Pet-Abuse.Com - Animal Abuse Case Details: 5 horses, 1 goat neglected

5 horses, 1 goat neglected
Centennial, CO (US)

Incident Date: Friday, Dec 31, 2004
County: Arapahoe
Local Map: available
Disposition: Acquitted

Person of Interest: Bill Stiffler

Case Updates: 4 update(s) available

Case ID: 6108

Classification: Neglect / Abandonment

Animal: horse, goat

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Suspect was in animal welfare field

The owner of a horse rescue and adoption agency in Englewood has been charged by the state's agriculture department with six counts of animal cruelty.

Bill Stiffler, owner of Friends of Horses Rescue & Adoption, has been under investigation by the Dumb Friends League for much of the past year for allegations of animal abuse.

"It involves five horses and one goat and all of the charges involve neglect," said Keith Davis, an animal cruelty investigator for the Dumb Friends League and an agent with the agriculture department's Bureau of Animal Protection. "These are serious cases," Davis said Friday.

The investigator said two animals were euthanized by a veterinarian after being injured and one died on its own. In all three cases, Davis said, Stiffler failed "to get vet care in a proper and timely manner" before the animals died.

In the case of the three living animals, charges centered on a lack of "basic nutrition" and "overall care" for the animals.

Davis said one of the surviving horses in question was being boarded at Stiffler's facility by its owner. He said he lost track of one of the other living horses and can't vouch for its current condition.

Davis said he served Stiffler with the charges in mid-November.�"He had his attorney present and was unhappy," Davis said. Stiffler is required to appear in court to answer to the charges in December 2005.

A separate investigation by the agriculture department into claims that Stiffler engaged in illegal livestock dealing is ongoing.

Stiffler, who didn't have a livestock dealer's license, was ordered last year by the department to stop trading or selling horses so frequently.

Case Updates

After seven days of deliberation in Arapahoe County -- the longest trial Judge Stephen R. Ruddick's courtroom had ever seen -- Bill Stiffler was acquitted on six counts of animal cruelty on June 21. Witnesses who testified to the neglect they had seen and documented at Stiffler's Denver-area horse rescue left the courthouse in shocked, red-eyed silence.

Stiffler testified that he created Friends of Horses Rescue and Adoption after realizing how many good animals get sent to slaughter. Since the nonprofit began five years ago, he said, he's saved over 400 horses from that fate. "This planet is being overbred," he said. "I didn't create these animals to bring them to my rescue. I'm not the one that breeds them." He paused, becoming choked up. "But I've taken in animals when people can no longer use or take care of them, and to this day I continue to do that."

About a year ago, a series of complaints about the rescue sparked an investigation by Keith Davis, a commissioned peace officer for the Colorado Bureau of Animal Protection. By September, several people had gone public with their concerns ("Beating a Dead Horse," September 29, 2005). Then in November, the state filed six counts of animal cruelty, a misdemeanor charge, against Stiffler.

At the trial, some twenty witnesses, including employees, volunteers and customers of the rescue, testified against Stiffler. The prosecution tried to show that Stiffler wouldn't treat or get vet care for sick or injured animals if they weren't "worth" the cost. "He didn't do anything until after the investigation started," said prosecutor Jacob Edson in his closing. "He didn't do anything until after [Davis and the assistant state veterinarian] came on the property."

Defense lawyer Caroline Cooley countered that "the reality is, animals die. Sometimes even our best efforts to try to save an animal don't workŠ. I submit to you Mr. Stiffler's actions were quite customary in the equine community."

In the end, jurors told Arapahoe County prosecutors Jamie Tholson and Edson that the evidence of cruelty wasn't there.

Still, Dawn Blakely, a vocal critic of Stiffler's treatment of animals and his business practices, vows not to stop her efforts. "The reason that we're here is we wanted the truth about the mistreatment of animals to be brought to the attention of the right authorities. I don't believe that the mistreatment is going to stop based on the verdict.

