In the summer of 1977, a family in rural Kentucky acquired a new horse.
She had appeared on a country road near their small farm, apparently abandoned. Nobody came looking for her, so Larry and Sandra McPherson took her in, fed her and called her Brandy.
Friends and family rode her. Somebody reportedly offered $200 for her.
What the McPhersons didn’t know was that Brandy was actually Fanfreluche, a Canadian Horse of the Year worth an estimated $500,000.
Nor did they know that she was carrying a foal by Secretariat.
And while she was being treated as an ordinary farm horse, the FBI had spent months trying to find her.
One Mare Missing at Claiborne
Fanfreluche was not just a valuable broodmare.
A daughter of Northern Dancer, she had been one of the best fillies in North America, winning the Manitoba Centennial Derby, Alabama Stakes and Princess Elizabeth Stakes on her way to being named Canada’s Horse of the Year in 1970.
A tendon injury brought her racing career to an end, but she became even more important at stud.
Her first foal, L’Enjoleur, went on to become a two-time Canadian Horse of the Year. By 1977, the ten-year-old Fanfreluche was at Claiborne Farm in Paris, Kentucky, and carrying a foal by Secretariat.
Then, on the afternoon of 25 June, she disappeared.
Farm staff noticed Fanfreluche missing from her paddock late that day. The following morning, the search revealed something rather more worrying than a mare hiding at the far end of a field.
The fence had been cut.
Hoofprints led away from the paddock, alongside one of Claiborne’s stone walls and towards a wooded area near the road.
There, they stopped.
Somebody had taken Fanfreluche.
A Trail of Alfalfa and a Waiting Trailer
The evidence suggested somebody had come prepared.
Alfalfa was reportedly found near the cut fencing, apparently used to coax Fanfreluche out of the paddock. The opening in the fence had then been crudely patched.
At the roadside, her hoofprints disappeared. The obvious conclusion was that she had been loaded into a trailer and driven away.
It was a remarkably brazen theft.
It was also difficult to see how anybody expected to make money from it.
Fanfreluche was estimated to be worth around $500,000, but a valuable Thoroughbred isn’t exactly easy to move quietly. She was registered, well known within bloodstock circles and permanently identifiable by the tattoo beneath her upper lip.
Then there was what she was carrying.
Secretariat had retired to Claiborne after his Triple Crown season in 1973 and was already the most famous racehorse in America. A foal by Secretariat out of Fanfreluche had obvious value before it had even been born.
The expectation was that somebody would ask for money.
No ransom demand ever came.
The FBI Goes Looking for a Broodmare
Kentucky State Police and the FBI became involved and the search quickly spread beyond Claiborne.
A $25,000 reward was offered. Investigators followed possible sightings and watched for any attempt to move Fanfreluche through the horse trade.
There was even an attempt to flush out whoever had her by circulating a story that the mare required regular medication.
Nothing worked.
Days became weeks. Weeks became months.
For a horse worth half a million dollars and carrying one of the most talked-about unborn foals in America, Fanfreluche had disappeared surprisingly well.
The reason was simple.
She wasn’t hidden away in some secret bloodstock operation.
She was about 150 miles away, being Brandy.
A $500,000 Mare Worth About $200
Larry and Sandra McPherson lived near Tompkinsville, close to the Tennessee border.
Around the time Fanfreluche disappeared, a stray mare turned up on a country road near their property.
The McPhersons had no reason to think they were looking at equine royalty. They assumed somebody’s horse had escaped and took her in while trying to find the owner.
Nobody claimed her.
They spread word locally and reportedly put up a notice at a country store. Eventually, the mystery mare became part of life on the farm and acquired a new name.
Brandy.
The family rode her, and children were given rides. Sandra McPherson later remembered that Brandy wasn’t necessarily the easiest pleasure horse, which probably shouldn’t have been surprising for a former top-class Thoroughbred.
At one point, somebody reportedly offered around $200 for her. Larry refused. Whatever Brandy was worth, she wasn’t really his horse to sell.
It was a fortunate decision.
By December, the FBI had received information about a mare in the Tompkinsville area.
An agent arrived at the McPherson farm.
There was a very straightforward way to settle it.
They lifted her lip. The tattoo matched. Brandy was Fanfreluche.
