Keep Bailing

If you’re from Southern California, you may be aware that people from around the country seem to think that California has more than its share of unusual characters. Who can blame them when they see stories like this one where one woman managed to distinguish herself from the crowd when she was arrested after skipping bail.

At the time, she was calling herself “Anita Gilbert,” which is actually the identity of a woman who died last year from cancer. Investigators are still trying to unravel her exact identity from the many she’s assumed. In fact, Bob Herman, the bondsman who brought her to jail, said that she had “rented apartments and been issued credit cards under about 10 different names.”

I know that identity theft by itself is nothing unusual these days, but how many con artists keep dead cats in their freezers?

Gilbert had initially been arrested on animal cruelty charges in 2006 in Hemet, when “neighbors complained about a stench” coming from her rented house. Investigators found 23 cats and 15 dogs in the house. This past July, she was charged again with animal cruelty when investigators found numerous sickly dogs and cats outside her Tehachapi home. The freezer contained several dead cats.

She skipped bail on both charges. By the time bail bondsman located her last month, she had acquired at least 14 more cats and had them housed in her motel room (along with yet another dead cat in the room’s freezer).

You’d think that an experienced bail bondsman would have seen it all, but this case is one for the memoirs. Herman seemed really astounded in news interviews:

”These hoarder people are the most destructive, weird people I have ever seen,” the bondsman, Bob Herman, said. ”They make normal crooks look like good citizens.”

”She is not sort of a con artist,” Herman said. “She’s one of the slickest ones I have seen in a number of years.”

You can file this one under sick, slick or just bizarre.