Apr 13, 2018 4 min read

Months after a district judge found a Bentleyville man guilty of 12 summary counts of animal cruelty, the case of Fredrick Frameli was back in court Thursday.

Eleven female canines, including three wolfdog hybrids, were removed Aug. 23, 2017, from Frameli’s Spring Street home.

A month later, District Judge Curtis Thompson fined Frameli $100 for each of 11 counts of failing to provide adequate food and water to the animals and ordered him to pay $300 restitution to Washington Area Humane Society, where the dogs and wolf hybrids were first taken.

Thompson also fined Frameli $500 for a count related to holding a dog’s head under water in a container, which was referred to as “waterboarding” at the appeal hearing Thursday in Washington County Court.

For his defense, Frameli hired Butler County attorney Al Lindsay, who is also representing Washington native Jerry Sandusky, a former Penn State University assistant football coach, whose child sexual abuse case is currently on appeal.

Senior Judge William R. Nalitz heard testimony, but will continue Frameli’s hearing on an as-yet unspecified date as Lindsay and co-counsel Jennifer Tully are seeking video footage recorded on a game warden’s body camera the day Frameli surrendered the 11 canines.

Lindsay raised the issue of the body camera Thursday morning.

The defense subpoenaed the footage from Wildlife Officer Richard Joyce, who twice went to Frameli’s home last August as part of his investigation and recorded the second encounter.

A subpoena to obtain the video file was served at the state Game Commission’s regional office in Bolivar, Westmoreland County, last week and it was then forwarded to Harrisburg.

Joyce testified in court, but Assistant District Attorney John Paul Lewis told Nalitz the footage was not being used in the prosecution of the summary animal cruelty case. Lewis said he did not have the footage and had not seen it.

Joyce, who adopted one of the surrendered German shepherd pups Frameli, charged the Bentleyville resident last year with keeping three suspected wolf-dog hybrids without a permit but later withdrew the charges.

Joyce declined to elaborate Thursday on that aspect of the case.

“It’s still an open investigation so let’s just leave it at that,” he said before departing the courthouse.

Bonnie McGary, a neighbor of Frameli’s, testified she was inside her garage last August when she saw Frameli grab “a pup by the scruff of the neck and slam it to the ground.”

She told the judge she also saw Frameli pushing a second, white-colored dog in a small tub of water hind-end first and then holding her head under the water as the animal struggled to get up.

McGary’s husband recorded snippets of video that were played in court.

“We could not believe what we saw,” Mrs. McGary testified. “I did not know how to handle this.”

She eventually contacted the humane society. Tully asked Mrs. McGary if she saw Frameli shampoo the dog.

“Heavens no. There was no bath,” McGary replied, but she then read testimony from a hearing before the magistrate in which she refered to Frameli using a towel.

Prosecution witnesses Chelsei Fleegal, a veterinary technician; Laura Maloney, formerly of Washington Area Humane Society and Joyce described the condition of the canines as emaciated or underweight. They testified the interior of Frameli’s home reeked of urine, some of the dogs had curling toenails, skin problems, dead fleas and urine and feces on their fur.

State Wildlife Officer Heather Flanegan described conditions inside the home as “disheveled.”

Lindsay called as a witness Dr. Emily Klosterman, who specializes in internal veterinary medicine at Pittsburgh Veterinary Specialty and Emergency Center. She testified one of the German shepherds had a bloated esophagus that was unable to “push” food normally to the stomach.

The dog, named Gabby, was underweight at 53 pounds but the vet said the digestive tract abnormality was “part of her problem” and she saw no signs Gabby had been abused.

At his hearing in Bentleyville, Frameli’s attorney William McCormick said his client spent $8,000 for treatment.

Timothy McMillen, record keeper at Braden Run Animal Hospital in Waynesburg said Frameli was a client from 2010 through 2017 who kept his dogs up to date with vaccines and had two treated for a coccidiosis, a parasitic disease of the intestinal tract.

Lindsay called Washington Area Humane Society humane office Glen Thomson as his final witness. Thompson testified Frameli consented to surrender the pets rather than be subjected to a felony charge of torturing an animal.

The canines have since left the humane society. Three wolfdogs and one companion animal are living at Wolf Sanctuary of Pennsylvania in Lititz, Lancaster County. They have since gained weight, according to testimony at the hearing.