CONVICTED (2009) | Dawn Elizabeth Rose, born 25/01/1960, previously of Llangolen, North Wales, and more recently Duncan Street, Brinsworth, Rotherham S60 5DE – allowed 72 horses on her failing stud farm to starve
RSPCA inspectors found desperately emaciated animals on Dawn Rose’s stud farm.
Divorcee Dawn Rose set up a stud farm using a £300,000 pay-out from her ex-partner to fulfil her teenage daughter’s dream of breeding ponies.
But the business was a failure, and when inspectors raided it they found desperately emaciated animals foraging for scraps of food.
Rose pleaded guilty to six charges of causing unnecessary suffering to animals.
The mother-of-two wept as RSPCA prosecutor Glen Murphy said the experienced inspection team had been “stunned” by the appalling condition of the animals on her stud farm.
RSPCA inspector Chris Dunbar first visited Rose in March 2008 when she bought her 42-acre farm to start a stud.
Inspector Dunbar said: “We had concerns from the start as she wasn’t feeding the horses. We kept going back — she listened but did nothing.”
One horse, a chestnut mare called Mist, was little more than a ‘skeleton with skin stretched over’, and the vet who treated her was amazed she could still stand up.
Three others were so weak that they died soon afterwards.
Rose, who had moved to the area from Norfolk, told investigators her money had run out and she could not afford to pay for the animals.
Sitting at Mold magistrates court, district judge Andrew Shaw told Ms Rose: “You neglected these horses in an obvious and shameful way.”
Mr Dunbar added: “We were happy with the ban. Our job is to stop cruelty and in this case that’s what we feel we’ve done.”
Sentencing: three-month sentence suspended for 12 months; 100 hours of unpaid community work. Banned from keeping or being involved with horses for 10 years (expired 2019).
As a bankrupt, Rose was only ordered to pay £250 of the RSPCA’s prosecution costs of £128,554.
#MostEvil | Amersham horse trader James John Gray (05/09/1963), wife Julie Cordelia Gray (24/05/1967) and daughters Jodie June Gray (12/09/1982) and Cordelia Gray (29/05/1988) and James Gray junior (23/01/1993) – left more than 100 horses, ponies and donkeys to starve among the rotting carcasses of other animals
Clockwise from top left: James Gray Sr, Julie Gray, Cordelia Gray, Jodie Gray, court protestors, James Gray Jr
In a case veterinary expert witness described as the worst case of animal cruelty they had ever seen, 31 equines were found dead at Spindle Farm, Chalk Lane, Hyde Heath, Amersham. Some 111 other horses, ponies and donkeys were rescued.
The massive rescue was co-ordinated by Thames Valley Police, Trading Standards and the RSPCA with help from the Horse Trust, the International League for the Protection of Horses (ILPH), Redwings Horse Sanctuary and the Blue Cross
James Gray Sr is banned for life from keeping equine animals
Hooves and body parts of horses that had been left to die were scattered around and a grotesque mound made up of bones and skulls was discovered.
The horror scene was uncovered when RSPCA inspectors were called to the farm, where a horse-trading business run by the Gray family was based.
James Gray Jr
There were 140 animals at the farm and many were left with little food or dry bedding, were crammed into pens and ankle-deep in their own faeces.
Jodie Gray, aka Jodie Keet, with son Tommy Gray
In total 115 animals, some severely emaciated, had to be rescued and removed from the farm during a huge operation in January 2009.
Robert Seabrook QC told the court how two RSPCA inspectors visiting the farm in January 2008 were confronted with a “grotesque and distressing state of affairs”.
He said a number of horses were discovered in “disgusting pens”, some were tethered individually and others were loose in the paddocks.
The most extraordinary aspect he said was that many horses were next to carcasses in varying states of decomposition and the smell of rotting flesh was “over-powering”.
He added: “A number of animals that were found had plainly been dead for a number of days and as it turns out, some for many months.”
Julie Gray
The court heard in one pen three severed hooves were found alongside the bodies of two other horses.
James Gray Sr was convicted of nine charges of causing unnecessary suffering to animals and two charges of failing to protect animals from pain, injury, suffering and disease.
