Virginia Wetzel - Philiadelphia

Mar 26, 2010: Woman who hoarded pets goes to jail

By Joseph A. Slobodzian

The city seized and sealed her Port Richmond house, removed 21 dogs and cats she said she had rescued from the streets, and hauled out trash piled six to eight feet high.

Yesterday, after insisting she did nothing wrong and then refusing to divulge her new address, 70-year-old convicted "animal hoarder" Virginia Wetzel was off to jail for six to 12 months.

"I've never hurt any animal in my life," Wetzel, a state welfare caseworker, told Municipal Judge Karen Yvette Simmons. "I have never intentionally even killed a roach."

But Simmons cited evidence from the nonjury trial in which she convicted Wetzel of 25 counts of animal cruelty: 12 flea-ridden cats, 9 dogs, and 4 decomposing, mostly skeletal, cats found Sept. 30 in Wetzel's malodorous, trash-filled Monmouth Street house..." More

Mar 26, 2010: Woman who had score of dogs, some dead, is jailed

By MENSAH M. DEAN

The "Dog Lady" got bit by Lady Justice yesterday.

Virginia Wetzel, who last month was convicted of 25 counts of cruelty to animals for hoarding 21 live and four dead pets in her squalid Port Richmond home, was sentenced to six to 12 months in jail.

Wetzel, 70, formerly of Monmouth Street near Belgrade, must report to jail in 30 days, but was briefly held on contempt charges after refusing to provide her current address to Philadelphia Municipal Court Judge Karen Y. Simmons.

The judge also ordered Wetzel to serve probation for four years and pay $32,300 in restitution to the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

She also can't have pets for 15 years, Simmons ordered.

Wetzel, a widow with no children, earned her nickname from weary neighbors who complained about animal odors wafting from her home. She told the judge that she never harmed any of the animals.

Evidence from her case paints a different picture. PSPCA officers entered her two-story home on Sept. 30 after receiving a tip on the agency's hot line.

In addition to finding a filthy brood of 12 cats and nine dogs, the officers discovered the skeletal remains of four other animals, two of them under Wetzel's bed.

It took the officers two hours to clear a path through ceiling-high debris to reach the animals...." More

Oct,1, 2010: 21 animals -- some dead, others alive -- rescued from filthy Port Richmond home

By DAVID CHANG

For Port Richmond residents, it was the smell that hit them first.

“It smelled like something was dead, that’s how I could describe it. About last week it smelled like something died and I couldn’t figure out what that smell was,” said Joseph Lisacchi.

The disgusting odor came from the home of 70-year old Virginia Wetzel. After complaints from various neighbors, the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (PSPCA) received a search warrant to enter the woman's home Wednesday.

The house was covered in trash and feces and there was no running water or bathrooms, according to officials. Yet the most shocking discovery of all was the 21 animals that resided there. Nine were dogs, 12 were cats, and four were dead.

“It took us two hours to clear a path to get to the animals,” said SPCA official George Bengal. “One of the upstairs middle bedrooms housed about five cats and to walk in the room, the feces was over a foot deep in that bedroom.”

Wetzel was charged with animal cruelty back in 2004 for placing kennels outside of her house. She was also wanted on a bench warrant for not appearing in court. Investigators say that instead of getting rid of the kennels, Wetzel moved the animals back inside..." More

20 Animals Seized From Filthy Home Pictures & video

Woman who had 56 cats gets year in jail

By BILL MCKELWAY

A judge yesterday described conditions in a home overrun with dozens of cats as the most grotesque he has seen in 25 years of judicial service.

Staring silently at a sheaf of pictures of the dwelling's interior, Chesterfield General District Judge Robert D. Laney blanched and told the home's occasional occupant that the pictures were worse than those he has viewed of German prison camps, homicide victims and lifeless teenage drivers.

Moments later, Laney sentenced Patti Wheeler, 52, also known as "Cookie," to a year in jail on multiple counts of animal cruelty. And he certified a felony charge of destruction of private property -- the house, now condemned -- to a grand jury.

On May 14 last year, animal control officers found 56 cats living in filth so pervasive that there was no place in the three-bedroom home not covered in feces, skeletal remains, or dried blood and hair. The house is in the 4500 block of Treely Road.

More than 30 of the cats had to be euthanized, including two whose eyeballs had abscessed so severely that the organs collapsed. Another had a bladder the size of a softball.

C.T. Coats, an animal control officer, testified that the house reeked of ammonia from urine, children's swimming pools were filled with animal excrement, and the remains of dead animals littered the home. One carcass was found in a cutlery drawer.

Coats said he and his fellow officers found a mother cat suckling her kitten atop a skeleton. There were also four dogs, two of which were euthanized.

"The [jail] time is for the suffering you subjected on these animals," the judge told Wheeler, who will appeal the cruelty convictions to circuit court and have the property charge heard there.

"I don't see how you could turn a blind eye to what I have just seen in these pictures," the judge said..." More