At Rescuer’s Home, 90 Tigers Found Dead

More than 90 dead tigers, including 58 cubs stuffed into freezers, were discovered at the Riverside County home of a noted animal rescuer by authorities who also uncovered a menagerie of malnourished animals roaming the property.

Officials who carried out the Tuesday morning raid were looking for a single juvenile tiger. Instead, they came across 11 tiger and leopard cubs crawling around the home’s attic, two small alligators swimming in the bathtub and two hungry tigers on the porch. Behind a gate in the yard, authorities said, they found 30 dead adult tigers, some with their legs tied together.

“The worst of it was that everywhere you went on the property, there were dead animals,” said Chuck Traisi, who took the live animals to his rescue facility in San Diego County. “Everyone was in a state of disbelief. There were cats that had long been dead and in various states of decay strewn everywhere.”

A pickup truck in the yard was filled with animal skins, said Ralph Rivers, a spokesman for the Riverside County Animal Services Department.

Sheriff’s deputies arrested John Weinhart, 60, who runs a well-known animal sanctuary called Tiger Rescue in nearby Colton. But authorities said they are baffled about why Weinhart kept the dead animals.

The Tiger Rescue facility serves as a home for tigers retired from the circus and entertainment industry and has long been a popular weekend destination for families who for a small fee can see the felines.

But in November, the state Department of Fish and Game raided the Tiger Rescue headquarters. San Bernardino County prosecutors charged Weinhart with unlawful public display of tigers, breeding animals without a permit, failure to clean animal cages, and supplying the animals with insufficient food and water. He pleaded not guilty to those charges and will face trial in late May.

The latest raid occurred a few miles away at Weinhart’s home near the community of Glen Avon. Also arrested Tuesday was Weinhart’s friend Marla Smith. Both were charged with one count of child endangerment because the couple’s 8-year-old son lived among the animals, said Paul Dickerson, a Riverside County deputy district attorney. The boy was turned over to the county’s social services department.

Prosecutors said they are deciding what charges involving the animals might be appropriate.

Wendelin Rae Ringel, a veterinarian who worked for Weinhart, also was arrested and charged with animal cruelty.

Steve Jeffries, a spokesman for Tiger Rescue, strongly denied that Weinhart or the other suspects did anything to harm the animals.

The live cubs were placed at Weinhart’s five-acre property because they required hand-feeding every four hours, Jeffries said, adding that the alligators were personal pets.

He said the couple’s child wasn’t in danger. “I’ve known that kid since he was in diapers and he’s always seemed healthy to me,” Jeffries said. “I have a 4-year-old daughter and my daughter has been around the [cubs] since she was basically born.”

Jeffries also disputed allegations by authorities that they discovered 100 dead animals at Weinhart’s home. He said that there were well fewer than 30 corpses, and that most of the animals had been dead for at least five years. He said he did not know why the dead animals were on the property or how they got there.

When asked about the 58 dead cubs in freezers, Jeffries replied: “We keep them for research reasons.”

Weinhart has operated his rescue operation for 30 years. Tiger Rescue started at his Glen Avon home, but a zoning change in the 1990s barred him from keeping tigers there, and the sanctuary was moved to Colton. Keeping a wild animal requires a permit from the state Department of Fish and Game, and local zoning must allow it.

Weinhart’s home is surrounded by a tall chain-link and plywood fence and backs up to a drainage ditch. A large stucco archway stands at the entrance and is topped by iron figurines of lions. The smell of feces was strong outside the home Wednesday, where several junked cars sat.

Officials said they were still trying to determine why so many dead animals were on the property.

“We may or may not end up with a conclusion about these things,” said Mike McBride, assistant chief at the state Department of Fish and Game.

Authorities said they raided Weinhart’s home in search of a single tiger that they could not locate during earlier searches of the Tiger Rescue facility. They had received an anonymous tip that the tiger was at his house.

Tippi Hedren, the former movie actress who runs a wildlife sanctuary in Acton, said she visited Tiger Rescue a few years ago when it was still in Glen Avon. She said she was “disgusted” by its filthy conditions. The animals lived in their own waste, she said, and did not have enough to drink because the only water was in upside-down trash lids. Hedren said she called the U.S. Department of Agriculture to complain but does not know whether any action was taken.

“I wish I could get inside his head,” Hedren said. “In my wildest imagination I cannot understand how anyone could do this.”

The average tiger has four to six cubs per litter, said Dr. Jennifer Conrad, an exotic-animal veterinarian. “Unless [the deaths happened] over the last 15 years ... 58 is a huge number of animals, especially cubs,” she said.

A contagious virus, such as canine distemper, could spread through a facility and cause such a high number of deaths, Conrad said.

Wayne Pacelle, vice president of the Humane Society of the United States, said there has been an increase in the number of tigers being raised for the exotic pet trade under the guise of a rescue facility.

“We call them pseudo-sanctuaries,” he said. “They’re primarily engaged in commercial activities while passing themselves off as a nonprofit.”

Neighbors in Glen Avon said Wednesday that they had come to accept Weinhart’s compound as part of the community.

Josephine Franco-Mercado, 51, who has lived next door to Weinhart since 1987, said her daughter tape-recorded the tigers snoring before leaving for college in case she missed home.