Just ahead of a March 14 deadline, Snohomish County prosecutors filed charges on five counts of cruelty to animals in the first degree against Jean Marie Elledge, 56, of Monroe, for allegedly allowing horses to starve to death on her property and other acts of neglect.

According to court documents filed March 7, Elledge, who was arrested twice in early February on suspicion of animal cruelty, once by King County officials at her Carnation property and once in Monroe, was responsible for the deaths of at least five horses in Monroe. Between Dec. 20, 2007 and Feb 22, 2008, Elledge, who boarded horses as well as owning them, allowed a stallion named Coco, a bay mare and a chestnut horse belonging to another woman, an Appaloosa named Holly and another horse named Phantom to starve, according to prosecutors.

The charges are based heavily on the testimony of animal control officer Lisa Lyons, who had been monitoring conditions on the Monroe ranch since June 2007. In January, Lyons went to the property again, where she met a woman who had hired Elledge to board her horse. The owner told Lyons that the horses had been without hay for four days and that Elledge repeatedly let the hay run out before replenishing it.

She also told Lyons of a dead horse on the property that looked very thin. Lyons and the owner toured the farm, where they found the dead horse, as well as another under a tarp. Elledge said that she had tried to save both horses.

A vet examined the herd and determined that four more, including two owned by another woman, were at risk of their lives. Lyons instructed Elledge how to care for them, but Feb. 19, a neighbor reported them dead.

Lyons found the horses in a wood, bodies eaten by animals. A third, more recently deceased horse lay nearby. All the horses showed signs of having struggled to get to their feet for some time before dying, according to Lyons. An inspection of the horses' food yielded poor quality grain, "moldy and sour smelling with no nutritional value," the report reads.

Owners of the boarded horses were notified of their condition, and one woman arrived to find her horse Phantom on the verge of death. Phantom and another horse were taken to another local barn, where the man preparing the barn was horrified at the horse's condition. He described the horse's head as "skull-like," and said that it had open sores similar to bed sores on its skin. Not only did it have no body fat, its muscles had wasted too.

As the horse waited for the barn to be prepared, it noticed remnants a bale of straw resting nearby and began eating them. "My first impression was that he resembled the pictures I have seen of the survivors of death camps such as Bergen-Belsen and Andersonville," said the man. The horse's health continued to decline in spite of food and medical attention, and it was euthanized.

The court may file more charges if Elledge doesn't plead guilty, prosecutors wrote.
She also faces five more counts in King County. If found guilty, she could spend more than a year in jail.

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