Trail of Dead Turtles Leads to Cruelty Case : Animals: Operator of a Canoga Park seafood firm faces charges after hundreds of the creatures are found dead or dying.

The case began with a malodorous van, and by the time investigators tracked the evidence across two counties, the body count had risen above 700.

Seven hundred dead red-eared turtles, sliders, coolers, diamond-backed terrapins and eastern painted turtles, that is.

They died in horrible ways--baked, crushed, drowned, starved and dehydrated, with cracks in their shells and gaping wounds on their limbs, authorities said. Live turtles spent days squeezed next to dead ones. Some became infested with maggots.

“It’s probably the worst case of animal cruelty that I’ve seen,” said Deputy City Atty. Don Cocek, who filed misdemeanor animal cruelty and neglect charges Tuesday against Mark Rommel Osterholt, the 28-year-old operator of a Canoga Park seafood company.

“They were inside burlap bags, thrown on top of each other,” the prosecutor added. “We have a photograph of a turtle, and it’s still alive, with its head crushed and its brains coming out.”

In addition to the animal cruelty charges, the 12-count complaint filed in Van Nuys Municipal Court accuses Osterholt of illegally possessing and bringing snapping turtles into California.

City officials said they believe Osterholt got the turtles from a business associate in Arkansas and sold them to restaurants and seafood outlets in California.

The case of the maltreated turtles began to unfold May 13, when West Hills residents, fearful of finding a human body, asked construction workers to check inside a foul-smelling van that had been parked outside their condominium complex for several days.

Instead of a human corpse, the van contained 1,112 dead and dying turtles, Cocek said. Police called animal rescue workers, who removed the corpses of 121 turtles, and recovered 979 severely dehydrated ones.

The trail next led investigators with Los Angeles Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and Southern California Humane Society from West Hills to Westminster. There, the owner of a wholesale seafood warehouse saw news reports of the turtle carnage, and told authorities he was worried there might also be hundreds of dead and dying turtles in a rented storage facility.

On Aug. 9, SPCA representatives inspected the refrigerator, which had been rented by Osterholt under an agreement with the previous owner, city officials said. They found even more turtles--1,367 of them--inside five large plastic containers, each about four feet square and three feet deep.

Of those turtles, 643 already had died, but 724 were still alive. The living turtles were taken to a shelter where their body temperatures were brought back to normal, and they were force-fed and given antibiotics, said Cocek. Species found at the warehouse included mud turtles, sliders, map turtles, red-eared turtles and snapping turtles, Cocek said.

Many of the dead turtles, he added, had drowned beneath the corpses of other turtles that had been crushed or starved.

The investigation also uncovered an incident Nov. 3, linking Osterholt to a California Department of Fish and Game warden’s discovery of illegally imported snapping turtles at a market in the 600 block of North Spring Street. The market owner told inspectors he had purchased the turtles from Osterholt and Sons in Canoga Park.

City officials said it is illegal to possess snapping turtles in California because they are aggressive and carnivorous, and therefore threaten native wildlife.

Osterholt could not be reached Tuesday. He is scheduled to surrender in Van Nuys Municipal Court for arraignment on Oct. 25. The charges carry maximum penalties of six months in county jail and $20,000 in fines.

Meanwhile, the surviving turtles were brought back to health and released to the wild, many of them outside California. SPCA spokesman Madeline Bernstein declined to be more specific, saying, “They’re in my turtle witness relocation program.”