Thursday, January 21, 2010

TN Dognapping Story

I held up on posting about the alleged theft of a dozen rescue dogs from a dog training facility in TN because I couldn't shake the nagging question: Who would want to steal a bunch of rescues?
[T]here were nine Doberman Pinschers taken, one hound mix, one Black Lab, and one Miniature Pinscher. One dog had three legs, and another was blind. The dogs were all rescued, waiting to be adopted.
Not exactly loot you can take to the local pawn shop and turn over for some quick cash. But Twitter has been abuzz with pleas for helping to find these dogs so I've been following the story. Today I read:
Police report that Ashli Thomas, 24, of Newbern Drive, Johnson City has been arrested for filing a false police report.
[...]

According to the Johnson City Police, Thomas admitted she “made the story up because she had left the dogs unattended and had not been caring for the dogs properly.“

The owners of the business, Brad and Tamara Josselyn, along with Thomas, have been charged with eight counts of animal cruelty.

Now understand that this woman fabricated a story which included one of the dognappers stabbing her with a knife. So I'm assuming she had some sort of knife wound to show investigators. After learning that the whole robbery story was false, I can't help but wonder:

  1. What actually happened to the dogs and where are they?
  2. What could be so bad that someone would stab herself in order to offer a convincing story to the police?
I'll be staying tuned for further developments.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Owners' arrest for 8 cts of animal cruelty evidently related to dogs found at the facility starving, no water.

I have a sinking feeling that the missing dogs are dead due to neglect and that this is a clumsy attempt at a coverup.

Anonymous said...

If the dogs are dead why would someone bring attention to the situation by filing a phony police report? Dumb criminals at work?

I believe that their "rescue" has been taking donations, even recently. I wonder if the whole rescue was a money scam (some of the dogs were never altered despite being in their care for long periods).

I called their dog training school in the fall. They said they'd call me back when new classes started. They finally called me back about 2 weeks ago. Needless to say I'm disgusted and disturbed that my dog could have been in that situation and I would have been supporting them.