"I will continue to stand up for the voiceless animals until the abuse ends," she adds. "This was just six of many more animals he's mistreated. There is so much more going on under the cover of a horse rescue than was able to be addressed in court."

Source: Denver Westword - June 28, 2006
Update posted on Jun 28, 2006 - 6:51PM

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Bill Stiffler runs 'Friends of Horses' in Arapahoe County. The Dumb Friends League, acting on a complaint, investigated him and turned over its findings to the Arapahoe County District Attorney's Office. Stiffler was then charged in 2005 with six counts of animal cruelty. The charges were related to five horses and one goat. Three of the animals died, including two that had to be put down.

After an eight day trial, the jury has cleared him of all counts.

Source: 9News - June 23, 2006
Update posted on Jun 25, 2006 - 7:00PM

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Bill Stiffler, founder and president of Friends of Horses Rescue and Adoption, has brushed off similar accusations from former customers and volunteers in the past, calling them unfounded, petty attempts to ruin him ("Beating a Dead Horse," September 29). On December 22, he'll have to face an Arapahoe County judge and respond to those charges.

Stiffler started Friends of Horses in 2001 and boasts of having adopted out more than 400 horses to loving homes, thus sparing them the brutal fate of death by slaughter. But Keith Davis, interim investigations chief for the Dumb Friends League, says he started receiving animal-neglect calls for Friends of Horses as early as 2004. He began looking into a series of complaints in June, and since then, more than twenty witnesses have come forward. "I think it's rare that a rescue would find itself in this situation," Davis says.

The six counts involve five horses and a goat. Davis says Stiffler has received warnings for other animals and has complied with most of them. Warnings were not issued for the animals in question because by the time Davis was made aware of their conditions, they had been neglected past the point of what the Bureau of Animal Protection considers reasonable.

Little Lady, an Arabian mare, was malnourished and hadn't received appropriate veterinary care but has gained weight since being moved from the Friends of Horses property. The others -- a paint mare, a gray mare, a quarterhorse gelding named Mr. Gorgeous, a goat, and a nameless thoroughbred that volunteers called Frankenstein because of the wounds on her face -- did not receive the care they needed for their injuries or ailments. Three died as a result of the negligence. "Two died by euthanasia after they were left to linger and suffer longer than would be reasonable by any standards, and one died without any vet care at all," Davis says.

Davis works for the Dumb Friends League, but he is commissioned by the Colorado Bureau of Animal Protection as a peace officer with authority to enforce Colorado cruelty statutes. Animal cruelty is a misdemeanor in Colorado, but a second conviction can be a felony. Penalties for animal cruelty vary greatly, but Davis says it's possible that the judge could decide that the defendant can no longer own animals.

The Colorado Department of Agriculture is conducting a separate investigation into Friends of Horses that will determine whether it's approved for a farm-products license. (Stiffler was previously selling horses without the required license.) "They are separate issues," spokeswoman Linh Truong says of the two investigations. "If for some reason the [Dumb Friends League] investigation stops him from doing business, his farm-products license could still go through, but it could stop him from doing business on the other end."

Source: Denver Westworld - Nov 30, 3005
Update posted on Nov 30, 2005 - 5:06PM

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Bill Stiffler sits on the front porch of his office, his sun-crisped face shaded by the wide brim of his white cowboy hat. He's watching over the ten acres that are home to Friends of Horses Rescue and Adoption, the nonprofit he started in 2001. A decade earlier, he had gone to an auction with his brother and discovered how many horses get bought by "killer buyers," those who sell them to slaughterhouses. After that, he began buying slaughter-bound horses on a small scale, training and selling them for adoption.
Post-9/11, Stiffler's meeting-and-events business began suffering, and he wanted to do something more meaningful. So he turned his energy to creating Friends of Horses.

