luxor warehouse videotaping and recording their moans.
The warehouse he was in was USDA-approved and climate-controlled, but had no windows. She received painkillers for a host of injuries and complications, including malnutrition, skin conditions, atrophied leg muscles, and ulcers on the pads of her feet.
After his death, no autopsy was performed to discover the cause.
Sarah Ralston, a spokeswoman for Circus Circus Enterprises, then the owner of the Luxor, said days later in a letter to the editor of the Las Vegas Sun that the hotel was not responsible for Stoney’s day-to-day care.
“LaTorres was the only person who had control and the legal right to decide Stoney’s future,” Ralston wrote. “For better or worse, Circus simply had no control over the fate of the elephant.”
“His death was a source of great sadness for all of us at Circus Circus Enterprises,” he concluded.
Linda Faso, a veteran Las Vegas animal rights activist who protested outside Stoney’s warehouse in 1994, recently testified that she tried to get better food and medical treatment for him over a nine-month period, but that he had deteriorated after his leg injuries.
The Luxor provided assistance to Stoney, but it should have done more for his well-being — like giving him fresh fruits and vegetables to eat instead of just hay — because he was injured at the hotel, Faso said.
“It was literally rotting away and that could have been prevented,” he said. “He was too affected, he was not going to live much longer. He suffered horribly”.
LaTorres moved quickly to arrange a gravesite at the Craig Road Pet Cemetery in Las Vegas. A 15-by-20-foot, 20-foot-deep hole was dug, and Stoney’s entire body was buried there within hours of his death.
His flat headstone is engraved with a drawing of an elephant with the message: “In loving memory of Stoney, a gentle giant.”
Jaynes wrote that LaTorres, likely overwhelmed by the ordeal, died only a few years after Stoney.
LaTorres “wasn’t a bad guy,” Faso said. “He was reasonable and decent,” but “once the accident happened, (Stoney) became a broken piece of machinery. It wasn’t good for Mike anymore.”
Stoney’s death drew attention to the plight of “wild animals being forced to come forward,” he said.
Fewer customers now want to buy tickets to circus-type shows after watching videos about how badly animals can be treated, and hotels and other businesses know this, he said.
“People are watching the training and the beatings,” he said. “It’s all about the public.”
