‘Out to Kill,’ Says Eccentric S.D. Fugitive : Warnings: Ex-kennel owner Ruby Mae Brown, who lost lengthy court battles over guns and animal abuse, talks about death and killing from her Nevada hide-out.

Last fall, Ruby Mae Brown found herself embroiled in yet another court case involving allegations of animal neglect at the kennel she used to run, Kelly’s Pet Hotel.

In the midst of it, she vanished from San Diego and the Morena Avenue kennel.

The case produced a no-bail warrant for her arrest--should she ever return. She says she won’t.

Brown is on the lam--holed up, it turns out, in a motor home park near Las Vegas. It also turns out she drove to Sacramento, to San Francisco and to Washington, D.C., trying to get President Bush and Gov. Deukmejian, among others, interested in her travails--but to no avail.

She claims there is no justice for her in San Diego. Every judge in town is against her, she says. The kennel is closed and all of her animals and all of her property have been taken away or sold off, she says.

“I am hurt so much I can’t keep killing off my mind,” she said in a 27-page letter to The Times.

The letter, a rambling recital of Brown’s legal wrangles, contains nine references to death or killing. This is another: “I will fight for justice or I am ready to die trying and I will not die alone.”

The detail of the lengthy legal battles is a prelude to the purpose of the letter, a request for an investigation of her many court files. In the letter, Brown said the files will reveal “the crimes that the state and county employees are doing,” a contention various officials said was unfounded.

In a phone call this week, her first interview since disappearing, Brown said she assuredly meant to include each of the nine references to death or killing. But she added that she was “not trying to alarm people” because her intent was uncertain.

“Everybody tells me you should never say you’re going to kill somebody. Perhaps I shouldn’t,” Brown said in the call. There isn’t a phone at her motor home, and she has to use one at a friend’s home nearby.

“But before this is over, I’m going to say on a stack of Bibles, I’m going to fight to get my stuff back--or I’m going to die trying,” she said.

For any number of judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys, as well as the San Diego Humane Society and the county Department of Animal Control, the issue is whether the saga of Ruby Mae Brown, 63, will ever be over. For nearly 20 years, she has been in and out of San Diego County courts.

Brown has had criminal cases brought against her in San Diego County for offenses ranging from animal abuse to child endangerment to petty theft. There are, however, no felony convictions on her record.

She has served a variety of jail terms in connection with her kennel business. In January and February, 1989, she was jailed repeatedly because she failed to surrender to authorities an assault rifle she had recently bought.

Brown was freed when the rifle was turned over to a judge. In her letter, Brown said she had no intention of ever returning to the Las Colinas women’s jail.

“I will die before I will ever go to that jail again,” she said.

About the same time, a judge ordered Brown to see psychiatrists. They found her mentally competent.

In 1970, Brown was in a car crash that left her with brain damage, she said in the letter. A couple years later, doctors recommended that she “get dogs for brain therapy,” she added in the letter.

She liked dogs--especially poodles--so much that she bought Kelly’s and took it over in 1981.

Over the years, inspections of her boarding facility found dog runs filled with feces and animals suffering from neglect. But Brown said in the phone call, “I have never hurt an animal.”

Repeatedly, Brown has been inspected, warned, cited, fined and convicted for conditions at the kennel. In the letter, she repeated a contention she has made many times over the years, claiming that Animal Control and the Humane Society conspired to put her out of business.

For five years, after Brown was convicted in 1984 of 20 counts of animal abuse, county officials tried repeatedly to get the kennel closed.

After an appeals court upheld her conviction, the kennel was finally shut down last year. Later, the property was sold.

The Animal Control officer who primarily has handled Brown’s case, Jim Johnston, drew particular enmity from Brown in the letter.

In 1984, she bought a double yellow-head parrot, which she named Borrego, for $3,000, she said in the letter. But, after the kennel was closed, Johnston took Borrego and various other birds and, she said, sold Borrego for $500.

Brown, however, could not offer any substantiation of her allegation.

“If I had killed Jim Johnston years ago, I would be a free woman from that murder today,” she said in the letter.

At another point in the letter, she said, “I have gone through so much till (sic) now I am out to kill unless I get my merchandise returned to me--especially my birds and Borrego.”

Calls to Johnston were referred to Sally Hazzard, the director of Animal Control, who declined to comment on threats aimed at Johnston. Hazzard also declined to comment about the parrot.

“Mrs. Brown is more than welcome to call the department and find out directly about any of the animals that we’ve dealt with that relate to her,” Hazzard said.

Elsewhere in the letter, Brown referred to Fred Lee, executive director of the Humane Society, saying she will “die trying to get him in the (position) so he will have to tell the truth.”

Lee said he was “concerned but not afraid.” He added, “I don’t doubt that Ruby is capable of this. I’m sure she’s capable of carrying out her threat or she wouldn’t go to the trouble of buying guns.”

Lee, Hazzard and the prosecutor assigned to the most recent of Brown’s cases took issue with the contention in Brown’s letter that her files would show wrongdoing by state or county officials.

“It’s Mrs. Brown who has failed to be reasonable with regard to the charges and all of the acts she has committed that underlie the charges,” Deputy City Atty. Fritz Ortlieb said.

“If she had put just a fraction of the time and money into taking care of the kennel that she has in litigating these matters, both the community and kennel would have been better off,” Ortlieb said. “And she would be better off, too.”

Last Oct. 25, a San Diego Municipal Court jury convicted Brown of four counts of animal cruelty and one of interfering with a county official in the performance of his duty, all misdemeanors.

A sentencing agreement, reached in a plea bargain in a separate but related animal neglect case, would have allowed Brown to be on three years’ probation during which she could not possess more than six animals and not house animals for a fee.

But she balked at an additional requirement--that she not own or possess a firearm during those three years. And on Nov. 1, to “stay out of jail again,” she said in the letter, she left San Diego.

On Nov. 30, Municipal Court Judge Robert McDonald sentenced her to 89 days in jail. On Dec. 13, McDonald issued a no-bail arrest warrant after she did not show up to begin serving her sentence, according to court records.

Brown, meanwhile, was on the road. She said she walked unannounced into the offices of Gov. Deukmejian, Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp, the State Bar, the California Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court, Sen. Pete Wilson and Sen. Alan Cranston, trying unsuccessfully to get someone interested in her case.

Though she had written several letters and fired off three or four telegrams to President Bush, White House security guards did not let her pass when she showed up there, too, also unannounced, she said.

So she settled in Las Vegas, because it’s close to San Diego, she said in the phone call. She has no job and lives off the proceeds from the sale of a house in San Diego, she said.

Brown insisted that she is not fleeing from the law. Rather, she said there “is too much friction” for her in San Diego.

Brown also said that she must insist on the right to own a gun. “There’s times when people at home do need a gun for protection,” she said in the phone call.

Currently, she said, she owns only a handgun. Until six weeks ago, she owned two submachine guns, an Uzi and an AK-47, but sold them, she said, adding that it’s no problem for her to go to Arizona and buy a gun, she said.

Brown said that she stands by the comments she made in her lengthy letter about death and killing. But she said in the call that she’s not sure whether she intends to carry out any threat.