Since then, Stiffler has been a vocal critic of the way slaughterhouses brutally kill horses, even criticizing Colorado State University for auctioning horses to known killer buyers. Over the past four years, Stiffler claims to have rescued and adopted out close to 400 horses. He says he's broke, bankrupt even, but persists because he loves animals. "I know what it is that I'm supposed to be doing, and I know why I'm supposed to be doing it," he says. "I'm not a religious fanatic, but I do believe in God, and I don't think he'd like his creatures treated this way."

But not everyone sees Stiffler the way he sees himself. People who have worked with him or attempted to adopt from him describe a man who cares only about the sale, a cowboy who rides lame horses, neglects his animals and lies to potential adopters about their condition. He's even been accused of drugging the stock to cover up any discrepancies.

These complaints sparked an animal-cruelty-and-neglect investigation by the Denver Dumb Friends League that is still ongoing, though the league has never filed charges. The Colorado Department of Agriculture's Farm Products Division, which deals with bonding and licensing, is also investigating Friends of Horses. Last year, the City of Greenwood Village issued a summons to Stiffler following a number of zoning and animal-abuse calls. He settled out of court with the city after agreeing to move himself and his business out of town and to never do business again within city limits. He now has five locations, including his main headquarters in Englewood, which a church in California purchased for him last year for $1.4 million.

Leaning back in his chair, Stiffler smiles as he prepares to defend himself against the allegations. With his deep, hoarse voice, he tries to discredit the people he feels are simply spiteful and out to get him. He says his troubles began with a "spoiled, bitter bitch" named Dawn Blakely, whom he told to get "her motherfucking ass off my fucking property."

Blakely and her daughter, Toree, started volunteering at the rescue in February. Toree fell in love with a big, red horse named Rusty that Stiffler said he'd rescued from a killer buyer. She and her mother agreed to adopt him and another older horse for $1,900. Stiffler told Blakely that both horses were sound and rideable, so she paid half the fee and called Stiffler's veterinarian for a check.

The vet told Blakely that the older horse was lame in three legs and that Rusty had a hip problem and would only be rideable for another year. So Blakely told Stiffler that she would pay only $950 for Rusty and that she didn't want the other animal. Stiffler backed out of the deal and sold Rusty to another family for $1,800. Blakely eventually got her deposit back -- after one bounced check.

Later, Blakely and her daughter learned that Rusty was back at Friends of Horses. Terri Randolph returned the horse because his condition had again been misrepresented. He was not "kid-broke," as she'd been led to believe, and no one had told her about the hip problem or the fact that he had strangles, a strep-like infection that can be deadly. Stiffler refused to return her money, so she eventually accepted another horse.

Ashley Leary, a sheriff's deputy in Douglas County, reported her experience with Friends of Horses to the Department of Agriculture after attempting to adopt a horse this summer. She told them that volunteers and employees, including Stiffler, didn't seem to know anything about horses. Pens were overcrowded. Sick and injured horses were outside without shelter. When Leary decided she wasn't going through with the adoption, she asked for her money back, but Stiffler never returned her calls. She disputed the charge with her credit-card company, and it, not Friends of Horses, refunded the money.

Last month, Regina Prevosto, of the Trail of Hope Horse Rescue and Rehabilitation in Sedalia, got a firsthand look at the condition of Stiffler's animals at an auction he was holding to raise money to pay off a killer buyer before the man reclaimed his horses. Prevosto had sent out a mass e-mail before the event, asking for donations so she could adopt. "You normally don't rescue horses from a rescue, but these horses were in as bad or worse shape than horses I have rescued," she says.

Prevosto purchased six horses for $2,300, including a mare with a strangles abscess on its neck that was oozing puss, and its foal, which also had the highly contagious disease. Both animals were being kept in the same pens as other horses. Another of Prevosto's adoptees was an underweight pony that she later discovered was still producing milk because it had recently foaled. No one could tell her where the baby had gone. A final foal that she chose was lying on the ground, barely moving. According to Prevosto, none of the horses had been fed that day.

"Morally, it's reprehensible that the horses are in the condition they're in," she says.

