WOMAN WHO BLAMED HORSE FOR MOM'S MURDER CONVICTED
ARIELA THRAN CONVICTED OF BEATING HER MOTHER TO DEATH
Mar. 7, 2025
An upstate New York woman who tried to frame a horse for her mother's murder was found guilty on Friday.
Ariela Thran shook her head and cried when a jury convicted her.
Thran was arrested Jan. 6, 2024. She “caused the death of her mother, Patricia Allison Halverson, by striking her on the head multiple times with an unknown object” on Dec. 27, 2023, according to the felony complaint against her.
The 62-year-old's body was found outside "near a piece of farming equipment" on her horse farm in the rolling hills of Cortland County on Jan. 3, police said. The farm was a former 66-acre Methodist camp at the end of a dead-end road.
It includes a main lodge with a three-sided floor-to-ceiling fireplace, 11 dorm-style rooms, a chapel, a recreation center, a pole barn, an amphitheater with a stage and several cabins, the Cortland Standard reported.
Thran did not have a criminal record. The 33-year-old pleaded not guilty at her arraignment. She remained jailed in lieu of $50,000 cash bail, $1 million bond or $10 million partially secured bond. She was represented by a public defender.
Jury selection began Feb. 24. Potential jurors were asked how they felt about their mothers, and how they felt about horses.
“She hit her mother over the head several times and killed her,” Assistant Cortland County District Attorney Richard Van Donsel argued to jurors. “How many times does it take to hit someone over the head to make them die?”
“What she chose to do was kill her mother,” Van Donsel added.
But Cortland County Public Defender Kevin Jones, Thran’s defense attorney, told the jury Thran didn't murder her mom—a horse did.
“Ariela did not kill her mother,” Jones said. “The injuries are the injuries one would suffer when kicked, stomped or trampled by a horse."
"Ariela," Jones argued, "is not guilty.”
The prosecution's first witness was the defendant's own daughter: Lacey Thran-Reed, 14, the murdered woman's granddaughter.
Thran-Reed testified she and her mother were at her grandmother's horse farm the day Halverson was killed. An argument between the two older women ensued.
“My grandma really doesn’t like my mom being on her property,” the youngster explained.
“I heard a scream” minutes later, Thran-Reed said. “It sounded human.”
“We had to grab our stuff and leave,” she said her mother told her. They left through the back door and walked "like, a mile.” She “told me, like, the police were coming.”
Two women who rented apartments from Halverson testified they saw one of Thran's hands damaged days after the murder.
Melanie Demello—Thran’s cousin—testified against her virtually from a hospital bed in California where she lives. The pregnant Demello said Thran called her on the day of the alleged murder “really upset at her mom.”
Thran asked her how many times one needed to be hit over the head to die, Demello said.
When Jones, Thran's defense lawyer, tried to cross-examine her, Demello started crying and said she needed a nurse.
The medical examiner who autopsied Halverson said her deadly injuries were caused by "blunt force trauma" and they could not have been caused by a horse, but a forensic expert for the defense testified they could have been.
Finally, Adam V. D’Agostino, director of the equestrian program at Alfred University and coach of its western competition team, testified for the defense. D'Agostino said horses could have killed Halverson, that "industry practices" were not followed on her horse farm and that the "horses could roam loose on the property.”
“Horses, by nature, can cause harm to human life, if they choose to, in their own way,” D’Agostino testified.
But the jury took less than a morning to reject "the horse did it" defense and convict Thran after a two-week trial before noon on Friday.
She faces a minimum sentence of 10 years and a maximum of life when she is sentenced May 6.
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