His son James Gray Jr was convicted of identical charges although two were later overturned on appeal.
Gray’s wife, Julie, and daughters Cordelia and Jodie were found guilty of the two charges of failing to protect the animals.
No member of the family showed any sign of emotion as the judge passed sentence.
RSPCA inspector Kirsty Hampton described the conditions the horses were kept in as “grotesque”.
Speaking after the sentencing, Hampton said: “The RSPCA is pleased the district judge has recognised the extent of the cruelty, neglect and the suffering endured by the animals in this case.
“We see the disqualifications from keeping horses as an effective measure to prevent animals suffering in future.”
Sentencing: James Gray Sr was sentenced to six months in prison and banned from keeping horses, ponies and donkeys for life. He was also ordered to pay £400,000. Gray was given a further two months after absconding from court. Two of Gray’s convictions were overturned in 2010, but Gray was ordered to pay £600,000 towards the RSPCA’s legal costs and faced financial ruin. A later appeal against what Gray claimed were disproportionate legal costs was rejected.
James Gray Junior was given an 18-month supervision order. He was banned from keeping equines for 10 years with right of appeal after five (ban expired June 2019).
Julie, Jodie and Cordelia Gray were each given 150 hours of community service. They were also banned from keeping equines for 10 years, with the right of appeal after five (bans expired June 2019).
Julie Gray was ordered to pay £750 in costs, and Cordelia Gray and Jodie Gray £500 each.
James Gray and Cordelia Gray, 57 Narcot Road, Chalfont St Giles HP8 4DF Julie Cordelia Gray, 15 Weller Road, Amersham HP6 6LQ James Gray Jr, Chalk Hill Farm, Chalk Lane, Hyde Heath, Amersham HP6 5SA Jodie June Gray (also known as Jodie Keet), 14 Middle Meadow, Chalfont St Giles HP8 4QS
Update September 2021
The Bucks Free Press reported that James Gray was let off £200,000-worth of fines due to bankruptcy.
Gray was ordered to pay more than £1million in fines and court costs and has served jail time since he was convicted of multiple animal welfare offences in 2008.
He attempted to appeal the convictions at London’s High Court in 2013, but although two of his 11 original convictions were overturned, he was ultimately unsuccessful and had another £200,000 added to his legal bill.
In August 2021, Gray, of 57 Narcot Road in Chalfont St Giles, had £223,453-worth of fines written off.
Documents attached to the court listing state that the amount was remitted due to Gray being bankrupt, having served prison time, and the RSPCA refusing the money.
In 2014, Gray was hauled back before the courts and was jailed for four-and-a-half years after he fleeced pensioners out of thousands of pounds for cowboy building works.
In an attempt to raise funds to pay off his fines and court costs, Gray conned an 88-year-old former British Library academic out of £20,000 for work which experts valued at just £150.
He drained £18,000 out of another 80-year-old victim’s account, leaving him with just £300 after repeatedly demanding money from him. This victim died just months after the money was found to be missing.
Gray, who had done this work under the fake name ‘Joseph De Paula’, admitted two counts of fraud by false representation before he was sentenced at Swindon Crown Court.
CONVICTED (2008) | Rose Jay, born c. 1949, of Monksfield Farm, Monksfield Lane, Newland, Malvern WR13 5BB – found guilty of causing unnecessary suffering to a chestnut mare.
Rose Jay outside court in 2008
Jay’s pregnant horse, called Sunshine, was found emaciated and being kept, along with others, in a Christmas tree plantation.
A representative from World Horse Welfare (formerly ILPH) visited Jay’s farm in 2006 and saw the mare in poor condition in a field with some hay but no water.
She visited again a few weeks later and found the horses were without grass, hay or water.
On March 15, 2007, the woman discovered the horses had been moved to a Christmas tree plantation.
Nicholas Sutton, prosecuting on behalf of the RSPCA, said: “The mare appeared to have deteriorated.
“There was no hay or grass in the plantation but there was straw.”
A few days later, the woman returned and was shocked to see the mare was emaciated, with protruding spine and ribs.
The RSPCA was contacted and a vet subsequently said the animal, which also had lice and worms, had been suffering for several weeks.
