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Middlesex County resident Jacqueline Witt, age 64, of Haddam, is charged with four counts of animal cruelty and tampering with physical evidence, the Connecticut State Police said on Tuesday, Sept. 10.
A Massachusetts family from North Reading reached out to a company on the website Thumbtack to find a dog trainer in September 2023, police said. A woman named Josephine Ragland, who went by the name Lily, agreed to train their 3-year-old French bulldog named Charlie for $2,250, CBS News reported last year.
Ragland left the animal with Witt, who kept it in a cage in a sunroom with four other crated dogs. Each animal had limited access to food or water, police said in their report this week. Ragland guessed that Charlie likely died three or four days into its stay at Witt's home when interviewed by police.
They originally said the dog escaped and was hit by a car, according to the police report.
However, Ragland continued to send the North Reading family old photos of Charlie in training rather than informing them that the animal was dead, police said.
Witt originally told police that she buried Charlie in a shallow grave on her property. She later led police to a freshly dug hole and claimed that scavengers must have dragged the animal's body off, authorities said.
However, she later admitted to leaving the French bulldog's body in a trash bag in the sunroom. When it began to bloat and smell, she and another person drove the body to Norwichtown, more than 45 minutes from her home, and dropped it 10 to 15 feet off of the Canterbury Turnpike, a police report said.
Officers later retrieved Charlie's body. Experts at the University of Connecticut found that the dog was emaciated and had little food in its digestional track when he died, the report continued.
The other dogs in Witt's care were emancipated and reunited with their families. Some were sickly with untreated skin and eye infections and required veterinary care, police said.
A judge ordered Witt held on a $50,000 bond, authorities said. She is not allowed to have any animals if she makes bail.
Ragland was being held in a Massachusett's jail on an unrelated charge, authorities said.
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