411 W Mill Rd, Long Valley, NJ 07853
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Author: Jewls Krueger
On the afternoon of August 7, 2019, 56 year old equestrian dressage trainer Michael Barisone shot his student and tenant Lauren Kanarek twice in the chest at his Hawthorne Hill horse farm in Long Valley, New Jersey. The shooting came at the end of a months long feud between Barisone and Kanarek over training, social media accusations, and a soured living arrangement at the farm.
Kanarek survived. Barisone was charged with two counts of attempted murder but was ultimately found not guilty by reason of insanity at his 2022 trial. The case became the subject of a CBS "48 Hours" episode and a 2026 Netflix documentary, "Untold: The Shooting at Hawthorne Hill."
Michael Barisone was one of the most respected names in American dressage. He had been a member of the 2008 U.S. Olympic dressage team and had won a team gold medal at the 1997 Nations Cup in England. He owned and operated Barisone Dressage, a high level training and boarding facility with two locations, one in Long Valley, New Jersey, called Hawthorne Hill, and another in Loxahatchee, Florida. He also served on the board of directors of the U.S. Equestrian Federation.
Lauren Kanarek was a dressage rider in her late thirties who hoped to compete at the top of the sport. In 2018, she and her boyfriend Robert "Rob" Goodwin moved into a farmhouse on the Hawthorne Hill property to train under Barisone. She paid roughly $5,000 a month for training, horse boarding, and housing for the two of them.
The working relationship soured during the summer of 2019. Staff members at Hawthorne Hill later testified that Kanarek began demanding more personal attention from Barisone instead of his assistants. In July, Kanarek began posting on Facebook calling Barisone "racist, homophobic" and "antisemitic," accusations he strongly denied. Kanarek and Goodwin filed a complaint with the Washington Township housing inspector alleging code violations and a fire hazard at the farm. Both parties also filed complaints with SafeSport, the body that investigates misconduct in Olympic sports.
By late July, Barisone had retained an attorney to draft an eviction notice. According to court testimony, there were at least six visits by Morris County police to Hawthorne Hill in the 10 days leading up to the shooting. The final flashpoint came when a caseworker from the New Jersey Division of Child Protection and Permanency arrived at the farm to investigate a report of possible abuse of Barisone's fiancée's children. Barisone's defense team would later argue that this visit, which they believed had been triggered by a call from Kanarek, was the breaking point that pushed him into a delusional mental state.
Just after 2 p.m. on August 7, 2019, Barisone retrieved a 9mm handgun from his safe and went looking for Kanarek and Goodwin on the property. He confronted them outside the farmhouse where they were living and shot Kanarek twice in the chest at close range. He then turned the gun on Goodwin, who lunged at him and was able to wrestle him to the ground and beat him before officers arrived.
Despite being severely wounded, Kanarek was able to call 911 herself from her phone, telling the operator, "Michael Barisone shot me." When Morris County police arrived at the farm, they found Kanarek in critical condition and Goodwin subduing a badly beaten Barisone. Kanarek was placed in a medically induced coma and required surgery to repair her punctured left lung. She eventually recovered. Barisone was arrested at the scene and charged with two counts of attempted murder along with weapons offenses.
Barisone was held in custody for more than two and a half years before his trial began at the Morris County Courthouse in Morristown, New Jersey in March 2022. The proceedings lasted 14 days. The defense, led by attorney Edward Bilinkas, did not contest that Barisone had fired the gun, but argued he had been legally insane at the time of the shooting due to a delusional disorder and persistent depressive disorder brought on by months of harassment. Two defense psychiatrists testified to that diagnosis. Barisone did not take the stand.
On April 14, 2022, after roughly 18 hours of deliberation, the jury found Barisone not guilty by reason of insanity on the charge of attempted murder against Lauren Kanarek, as well as on a related weapons charge. He was outright acquitted on the charges related to Robert Goodwin. He had faced up to 60 years in prison.
Within weeks of the verdict, Barisone was transferred to a New Jersey psychiatric hospital for treatment. He was cleared for release around November 2023 and eventually returned to his Florida farm. In December 2025, the U.S. Center for SafeSport permanently banned him from U.S. Equestrian Federation activities and competitions citing findings of sexual harassment, emotional misconduct, and violation of physical contact policies.
Hawthorne Hill Farm sat off West Mill Road in the Long Valley section of Washington Township, Morris County, New Jersey, about 50 miles west of Manhattan, in the rolling countryside of horse country. According to journalist Nancy Jaffer, who covered the case extensively, Barisone sold the Long Valley property after the trial. He now operates Barisone Dressage out of his 20 stall, 5 acre farm in the White Fences development in Loxahatchee, Florida. The former Hawthorne Hill property remains private and is not open to the public. Please be respectful of the current owners and the surrounding neighborhood, stay on public roads at all times, and do not attempt to enter the property under any circumstances.
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