Lori Ann Clays, 30, of Scotts Valley and her parents Richard Paul Beckwith, 57, and Carol Yvonne Beckwith, 53, of San Jose have been arrested on charges of child endangerment. Bail for Clays was set at $75,000 and $100,000 for the Beckwiths who were also charged with cruelty to animals.
The Beckwiths have a 39-acre farm at Monterey Highway and Bailey Avenue. They sell fighting cocks and many different animals. The authorities described the farm as a place so squalid that human waste was pumped into the basement of a house where two of the girls slept and the animals were ravaged by ring worms, mange and conjunctivitis.
An official said the place stank and there were so many flies swarming around that a nearby school called the authorities to complain.
They were charged with letting children sleep and play barefoot on a South San Jose farm covered with feces, heaps of garbage, rodents and more than 1,000 ill-kept animals, many of them diseased.
This was the third time since 1991 that the girls have been removed form the property and placed in protective custody. The Santa Clara County District Attorney Cynthia Severly questions county social service officials for their handling of the case.
The Beckwiths had sold animals at a flea market for years under the name of Beckwith's Rabbit Tree. Richard Beckwith said that up to 1,500 animals had been housed at the site for sale as food, pets or other purposes. The animals included: pigs, goats, chickens, ducks, turkeys, parakeets, cockatiels, finches and fighting cocks.
The authorities recovered more than 100 dead animals, and had to put more than 100 to sleep because they were in such poor health.
Droppings from rodents and roaches were discovered in kitchen drawers and cabinets, a dead mouse found in a cup above the sink. Clothing stacked in a bedroom closet was "crawling with roaches and covered with their debris."
A woman reported seeing an estimated 500 rabbits in rusty wire cages stacked atop of one another with no water, in a barn whose floor "was so click with urine and fecal matter she had to hold onto cages" as she walked by. Many animals had "urine burns on their feet, open wounds or abscesses .. and large tumor-like growths about the neck area of some of the male rabbits."
Authorities removed all the animals the site and many of the buildings were bulldozed. Some of the animals that survived were given to private individuals or local 4-H clubs. Neighborhood MapFor more information about the Interactive Animal Cruelty Maps, see the map notes.
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