THE HORSE MEAT VIGILANTE

In a fetid Florida backwater, butchers operate black-market equine slaughterhouses. One man is determined to end the trade

- David Gauvey Herbert

You don’t find the Dark Knight of Florida’s animal- slaughter underworld. You put out a signal, and he finds you.

Last March, I flew to West Palm Beach, drove a rental car inland, and settled into a room at a chain hotel that Richard Couto had chosen for me. Then he texted me an address. The drive to his secret compound took me past orange groves, belching tractors, and homemade Trump billboards. Down a dirt road flanked by tall Australian pines, I reached a series of remote- control gates guarded by closed-circuit TV cameras and screaming eagle busts. A final fence slid open to reveal a sprawling 100-acre sanctuary. Cows, horses, and pigs grazed, rescued by Couto and his team from slaughter. I pulled up to the command center, open-air on one side, with white leather couches, standing desks, and Spanish tile. It was the Bat Cave, with a Sunshine State twist.

Couto is 50 years old, bald and powerfully built, with a white goatee. He wore tactical gear and carried a concealed handgun. Decade-old YouTube videos suggest that his voice had dropped an octave to the Christian Bale-ish growl with which he barked orders from his swivel chair. A massive black Ford F-350, with tinted windows and a dash camera, sat in the driveway. An outbuilding held a cache of pistols, tactical shotguns, and a 50- caliber rifle. In an evidence freezer a few feet away were slabs of illicit equine flesh, purchased undercover during a recent operation in Couto’s longtime quest to take down America’s illegal horse meat market.