Animal cruelty or compassion? Longtime foes square off in Leawood
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Animal cruelty or compassion? Longtime foes square off in Leawood
VIDEO
By FINN BULLERS
The Kansas City Star
No one may ever know why Risky the horse died.
Animal activist Ann Martin-Gonnerman says neglect and cruelty are to blame.
Jeff Sharon, the horse’s owner, says it was old age.
At 9 a.m. today, Leawood Municipal Judge Renee Gurney will try to untangle the story.
Sharon faces an animal cruelty charge alleging he left Risky to linger near death for at least a day last fall and refused to put him down.
If convicted, Sharon faces 180 days in jail and up to a $500 fine.
Dig deeper, and you’ll discover a battle of wills between two feisty “animal lovers” that has raged off and on for nearly three decades.
And you’ll find people who believe that suburban Leawood is no longer a good fit for a 100-animal menagerie like Sharon’s.
His Leawood Stables, at 3000 W. 135th St., sits in the direct path of growth. Upscale homes abut the north property line. Churches lie to the south and east, and shops approach from the west.
This is a tough one,” said former Johnson County Manager Gene Denton. “There are a lot of folks who just wish this would go away.”
Sharon, 63, first made headlines as a collector of exotic animals who once dreamed of opening a drive-through safari in Johnson County. Today he says his stable is a refuge for cast-off critters.
“I provide a nursing home for old and sick horses. And if I didn’t do it, the old, sick animals would go to the killers,” he said Monday in front of a 131-acre landscape of broken-down vehicles and ragged livestock.
Martin-Gonnerman, 72, of Prairie Village, helped reform animal-care practices at the Kansas City Zoo, shed light on Missouri puppy mills and pass national animal-protection laws
Now she has launched Johnson County Citizens for Animal Protection to shut Sharon down.
“This has been my life’s work to protect those who can’t speak for themselves,” she said. “How can anyone sit back and do nothing?”
Stuck in the middle are Jojo, the white horse with eye cancer; Festus, a slow-moving gray Sicilian Donkey; and Bessie, the Angus cow who refuses to be ignored.
Rams, emus, sheep, llamas and 30 bison graze nearby. All have names.
Denton says today’s court case goes beyond Risky the horse and raises troubling land-use and public health concerns. Regnier Family Ltd. owns the property.
“Ann may be seen as a cranky old woman,” said Denton, who plans to join Martin-Gonnerman’s group once it incorporates. “But it just seems to me that … this land is so imminent for development that its use for open range is no longer appropriate.”
The adversaries
Born in Atchison, Kan., Martin-Gonnerman ran a dress shop in Des Moines, Iowa, in the late 1960s. A newspaper story changed her life. There, on the front page of The Des Moines Register, were hundreds of hogs being killed as a political protest to sagging price supports for farmers.
Animals have feelings, too, she reasoned. And they hurt.
For the next decades, she traipsed through feedlots and show rings, attracting media attention with pickets and protests. She helped governments — including Leawood — draft animal-protection laws and developed a national reputation as a tireless advocate.
In the late 1970s, Martin-Gonnerman was ousted as regional director for the Humane Society of the United States, in part because of her confrontational tactics.
But Debra Duncan, director of animal facilities inspection in Kansas, described her as an “extremely rational and practical person with good common sense.”
As a boy in Chicago, Sharon longed for a pet. After finishing his childhood in Johnson County, he sold electronics in the late ’60s to an exotic animal broker.
Soon he owned a baby black bear.
His collection grew to include at one point 37 lions and tigers, two chimpanzees, a dozen baboons and scores of deer and rams that caught the attention of zoning regulators.
Yellowing newspapers describe how, in February 1980, Sharon whisked seven lions, a jaguar and a tiger out of Johnson County, just ahead of law enforcement.
The secret surfaced when pictures of the cats housed in a livestock trailer — in subzero weather with little food and water — were taken by The Kansas City Star in Douglas County.
A misdemeanor charge of animal mistreatment ended with a deadlocked jury.
Four months later, Sharon’s 200-pound bear Buster lumbered off a farm east of De Soto and remained on the lam four hours before being tranquilized.
Since then, Sharon has kept a low profile. Until now.
Tom Krause, pastor of Lord of Life Lutheran Church next door to Leawood Stables, has known Sharon a dozen years.
“I have a high regard for his care for animals,” Krause said. “Jeff’s a good ol’ boy, kind of a cowboy at heart. He has a true love for animals.”
Jerry Old, a retired executive with Hughes Aircraft, eats breakfast with Sharon nearly every day and fixes fences on the property. His granddaughter once leased a horse from Sharon, who helped the girl. She ended up with a scholarship in equine studies.
“These are Jeff’s pets,” Old said. “When an animal dies, he doesn’t say, ‘He’s dead.’ He says, ‘Risky died.’ ”
Some who board horses with Sharon also support him, but one former boarder is not so charitable.
“During my time at the Leawood Stables I noticed several dead animals left rotting, other animals without water on hot days, injured animals without medical attention,” Maria Acosta said in a document presented to the court. “Hooves never were clipped. One donkey’s hooves were so bad that he was known as ‘the elf’ because his hooves looked like elf shoes.”
Today’s case
Over the years, Martin-Gonnerman said, residents have brought her disturbing photos from Sharon’s property.
“And over the years we’ve tried and tried to get the city of Leawood to do something,” she said. “There’s no question in my mind that the animals out there … are in desperate trouble.”
Today’s hearing arises from a complaint filed by horse owner Kim Accurso, a former friend of Sharon’s who once kept animals on his property.
Veterinarians who examined Risky gave conflicting accounts.
“There’s no cruelty as far as I can see,” said Jeff Thompson of Louisburg, Kan.
City dwellers used to riding petting-zoo ponies are not used to the realities of a working stable, he said.
A Kansas State University veterinarian looked at Sharon’s horses in November and reported: “I find no evidence of abuse against these animals.”
But Bob McCrady of Raymore reported that Risky had kidney failure and ulcers on pressure points indicating the horse had been “down for an extended period of time.” His written report did not define that time frame.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is urging Leawood to “vigorously prosecute” Sharon.
The group has seen cases where people hoard dying animals, convinced their home is the best, said caseworker Stephanie Bell. “They simply don’t see the pain and suffering they’re inflicting.”
Sharon dismisses people like Bell as “humaniacs.”
“I like confrontation,” he said. “My favorite thing is to cuss and yell. But the only thing I care about in this whole world is those animals.”
■ See video of Jeff Sharon’s
Leawood Stables and some
of the animals kept there.
