Accused animal hoarder faces similar charges in Riverside — under different name BY JAMES BURGER, Californian staff writer e-mail: jburger@bakersfield.com | Friday, Jul 18 2008 12:37 PM Last Updated: Friday, Jul 18 2008 5:44 PM Alleged animal abuser Anita Gilbert, arrested in Tehachapi Wednesday, may actually be Barbara Ryan, a Hemet woman who officials say skipped out on similar animal abuse charges in Riverside County in 2006. Our readers recommend: Appeals court throws out child rape conviction Man run over by city truck in Jefferson Park dies Valley fever infects brain of Bakersfield teen hospitalized at UCLA Man pleads guilty to shining laser at sheriff’s helicopter Police checkpoint results in dozens of citations, arrests Related Stories: Pets rescued from nightmarish conditions; corpses found in freezer Or Barbara Ryan may be just another alias for the woman. Rita Gutierrez, field services commander for the Riverside County Department of Animal Services, said she is 100 percent certain Ryan and Gilbert are the same person. And in another twist, some of the animals seized in Kern were the same animals seized from her in Riverside County. Kern County Animal Control officers raided a home on Bear Valley Road on Wednesday and discovered Gilbert living in “deplorable” conditions with 15 dogs, 37 cats and 14 animal corpses. Kern County Senior Animal Control Officer Steve Eirich said Thursday that the case was one of the five worst in his 17-year career and described piles of discarded animal food cans two feet deep and feces-covered rooms buried in refuse. During the raid, local officials found pet carriers emblazoned with Riverside animal control’s name and phone number, Gutierrez said. They called the number. That phone call brought Gutierrez to Mojave Friday morning, where Gilbert was scheduled to be arraigned on 41 counts of felony animal abuse. Riverside officers walked back into the holding cells, saw Gilbert and knew they’d finally found the woman who’d been running from them for two years. “It’s nice to know she’s in custody right now and she won’t be hurting any more animals,” Gutierrez said. Riverside officers also discovered that several of the animals taken from Tehachapi on Wednesday are the same ones that were seized from Gilbert’s rental home in Hemet two years ago. In a jailhouse interview Thursday, Gilbert refused to take blame for the animals’ condition. TERRIBLE MEMORIES Gutierrez remembers well the conditions she and other officers discovered in September 2006 when code enforcers called them to rescue pets from a Hemet home Gilbert was renting under the Ryan name. Immaculate on the outside, the home’s inside was filled with trash and feces and the floor was soaked in urine. “Urine from the floor had wicked up into the walls. The drywall was disintegrating,” Gutierrez said. The home and the animals were infested with *censored*roaches and fleas and covered in dried feces. Riverside animal control officers rescued 15 dogs, 23 cats and several cages of mice. Then they came back for Gilbert with an arrest warrant. “We went to arrest her and she was gone,” Gutierrez said. ANIMALS RETURNED Currently animal control officers from both counties are looking into how animals from Hemet made their way back into Gilbert’s hands in Tehachapi nearly two years later. The link may be a woman named Susan Marlowe. John Welsh, public information officer for Riverside animal services, said all of Gilbert’s animals were released to Marlowe after they were rescued from Hemet in September 2006. Two months later, according to documents filed with the Kern County recorder’s office, Marlowe took out a loan to purchase property at 24492 Bear Valley Road. Price confirmed that the address was being rented by Gilbert and was the location Kern County animal officers raided Wednesday. It is where they found the animals that Riverside officials say they put into Marlowe’s care in 2006. Calls to Marlowe’s business offices in Beverly Hills were not returned. NOT IN FLORIDA Gilbert, in a jailhouse interview Thursday, said she wasn’t responsible for the condition of the animals in Tehachapi. She claimed to have been in Florida until 10 days ago, undergoing an experimental chemotherapy treatment for bone cancer. That’s not true, said Norman Maes, who owns the International Home of Pancakes restaurant on Buck Owens Boulevard in Bakersfield. He said Gilbert has been a regular customer all year. “I’ve seen her in there all year — maybe once every two weeks,” Maes said. “She has not been in Florida.” Maes said Gilbert showed a lot of interest in the stray cats that hang out behind his restaurant. “She came in one day and she said to me, ‘Have you seen that black cat? If you catch him could you hold him for me?’” Maes said. Maes said he told Gilbert he wasn’t going to get close to the cat. “She said, ‘I’m coming back later. I’m going to get him,’” Maes said. Open CalaisAdvertisement