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Case ID: 12124
Classification: Hoarding
Animal: cat
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Hoarding 80 cats
Long Beach, CA (US)

Incident Date: Monday, Aug 20, 2007
County: Los Angeles

Disposition: Alleged

Alleged:
» Adele Heidi Hill
» Debbie Hill

A more detailed picture emerged Thursday about a squalid one-bedroom apartment where 80 cats were found, as a landlord confirmed that one of the unit's two residents had returned to the scene after being held for a pyschological evaluation.

The two women, Adele Heidi Hill, 68, known as Heidi, and her daughter Debbie Hill, believed in her 40s, were detained Monday at a county hospital for a 72-hour psychological evaluation after they were found to be living in a unit packed with living and dead cats, roaches, piles of trash bags and a stench that had police officers gagging.

Of the 80 cats found, two have survived. The rest were either discovered dead or euthanized because of their poor health, Animal Control officials said.

Within 24 hours of being taken for evaluation, Heidi Hill was back in town, although her whereabouts were unknown.

Because of patient privacy laws in the case of psychological patients, a county hospital would not release information about the Hills. Officer Jackie Bezart of the Long Beach Police Department said it is up to the hospital to release patients early, or allow them to go in and out of the hospital's care.

Animal Control Lt. Michelle Quigley said she learned of the release after hearing on her two-way radio that Heidi Hill contacted the police department on Tuesday saying her belongings were removed.

Authorities have been working to sanitize the unit since the Monday discovery.

Paul Chandler, one of the owners of the complex, said he spoke with Heidi Hill at the unit at about 3 p.m. Tuesday, but was not sure if she spent the night there.

"She was upset because her stuff was thrown away," Chandler said.

"She was saying she had a red pocketbook with money sitting on the stairs. I personally cleaned the stairs and I didn't see any pocketbook," he said.

Chandler said he took what he thought were personal items like a cell phone, photographs and a Bible, and put them on the mantel.

"Really, there was nothing there that you would expect that somebody would have in their house," he said.

There was no furniture in the 500-square-foot unit, and instead of closets stuffed with clothes, authorities found closets stuffed with trash bags from floor to ceiling, as in the bedroom, Chandler said.

A few trash bags that came undone revealed that they were filled with newspapers soaked in urine and cat feces.

A couple of prints were hanging on the wall and the refrigerator still had food in it, but the health and police department said everything on the floor had to be thrown away because of the health risks.

While the rest of the unit was in deplorable condition, the bathroom was not in bad shape, Chandler said.

When Chandler left the unit about 5 p.m. Tuesday, he said he left the door unlocked so that fumigators could access the unit the next day in case he was unable to meet them, but when he arrived at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday to meet the fumigators, the door was locked.

"Somebody had gained access," Chandler said.

The only people with keys to the residence are Chandler and the two women.

Chandler said that he cannot legally prevent the women from going into the apartment. The women are in the process of being evicted for not paying rent and are due to appear in court in September.

Chandler received a phone call from a tenant that someone had been in the unit again about 11 p.m. Wednesday, though fumigators had left a notice on the door at noon that day instructing that no-one could enter the unit for 24 hours after the surface-spray fumigation.

"Whoever went in there had total disregard for the notice," Chandler said.

Pest control told Chandler that the spray would take care of 85 to 90 percent of the roaches in that unit.

The entire building was fumigated at 9 a.m. Thursday, in case the roach problem had spread.

The owners of two other units had reported roaches, Chandler said.

"We never had a roach problem before the Hills moved in," Chandler said.

Although he had his suspicions that it was either Heidi Hill or Debbie Hill going in and out of the unit, there is no way of knowing for sure, he said.

The two surviving cats are being treated at Long Beach Animal Control for severe ear mites and dermatitis.

"They're being monitored daily. They're eating and responding, so they're doing pretty well," Quigley said.

The cats will not be available for adoption any time soon because they are being held as evidence in the ongoing Animal Control investigation against Heidi and Debbie Hill.

The last live cat, found alive just before fumigators were about to sanitize the apartment Wednesday, had to be euthanized because Animal Control found that it had even more significant health problems than the others, Quigley said.

The cat was severely dehydrated and had more significant skin issues, dermatitis and ear mites, not to mention being "totally feral ... completely unsocialized," Quigley said.

Seventy-three cats had already been euthanized already because the Hills had told Animal Control that they knew the cats were ill and didn't want them to suffer.

"They wanted to see them humanely put down," Quigley said.

The cats were thin and dehydrated, with various stages of respiratory diseases and skin diseases that would have required extensive medical care.

Two other incidents involving the Hill women have been reported since the news about the contents of their apartment broke Tuesday.

Gordon McMullen, a site manager at an apartment complex on East Third Street in Long Beach, said the women had accumulated close to three dozen cats before they were evicted for not paying rent a few months after they moved in.

The second incident was in 2006 at an apartment on the 800 block of Linden Avenue.

According to Cat Davis, a resident of the building, the women left one day and when building management broke the lock and went into the unit, they found hundreds of trash bags filled with newspapers and cat feces.

Long Beach resident Cookie Tanniehill said she was shocked to hear about the Hill women, who had been good neighbors to her when she lived at the Linden building.

"They're not bad people. They would come up to my apartment, and we'd talk," Tanniehill said.

"They were always dressed neat and kept themselves clean," she said.

Tanniehill said the women were good tenants, but admitted she had never been inside their apartment.

References

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