EUREKA SPRINGS, Arkansas--"Turpentine Creek should be called Death Row," says Los Angeles animal care consultant Kathi Travers. Formerly in charge of wildlife rescue for the American SPCA, and later employed in a similar role with the World Society for the Protection of Animals, Travers visited Turpentine Creek twice in mid-to-late 1996, in part to verify that improvements pledged after the sanctuary formed links to DePaul University in Chicago were actually made. Each time Travers left in tears--and called ANIMAL PEOPLE before the shock wore off. "
It was the worst so-called sanctuary I've ever seen," Travers reaffirmed on February 9, 1998. She hasn't been back, but--like ANIMAL PEOPLE--has heard often from others who have visited more recently.
"It's really a bad roadside zoo," Travers added. "They say it's 430 acres, but all the big cats are crammed into just a few acres. The only animal I saw there who was even properly secured was a monkey. I'd rather see animals euthanized than be put at Turpentine Creek. How often have you heard me say that about anywhere?"
Interviewing Travers dozens of times over the past 10 years, about substandard zoos and sanctuaries all over the U.S., Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean, ANIMAL PEOPLE has never heard Travers say anything of the kind before. Nor has ANIMAL PEOPLE ever had more different people call with objections about the care of animals at such a remote facility, whose impression sharply conflicts with the glowing self-portrayal on the Turpentine Creek Foundation web site.
Tried to give place a break
Extensive complaints by animal rights activists and other exotic cat rescuers were initially affirmed by veteran environmental reporter Elaine Hopkins of the Peoria Journal-Star, who has written often about animal sanctuaries and the problem of big cats proliferating in private hands. However, ANIMAL PEOPLE delayed writing about Turpentine Creek after Hopkins' visit, upon learning of the then new DePaul connection.
DePaul president John P. Minogue now heads the Turpentine Creek Foundation board. DePaul professor Dolores McWhinnie directs an Exotic Cat Management program featuring internships at Turpentine Creek, which in February 1998 claimed to keep more than 90 exotic cats.
Instead of proceeding with an expose, ANIMAL PEOPLE began filing requests for the Turpentine Creek filings of IRS Form 990 financial disclosure statements, and for any USDA Animal Welfare Act enforcement reports about the sanctuary. Either a before-and-after "good news" story or an expose might have resulted, depending on what the DePaul input accomplished.
The USDA data still hasn't come, but the IRS told us on December 29, 1997 that it could find no Turpentine Creek Exotic Animal Refuge filings, from any year. We reported the IRS statement in the January/February 1998 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE, as part of our eighth annual abstract of Form 990 data from noted animal protection societies.
That brought a prompt objection from Turpentine Creek Foundation accountant and board member Kerry M. Kerstetter, who faxed copies of the first page of Turpentine Creek filings of IRS Form 990 from 1994, 1995, and 1996, and mailed us the complete 1996 filing.
Yet the documents raised more questions than they answered. Turpentine Creek claimed assets of $540,435 in 1996, for instance, after claiming a cumulative deficit of $35,647 in 1995. The assets increased by $152,315 more than the income figures could explain.
Declared program spending rose from $154,327 in 1994 to $365,436 in 1996, but Turpentine Creek claimed to spend nothing on either fundraising or management in all three years.
The 1996 filing claimed that all funds were spent on "Care and maintenance of ill, abused, neglected and unwanted animals." Yet it acknowledged that Turpentine Creek attracted revenue through activities including "Education and information to the public on the animals cared for by the refuge, membership support newsletter to inform of status of the refuge and animals, (and) sales of animal-related products."
Income from those activities was declared, but the amounts invested to raise the income were not. The National Charities Information Bureau, a private watchdog whose guidelines ANIMAL PEOPLE uses in reviewing Form 990 filings, considers most investment in income-producing activity to be "fundraising" expense.
Financial statements attached to the 1996 Turpentine Creek filings listed amounts spent on ads and promotion, and for running a bed-and-breakfast, which the NCIB would also consider to be mostly fundraising. In addition, the statements listed expenditures for vehicle use, insurance, licenses and permits, office supplies, legal and accounting service, and property taxes, much or all of which the NCIB would regard as management cost.
Statement 9 explained, "Title of refuge land is in the name of the foundation president, and is leased from her at the same cost as her mortgage payments."
Although animal shelters and refuges often lease space from officers and directors, a jury in Travis County, Texas, on September 20, 1997 found that a seemingly similar mortgage-paying arrangement by Texas Exotic Feline Foundation founder Gene Reitenauer constituted an illegal comingling of assets. A federal court upheld the ruling on December 8, 1997. Reitenauer was evicted from her house at the TEFF site in January 1998.
Has run afoul of law
Turpentine Creek refuge cofounder Tanya Alexenia Syrenia Smith on October 20, 1997 pleaded innocent to one count of felonious theft of public benefits, for declaring on a series of applications for food stamps and Medicaid benefits that she and her son had no income other than the son's Social Security payments, and that they were without other resources. According to the charges against Smith, she had actually received $5,000 per month rent from the Turpentine Creek Foundation since April 1, 1994; had received annual income of $20,000 plus 5% interest, 1992-1994; and had received income of $34,122 from January 1995 to the date the case was filed. In addition, Smith received income from leasing a van and a pickup truck to the Turpentine Creek Foundation until July 1, 1997.
ANIMAL PEOPLE at deadline had requested but not yet received comment and/or updates from Kerstetter, Turpentine Creek Foundation director of advancement Michael Gibbs, and/or Turpentine Creek attorney John Libby.
[UPDATE: Subsequent to this expose, we understand, DePaul University severed association with Turpentine Creek.]