Woman explains why she kept 100 dead cats in her freezer

A Jackson county couple is accused of keeping at least 100 dead cats in a freezer that didn't work. Now, they say they're being targeted because of their religion. Gabriella Bernabei says she kept the cats in the freezer because she hadn't found the right time to bury the cats. She says she's Wiccan and in her religion you honor the animal by returning it to Mother Earth. She believes it's her Wiccan beliefs that got her in trouble with the law. But, the sheriff says she and her boyfriend were mistreating their cats.

It was in an un-working freezer in the back of a garage that the Jackson County Sheriff's Department says it found 100 dead cats accumulated over a year and half. The woman who put them there says that number is closer to 50 and says the freezer was working. Bernabei says she brought some of the cats with her from Illinois when her family moved to Jackson County. She says others weren't necessarily theirs, but every animal deserves a burial and she was just waiting for the right moment to return them to the earth.



"That's what you do with a dead animal waiting for a burial. (It was) just proper storage until then. That was responsible," says Bernabei. Bernabei and her boyfriend Robert Grassi are accused of mistreating animals and not meeting cat sanitation standards. "The unkempt house and the combination of the fecal matter from the animals with other contributing factors did not make the conditions of the home livable," says Jackson County Sheriff Duane Waldera.

A couple weeks ago, social services removed the couple’s three children and placarded the home. "It’s unfortunate that children have to live in a situation like that. But, that's why we have so many agencies—the sheriff's office as well as health and human services. It's too bad that it has to come to that but that's what we're here for—to protect the children," Waldera says. Seventeen cats were taken to the Jackson County Animal Shelter.

With news video.