Who Stole Fanfreluche?
Police had a suspect remarkably quickly.
William Michael McCandless was a horseman, gambler and a man who would develop a lengthy relationship with the law.
Other horsemen told investigators that McCandless had bragged about stealing Fanfreluche. A warrant was issued in July 1977, and he turned himself in, denying involvement.
Then he jumped bail.
McCandless remained at large for several years before eventually facing trial over the theft. In 1983, he was convicted and sentenced to prison.
Exactly what he intended to do with Fanfreluche is less certain.
A later account from trainer Mike Isaacs, who knew McCandless, offered an explanation. According to Isaacs, McCandless admitted stealing the mare as part of a plan involving a buyer interested in the valuable Secretariat foal she was carrying.
Once the FBI investigation and national publicity surrounding Fanfreluche intensified, the prospective deal collapsed.
If that account is accurate, abandoning Fanfreluche near Tompkinsville makes considerably more sense.
McCandless hadn’t pulled off an elaborate kidnapping and hidden the mare for months. He had allegedly stolen an exceptionally identifiable piece of bloodstock, discovered that he couldn’t safely turn her into money, panicked and got rid of the evidence.
Fanfreluche then wandered into the McPhersons’ lives.
The Most Expensive Feed Bill in Kentucky
The McPhersons were quickly cleared of any involvement in the theft.
For nearly six months, they had fed and looked after one of the most valuable mares in North America without knowing anything more about her than the name they had given her.
Brandy went back to being Fanfreluche and returned to Claiborne in good health, still carrying her foal by Secretariat.
The McPhersons reportedly worked out what the mare had cost them in feed and sent an itemised account to her owner, Canadian businessman Jean-Louis Lévesque.
It came to around $14.
After six months looking after a champion mare worth an estimated $500,000, McPherson hadn’t stumbled into a fortune.
He’d run up a feed bill.
Safe and Sound
On 16 February 1978, Fanfreluche produced a healthy bay colt by Secretariat.
A competition was held to name him.
The winning suggestion was Sain Et Sauf.
Safe and Sound.
After the previous eight months, nobody was going to improve much on that.
Sain Et Sauf eventually raced but never approached the achievements of either parent. Fanfreluche hardly needed him to enhance her reputation.
L’Enjoleur became a dual Canadian Horse of the Year. La Voyageuse and Medaille d’Or were also Canadian champions, while her influence continued through subsequent generations.
Australian racing fans can find Fanfreluche in the families of major stallions including Flying Spur and Encosta de Lago, while Holy Roman Emperor carried her influence into European breeding.
The Secretariat colt at the centre of the kidnapping never became a great racehorse. The family around him became an international bloodstock force.
In hindsight, putting a $500,000 value on Fanfreluche only captured what the mare was worth at that particular moment. Her name would continue appearing in important pedigrees decades later.
McCandless Wasn’t Finished With Racing
The Fanfreluche case could have remained an eccentric episode in racing history.
McCandless’s later activities made it rather darker.
Two decades later, his name appeared in an investigation involving the “sponging” of racehorses.
The practice involved forcing sponges into horses’ nostrils to restrict their breathing, compromising their performance and creating an opportunity for people who knew what had happened to bet accordingly.
McCandless was indicted in connection with the scheme in the 1990s.
Once again, he disappeared.
He was eventually featured on America’s Most Wanted, but investigators failed to find him. His ultimate fate remains unclear.
For all the almost comic elements of Fanfreluche’s disappearance, the man convicted of stealing her was no lovable racing rogue.
Fanfreluche was fortunate.
Brandy Goes Back to Being Fanfreluche
Fanfreluche lived until 1999, reaching the age of 32.
She produced 18 foals, was inducted into the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame and received a Sovereign Award as an outstanding broodmare.
Her disappearance is inevitably compared with Shergar, stolen from Ballymany Stud in Ireland six years later.
There is one rather important difference.
Shergar vanished into one of racing’s darkest mysteries and was never recovered.
Fanfreluche spent nearly six months being fed, ridden and looked after by a Kentucky family who thought they had found an ordinary stray horse.
The FBI was searching across America for a champion mare carrying Secretariat’s foal.
Larry McPherson was waiting for somebody to come and collect Brandy.
And, eventually, settle the feed bill.
