Talk to those involved in the recent blockbuster in Wolfeboro, where 75 Great Danes, some blind, most diseased, were found in a feces-filled mansion.
Ask for their opinion about the woman, Tina Fay, arrested last month for cruelty and neglect. She allegedly profited from an illegal business, breeding and selling these giant dogs as puppies for thousands of dollars.
It’s hard to ignore that she’s got a similar name to a really funny woman, but this is no laughing matter. This is a case that has enraged people all over the country, and the sources I spoke to want Fay held accountable, seeing her as a criminal.
But as I listened, a Rolling Stones song came to mind, the one called “Sympathy for the Devil.” Because with each comment came a little voice in the back of people’s minds, the voice that told them Fay must be emotionally disturbed in some manner.
So can you really blame her without seeing another side?
“In her mind, she loved those dogs, and she thought she was doing right by them,” said Marilyn Kelly, a staff member at the mansion who helped crack the case wide open last month. “I’m not a psychiatrist; I don’t know what she was thinking in her head to think that anyone, including herself living and sleeping in a house covered by feces and urine, could be okay.”
Kelly, 49, lives in Intervale and works at the Conway Area Humane Society. Because of her actions, that shelter has eight happy Great Danes. It had nine, but one of them, Ellie, recently gave birth to three puppies, and the family was moved to a foster home somewhere in the Concord area.
Kelly’s boss, Virginia Moore, wouldn’t reveal exactly where the four dogs are. But she and Kelly revealed their ambivalent feelings as they tried to make sense of the unthinkable.
“Something’s wrong with someone who lets dogs wallow in inches of fecal material and doesn’t clean it up and lets the animals urinate all over her house and sleeps in a bed with all that around her,” Moore told me by phone. “I don’t think she necessarily sees it. I don’t think people in those situations see what’s around them.”
Kelly saw it right away, as soon as she got the job working for Fay. She said Fay “seemed nice,” during an interview. She had been told that Fay had 20 to 30 dogs during that interview. She had been told “it was a little out of control right now,” according to Fay, but Fay’s typical five-person staff, down to one, would be back to full strength soon.
The rest – what was found inside the million-dollar mansion, the waste and rotting food and maggots and sick dogs – you’ve heard about.
What you may not know is that Kelly actually thought she could clean the place up, move the dogs to nice homes, get them to clinics for medical help, convince Fay that she’d gotten in way over her head, convince her to hire more workers.
Soon, though, Kelly said she saw dogs coming in from Europe for breeding purposes. She heard about a newborn pup that had died and been thrown out in the trash.
“My thought was to help out the best I could, make sure the house was spotless once again, the dogs were fed, everyone was happy and healthy,” Kelly said. “I realized that wasn’t going to happen.”
She took photos and passed them to her superiors in Conway. She prompted Fay to release nine dogs to the Conway facility. She, along with an unnamed minor, worked with officials leading up to the June 16 arrest.
And she wondered how someone could fall into this type of behavior. Was Fay evil, or simply ill? Did she deserve jail time if convicted, or medical help?
“Both,” Kelly said. “I think the laws need to be changed in this state. There’s not harsh enough penalties, there’s not enough people checking up on so-called breeders to make sure the conditions are okay.”
“It’s on a lot of people’s heads, but she’s the one who created this situation,” Kelly continued. “She did this and she needs to be held accountable.”
Kelly cited others. She said she sought help from the kennel manager, Julia Smith, several times but, according to Kelly, was told, “(Fay’s) a collector and I should keep my mouth shut and do my job, and if she wants to live this lifestyle, it’s her business.”
Smith did not return two phone messages seeking comment.
Kelly also said her former veterinarian, Dr. Kate Battenfelder, who practices in Bartlett and began seeing Fay’s dogs early last year, seemed indifferent when Kelly visited her and expressed concern.
Battenfelder could not be reached over the holiday weekend. She has declined comment in the past, referring media inquiries to Facebook, where she posted this last month:
“In our past interactions (Fay) appeared to have both the funding and capacity to care for a large number of dogs. We believe the findings must have been a recent turn of events and we are heartbroken that things deteriorated to that level. We regret not knowing what was happening out of sight, and would have taken action if we were aware.”
Meanwhile, Wolfeboro police Chief Dean Rondeau has said that Battenfelder is not off his radar. He also told me by phone that Fay “knew right from wrong. This is not a person with mental illness, in my opinion. This is someone who clearly had the resources to do this correctly and chose not to, chose to do it underground.”
Published reports have said that Fay came to New Hampshire from Maine after officials there began to document guidelines necessary to start her business, suggesting that she was, indeed, cognizant of laws and ethical behavior.
But her deeds here remain so bizarre that some remain skeptical, or at least fuzzy, as to how much malice Fay actually had in her heart.
Said Kelly, “I don’t know what world there would be where anyone would think that that’s okay.”