He Was A Horse That Never Won A Race. So Why Would Someone Steal Him?

The Hollywood Park stables were quiet that night. Gail Ruffu had planned it that way.

It was around midnight on Christmas Eve, 2004, days before the winter racing season would start at Santa Anita Park, about 30 miles away in the Los Angeles suburb of Arcadia.

It would be easy for Ruffu, a horse trainer, to slip into the Hollywood Park stables without anyone noticing.

It would be easy to find the horse she once trained, Urgent Envoy. He was in a barn just across the road from her own. She could lead him into a trailer, talk her way past a guard and drive away. And that's exactly what she did.

"I figured, whatever it takes, even if I go to jail, I have to save this horse's life," Ruffu said.

Ruffu had trained a handful of horses before, but Urgent Envoy was special. Over the previous year, she helped transform him from a dangerous rebel into a gentle athlete. It seemed he was her one shot to train a winner.

For 15 years, I knew a similar version of this night at Hollywood Park. I had been told that my father, Steve Haney, had hired Ruffu to train his first racehorse. When he fired her, she stole the horse. My dad was the victim.

But then last year, an unexpected discovery changed everything. I stumbled on a graphic novel called . Written by Ruffu's cousin Greg Neri, it paints a much darker narrative. In this version, as in real life,