When John West began volunteering in September 2003, he found that hay was often moldy and that there were no vet checkups done on the animals unless an adopter arranged and paid for it. Horses weren't being inoculated, and veterinarians were seldom called out, even for sick horses, because Stiffler was so in arrears with them, according to sources who wish to remain anonymous for fear of harm to themselves and their horses.

Since then, the Denver Dumb Friends League has issued Stiffler several warnings, requiring him to obtain veterinary care for certain horses brought to their attention by concerned callers.

"I don't encourage people to [adopt] there," says Dr. Lois Toll, a veterinarian with the Littleton Large Animal Clinic, which Stiffler owes at least $6,000.

For West, the saddest story was that of a horse named Excalibur. After years spent pulling carriages on the 16th Street Mall, Excalibur had joint problems, ringbone and forms of tendonitis, causing severe pain in his front legs. He wasn't rideable, but he was adopted out as such three different times, West says. "Each time he was brought back because either Bill had not disclosed the horse's health problems or gave them inadequate information.

"When you're running a rescue, you need to make sure the horse is going somewhere where it's not going to end up at another auction or dead due to neglect," West adds. "From what I've seen, Bill's only screening procedure is 'Did the check clear?'"

Stiffler admits there were times when one of his trainers, who no longer works for him, sold horses under false pretenses in order to make a bonus or a commission. But he is adamant that he always refunded money to anyone who brought a horse back, unless it was a horse he reclaimed for neglect.

When West confronted Stiffler with his concerns, he says Stiffler ordered him away. Since then, West has been trying to access the nonprofit's tax records, to no avail.

Stiffler claims that West is a radical, right-wing weirdo who creeped out the other volunteers and destroyed the rescue's database when he left. "He turns around and says, 'Bill, I want to see your 990s,'" says Stiffler, who has not yet filed an annual report with the state this year. "I'm like, 'Fuck you, John. Kiss my ass. Come over here, you piece of shit.� He knows it's going to be difficult for me to get my 990s. I have to go back through bank statements and brand inspections, because I don't have the information any longer."

But this isn't the first time Stiffler's had financial -- or people -- troubles. He has been taken to civil court over unpaid debts at least a dozen times, including failure to pay child support last year. Reports from the special advocate in his divorce case described Stiffler as a man with a drinking problem who would start a fight at a public place in front of his children, a man whom the children worried would not take care of the family's pet dog if it were left in his possession.

At the September 29, 2004, sentencing hearing, Stiffler's attorney argued that his client did not have the money to pay his child-support obligations. The judge disagreed, saying Stiffler "dealt with the horse-rescue agency as his private pocketbook. He withdrew money from it at will for his own purposes. None of those purposes benefited the children."

Stiffler's own lawyer said his client had used the horse rescue's accounts to pay his mortgage for two or three months and "treated those accounts as personal in the past," but the lawyer said he advised Stiffler such actions violated 501(c)(3) and corporate-shield rules.

The judge sentenced him to jail until he came up with the back $11,401.66 owed; after spending about four hours inside, Stiffler covered the entire amount.

Still, Stiffler maintains that he hasn't used the rescue for his own purposes and that the adoption fees, which range from $500 to $3,000, have never covered his expenses. "When I say this is a nonprofit, it's a nonprofit," he says. "I'm in foreclosure. I'm filing bankruptcy. I'm so broke I can't pay attention. So if they think I'm absconding with all this dough, I sure wish they'd tell me where I put it, because I must have Alzheimer's.

"My intention when I started this thing was really to do something good," he adds. "I can be a very difficult person to deal with. I just don't like it when people screw with me."

Source: Westword.Com - September 19, 2005
Update posted on Nov 22, 2005 - 11:35AM

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References

	Rocky Mountain News - Nov 18, 2005
	Rocky Mountain News - Nov 19, 2005

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5 horses, 1 goat neglectedCentennial, CO (US)

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5 horses, 1 goat neglected
Centennial, CO (US)