Pet Lover’s Lament : When Her Parrot Got Stolen, She Tried to Get Someone’s Knee Broken

Georgiana Griffith admits that she may have acted foolishly when she went out to hire a thug to “break a knee” of the man she suspected of stealing the parrot she had kept and loved for 11 years.

“The average person couldn’t understand unless he had a parrot,” she said in an interview Wednesday. “I never had any intentions of hurting anybody. All I ever wanted was my bird back.”

Hard as she tried, the 46-year-old North Hollywood woman never did get back “Mellow,” the yellow-nape parrot that she considered more a child than a pet. What she got instead was trouble with the law: three years’ probation for “solicitation to commit a crime” because the thug she tried to hire for $2,000 turned out to be an undercover police officer.

Griffith had been accused of soliciting a murder because she had told the undercover officer that it did not matter if the man was “killed, maimed or stabbed,” as long as she got her bird back, according to court records. But that charge was dropped when Griffith agreed to plead guilty to the misdemeanor charge of soliciting a crime “likely to produce great bodily injury.”

“It was felt that she had not wanted a person to be killed,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. JoAnn Barton, who helped prosecute the case in Pasadena Superior Court. “What she really wanted was her bird back.”

Meanwhile, the man Griffith had wanted injured was arrested and charged with the theft but was acquitted in August when a Los Angeles Municipal Court jury could not reach a verdict. The city attorney’s office in Los Angeles, which prosecuted the case, has no plan to refile charges.

The case of the pilfered parrot began unfolding in April, when Griffith left the bird at a Hollywood pet shop for two weeks while she was out of town, according to court records.

Upon her return, Griffith said, the shop owner told her that Mellow, which had a dwarfed left wing and an injured right wing, had been stolen April 18 and that police had arrested a suspect. Griffith found little comfort in the news of an arrest.

“Just because he was arrested, booked and tried doesn’t mean I get my bird back,” she said.

Griffith, a former actress and singer who came to California from Texas in 1962 “to be a star,” then wrote to the suspect and offered him $2,000 for the parrot’s return.

When she received no response, Griffith said, she hired a private detective, put up posters, ran newspaper ads offering a $2,000 reward and even consulted a so-called psychic.

Finally, on June 27, Griffith went to a coffee shop in Alhambra where a friend had told her that she could find a gang member to put out a “contract” on the alleged thief, according to court records.

She approached a coffee shop security guard, who told her that he knew a man who would do the job for $500. Griffith left her name and telephone number with the guard, who then informed police of the incident.

The next day, an undercover officer posing as a “hit man” met with Griffith, who told him that she would pay $2,000 to have the alleged thief “really shaken up, a broken leg, a kneecap, whatever,” according to court records.

Griffith, however, said she told the officer that she only wanted to scare the alleged thief.

“Those were catch phrases that certainly were never meant to be taken literally,” she said. “Unfortunately, I was very stupid.”

Even though she has other pets--2 dogs, a cockatoo, a cockateel, 6 tortoises, 12 fish and a new parrot the shop owner gave her to replace the stolen bird--Griffith said she still misses Mellow.

“Every night, before I go to sleep, the last thing I say to myself is, ‘Just let him come back,’ ” she said. “No drama. Just let him come back.”