Encino Home Found Overrun by Rats

The Los Angeles city attorney’s office Thursday filed four charges against a 77-year-old Encino woman, accusing her of allowing her home to be overrun by rats.

Inspectors from the county Department of Health Services found “rats running rampant through the house” when they went to the home of Wilma Bevercombe Stieb on Woodvale Road, said John Reynolds, a county health officer. She was charged with harboring rats and vermin, having inadequate plumbing, owning too many animals and causing a public nuisance.

Stieb declined comment.

Reynolds said Stieb’s neighbors complained that there were so many rats in her house they were spilling over into neighbors’ yards. “She let them in” her house, Reynolds said, adding that some rats were an estimated 20 inches long from nose to tail. “The curtains were shaking because there were so many rats clinging to them.” he said.

The city Department of Animal Regulation also impounded 11 cats found living in the kitchen.

Stieb, who earned a master’s degree in psychology from the University of Idaho in 1933, was a community worker and author of a book, “Occupations in the State of Idaho,” published in 1934, according to “Who’s Who in California.”

Authorities ordered the house closed to human habitation, Reynolds said, and Stieb is living elsewhere. Neighbors said she lived alone in the big house, situated in an upper-middle-class neighborhood, with a swimming pool and gated driveway, Reynolds said.

In compliance with health department orders, Stieb hired an exterminator, Pestbusters Co. of Van Nuys. The company president, Philip Noud, said the house was fumigated this week. He estimated his company would have to remove more than 100 dead rats.

Stieb is scheduled to appear in Van Nuys Municipal Court on Jan. 6, said Deputy City Atty. Jessica Silver. If convicted of the charges, she could receive a fine of up to $2,500 or two years in jail.