Animal hoarder sent back to jail

JOLIET -- Although a Will County judge recently gave a Paxton woman probation in an animal abuse case, he's changed his mind.

Elizabeth Brown, 64, did not obey Will County Judge Richard Schoenstedt's orders. Now she could be sentenced early next year to one to three years in prison.

Brown, whose address is alternately listed in court records as Joliet Township, Paxton and Ashkum, was arrested Jan. 25, 2008, by Will County police and charged with cruelty to animals, a felony.

A few days before her arrest and on one of the coldest days of that year, humane society investigators and Will County police seized 18 starving dogs -- animals that belonged to Brown -- from two locations. Most were in an unheated barn in Manhattan Township, and the others were in the yard of an empty house Brown owned on Loganberry Lane in Joliet Township.

The animals were in pitiful shape, starving, thirsty and dirty. One had lost part of an ear to frostbite, and another had a baseball-sized tumor and glaucoma. Authorities later removed 10 cats from inside the same unheated and unoccupied Joliet Township home.

Brown has a long history of hoarding animals and has been charged and convicted of similar crimes in other Illinois counties. She also is currently facing similar charges in Ford County.

Brown pleaded guilty Sept. 25 to the Will County charges, and Schoenstedt gave her probation.

Brown received that sentence because the dogs' and cats' lives were saved.

They were adopted by owners who now love them, the judge said.

But Schoenstedt also sounded stern during that hearing. He forbid Brown from owning pets of any kind. He also told her to visit her probation officer Sept. 28, warning Brown that if she didn't, he would send her back to jail and reconsider his decision.

Then Will County Assistant State's Attorney Nicole Moore, a lawyer who recently has been in the spotlight as part of the team prosecuting Drew Peterson and also handles many of the office's animal cruelty cases, learned something. At the time of her sentencing hearing, Brown owned two cats and didn't make the judge aware of that fact. She also had been late to see her probation officer. Moore alerted the judge, and he signed a warrant for Brown's arrest.

On Oct. 28, Brown appeared in court represented by Dan Kennedy. After a hearing, Schoenstedt made good on his promise. He decided that probation was not the right sentenced for Brown. He sent her back to jail and ordered her held without bond.

"Petition to revoke (her bond) is granted based on the defendant misleading the court and still having animals in her possession after she was ordered not to," the judge said, according to court documents.

Schoenstedt scheduled Brown to return to court at 9:30 a.m. Jan. 6 to be sentenced for the second time on the cruelty charge.