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Case #257 Rating: 1.5 out of 5
Hoarding/Breeding - 212 cats, 60 found dead
Modesto, CA (US)Incident Date: Saturday, Aug 12, 2000
County: Stanislaus
Disposition: Convicted
Case Images: 2 files available
Defendant/Suspect: Debra Rexelle
Case Updates: 3 update(s) available
Animal control officers, clad in white protective jumpsuits and breathing masks, rescued 212 cats and kittens from a Stanislaus County house. They also discovered the rotting remains of at least 60 dead felines amid the cat waste and debris.
"The smell is enough to make you throw up," said deputy Jeff Broumas of the Stanislaus County Sheriff's Department. "It's horrific." Authorities began to investigate after receiving an anonymous phone call last week. It wasn't the first time the home's occupant, Debra Rexelle, had been called to their attention.
Kelly Huston / Stanislaus Co. Sheriff's Dept.: "It appears she tried to breed these cats and sell them on the Internet. She also says it is a hobby of hers to collect animals."
Broumas said the 48-year-old woman was cited in 1993 for possessing more than 50 cats. In Stanislaus County, it is illegal for anyone but breeders to own more than four cats.
Rexelle, he said, is not a licensed breeder, although it appeared she was selling many of the cats online. She also doesn't have a business license.
In 1993, Broumas said Rexelle simply paid a fine. This time, she faces multiple felony charges of cruelty to animals. She was being held in jail with bail set at $10,000. Earlier that day, animal control officers from three counties searched Rexelle's home, as well as several dilapidated storage sheds behind the brick house Rexelle has rented for the past seven years.
Conditions in Rexelle's house were so filthy, Broumas said, that specialists from the county's Environmental Resources Department conducted tests - for ammonia and other toxins - before allowing workers inside.
More than 90 percent of the cats and kittens rescued from the home, Broumas said, were either injured or suffering from various virus-borne upper respiratory ailments.
"In this type of intensive cat housing, you can't avoid these upper respiratory viruses," county veterinarian Debbie Greer said. "They just sort of explode."
While Greer said the cats were neglected and living in the most deplorable of conditions, she said she found evidence that Rexelle was trying to care for them. There were large bags of cat food in the house.
Many of the animals had their own water and food bowls, she said - though all were empty when authorities arrived at 6:40 a.m. The cats all had their own litter pans, Greer said, which were overflowing with urine and feces.
Authorities said Rexelle kept so many cats in the house that she moved into a tent nearby.
"We were told she was living in there for a time," sheriff's spokesman Kelly Huston said, pointing to a small back-packing tent pitched under a tree. "There's just a bunch of debris in there now." Huston said animal control officers found a computer and other evidence in the house that indicated Rexelle was offering the animals for sale via the Internet.
One of her neighbors, who asked not to be identified, said Rexelle told him she had been selling cats and receiving a "pretty fair price for some of them." That didn't surprise Greer, who examined each of the cats before they were taken from the house and tagged as evidence. The veterinarian said there were numerous Manx (tailless), Chartreux, American curl, Turkish Angora and Turkish van cats in the home.
A pet-quality Chartreux, Greer said, can sell for $300 to $400, while a show-quality Chartreux can go for as much as $1,200. "These breeds are fairly valuable breeds, and somewhat rare," Greer said. But there may have been more involved than money.
Under different circumstances, Greer said she could picture herself trying to care for a large number of cats.
"You love animals so much you just want to save every one of them," Greer said. "I look at the cats in our own shelter and I want to take all of them home. It's really a very fine thread: what you can handle - reality - and what you think you can handle."
Such people take in more and more animals, Greer continued. "At some point, they become overwhelmed."
While no one could say for sure when Rexelle reached that point, the advanced decay of some of the dead cats - described by Broumas - means the breaking point may have come long before last week's anonymous tip.
Broumas said dead cats were found in plastic bags, empty cat food bags and a broken freezer in the garage. Some of the remains were so mushed together, Broumas said, that it was difficult to count the animals.
A number of the cats, Broumas said, were mummified.
By late that afternoon, 60 cats were confirmed dead. Broumas said the final count could reach 100 or more.
Michael Rodriguez, Stanislaus County's director of animal services, said his department was forced to rent a facility to house the rescued cats and kittens because the county animal shelter did not have enough room.
The county must care for the animals, which will be held as evidence, until the case is resolved
Case UpdatesDebra Rexelle won't say where she lives, for fear of reprisals. But she readily admits she's the cat lady -- that cat lady -- the one who had 212 cats living in a rental home on Nebraska Avenue west of Modesto.
She served 89 days behind bars after a Stanislaus County Superior Court jury in May 2002 found her guilty of four felonies and four misdemeanors, for cruelty to animals. Rexelle said she is paying $20 a month toward a $114,032 restitution bill, the amount the county's Department of Animal Services paid to seize and impound the skinny cats, which had dirty fur and weepy eyes and noses.
She lost appeals of her verdict and restitution order in state courts. She was so adamant that she took both cases to the U.S. Supreme Court, but that lofty panel declined to review her grievances.
Rexelle, 53, still pleads innocence, as she did at her trial. She says people don't understand her affinity for felines. "I just can't believe how much people lie about things," she said. "I honestly believed in the judicial system, but I don't trust anybody anymore."
When investigators first showed up at Rexelle's home in early August 2000, they found a middle-aged woman who was eating a sandwich covered in cat hair, according to court records. She denied them access to the home, which sits on a one-lane country road, overlooking an orchard. So the authorities returned a few days later with a search warrant. What they found shocked investigators, animal activists and the public alike -- and became the subject of 24 articles in The Bee. There were cats everywhere, stacked in cages around the home and in sheds on the property. The animals were sick and wheezing, because they lived in layers of filth and in many cases were covered in their own excrement, according to authorities. Carcasses of 50 dead cats were scattered across the property, found in garbage bags or stacked in an inoperable freezer. Investigators wore gas masks, due to measurable amounts of ammonia, and set up fans to draw fresh air into the single-story home.
At her sentencing, a psychiatrist told the court that Rexelle suffered from "protracted grief," due to the death of her mother and boyfriend in 1997, and from "overpowering fatigue," due to medications. Rexelle recalled the grief and a bad reaction to Prozac.
She acknowledged that she was tired all the time and slept in her clothes, but she said the scene in her home never was as bad as a prosecutor contended. "I was so physically wiped out," Rexelle said. She said she kept the cats in cages, separated by sexes, because she didn't have enough money to get them all spayed and neutered. "They made it sound like it was a kitten mill," Rexelle said. She said she took in strays because she couldn't say no to people who dumped their cats on her doorstep. "My motto was, buy one, get two for free," Rexelle said. She said she tended the cats constantly. "They ate 40 pounds of food a day," Rexelle said. "I always fed them." She said she kept the dead cats because she was waiting for their bones to rot, so they could be used in research.
"I'm a scientist, that's my interest," Rexelle said. "I can't help it." At the time of her arrest, a Web site for Rexelle's Ashmanor Cattery listed the same address as her Nebraska Avenue home. The International Cat Association and the Cat Fanciers Association listed her as a breeder on their Web sites. And the Cat Fanciers Association named one of her Turkish Vans -- Ashmanor Duracell -- best in breed for 1989-99. Those pedigreed references are long gone. Now, an Internet search turns up references to articles Rexelle wrote decades ago, about Chartreaux cats. Rexelle also is listed as a "bad breeder" on the Pedigree Cat Breeder Society's Web site. The group calls itself a nonprofit watchdog for the animal community.
During the decade before her arrest, Rexelle faced a few complaints.
In April 1991, a newspaper in Alameda County reported that Rexelle's neighbors were up in arms about her cats because they disturbed their sleep. In November 1993, shortly after moving from Hayward to Modesto, Rexelle hired a Modesto woman to feed her cats for several days while she was at a cat show. Karen Ohl tagged along, because her friend found that the job was more than she could handle. Ohl, of Modesto, recalls waste-caked cages and 122 sickly cats. Ohl said she was so concerned that she documented everything in letters to several county departments. She also left a copy of an article about cat hoarders on Rexelle's kitchen table.
"It was hard to imagine anything worse than what I saw in 1993," Ohl said.
Rexelle said inspectors came to her home, determined that the animals were fine, then cited her for breeding without a license. She paid a fine. Allegations by a former friend, Debbi Smith, prompted the final investigation.
In 1998, Rexelle stopped letting Smith into her home, according to Smith's testimony at Rexelle's trial. Later, Smith told the authorities that the windows of Rexelle's white brick house were covered with newspapers, and that Rexelle had been sleeping in a tent in the back yard in the summer. She suspected that the cattery had gotten out of control. The authorities concurred and charged Rexelle with 13 felonies and four misdemeanors.
Dorothy DiGino, operations supervisor at the county animal shelter, remembers the scene at Rexelle's house, a sudden influx of cats at the shelter and an outpouring of support from the public, which donated $13,215 and lots of supplies. Everyone was puzzled by the lady who loved cats but couldn't care for them properly. "I don't think anybody goes into something like that with the intention to cause an animal harm," DiGino said.
A 10-day trial brought an array of cat experts to the witness stand. Rexelle testified on her own behalf, saying she never abused her cats. Jurors split the difference, convicting Rexelle of eight charges and dropping nine. Rexelle moved to Stockton after her arrest, but the phone at an address listed on court papers has been disconnected. She declined to say where she lives, due to the public scorn she faced after her arrest. The Bee tracked Rexelle through an e-mail.
Rexelle, who is disabled and lives on a small pension from the U.S. Postal Service, said she never will be able to pay all of the restitution. She finished serving three years of probation this summer. She lives with four feline friends. She said Jacinthe, Jubilee, Olivia and Rex are just pets.
She said she has learned that no one should have so many cats. But she also said her greatest regret is that she couldn't save her cats from the animal control department. In the end, 143 of the cats were adopted, reclaimed by an owner who sent them to Rexelle to breed, or given to a rescue group. The others died from maladies or were euthanized because they were not adoptable.
"I would have given my life for those animals," Rexelle said. "In a way, I did." | Source: The Modesto Bee - December 26, 2005
Update posted on Dec 26, 2005 - 11:51AM |
| Debra Rexelle was sentenced to four months in jail for abusing cats in her home west of Modesto. She was also put on probation for three years and will be barred from having more than four cats at any given time. Judge Terry Cole could have sentenced Rexelle to up to 12 years in prison. | | Update posted on Feb 3, 2003 - 11:55PM |
After many delays, the case against accused cat hoarder Debra Rexelle appears to be moving forward. Following two pre-trial court appearances, another such hearing is scheduled for April 25 and a jury trial has been scheduled for May 6.
At least a dozen of the cats removed from Rexelle's home had to be euthanized. Authorities allege that the woman was breeding cats without a breeder's license or a business license. As a result, Rexelle has been charged with 13 felony and five misdemeanor counts of animal cruelty.
(Update from ALDF - Update posted on Apr 12, 2002 - 12:00AM |
References- Nando Times
- Modesto Bee, dated july 8,2002 article: judge also sets limit of 4 cats during probation
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