Representing herself, Jay said the mare had since given birth to a healthy foal and had absorbed the weight to put into the foal.
She said she moved the horses to the plantation after an attempted theft and was £30,000 in debt.
She said her other horses were healthy and she intended to appeal against her conviction.
The RSPCA’s chief inspector for Worcestershire, Lee Hopgood, welcomed the sentence imposed on Jay, saying: “I feel it adequately reflects the seriousness of the offence and Mrs Jay’s clear inability to adequately care for horses or take advice.”
Sentencing: 12-week prison sentence suspended for 13 months. Total of £3,150 costs including vets’ bills. Banned from keeping horses and ponies for five years (expired May 2013).
CONVICTED (2007) | animal hoarder Lee Howard, born 12 August 1966, of Shinwell Crescent, Middlesbrough TS6 6LJ – let nearly 30 animals die of thirst and starvation at a County Durham stables.
Lee Howard was charged after the RSPCA discovered animal remains at Bank Top Stables in Trimdon, County Durham, in May 2005.
Magistrates heard that 13 horses and ponies, 11 hens, four dogs, and a rabbit died of dehydration and starvation over a period of several weeks after being locked up at the stables. Three dogs survived by eating the remains of the dead animals.
In March 2006 Howard was sentenced to six months in jail and banned from keeping animals for the rest of his life.
Just a few months later Howard was back in court after it was discovered he was keeping 11 dogs and 16 birds at a house in Delarden Road, Pallister Park, Middlesbrough.
The animals were kept in squalid conditions, with the dogs running around in piles of faeces and pools of urine. Six of them had problems with their paws and one had an ear infection.
Howard was given a further six-month jail term for breaching his ban.
Sentencing: two custodial terms and a lifetime ban on keeping animals.
Lee Howard, who has used the name Lee Howard-Smith, was handed a suspended prison sentence after being caught breaching his ban. Several animals and birds were found living in squalor at his home. Howard, who since his original convictions has gone on to obtain multiple training certificates in animal care, was also working as a paid pet-sitter. He was caught out after a customer found his name and photograph on an animal cruelty website.
His address at the time of conviction was Scott Road, Kettering, North Northamptonshire.
CONVICTED (2007) | Matthew Alex Corfield, born 05/11/1988, of Garden Village, Highley, Bridgnorth, Shropshire WV16 6HN and Alex John Lister, born 22/09/1989, of Bickford Lane, Teignmouth TA14 8QT – attacked a horse with a meat cleaver, leaving her so badly injured she had to be put down.
Recent (2019) photos of horse killers Matthew Corfield (left) and Alex Lister
On Friday 13th April 2007, a 19-year-old piebald mare, known as Maggie, was attacked at Essington Hall Farm, Essington, South Staffordshire, by drunken youths Matthew Corfield and Alex Lister then of Wednesfield, Wolverhampton. A third youth – Anthony Ronald Hinsley, born 07/09/1988, of Fryer Close, Wolverhampton WV11 3JD, was also initially charged, but the case against him was later dropped.
Charges against Anthony Ronald Hinsley were dropped
The trio, who had been drinking in local woods with two other youths, went into Maggie’s field and startled her. As she fled, Corfield and Lister proceeded to chase her with the former repeatedly hurling a meat cleaver at her.
The court heard Corfield laughed as he inspected the 12-inch by five-inch blade for blood.
Victim Maggie with her owner
Maggie was found the following day lying in a pool of blood. She had suffered a five-inch-deep cut to her neck, a three-and-a-half-inch cut on her shoulder and her right leg was broken. The tendon of one of her rear legs was severed by a blow that cut to the bone. Her injuries were so severe that she had to be put to sleep on humane grounds.
Corfield, Lister and Hinsley were arrested after locals raised £1,500 for information leading to the conviction of those responsible.
Remorseless Matthew Corfield and accomplice Alex Lister (inset) pictured outside court in 2007
Paul Jenkins, defending Corfield, said he did not accept he was “solely or exclusively” to blame.
Jenkins said it was not a premeditated attack and that Corfield had taken the cleaver with him to chop wood to make a fire for the five friends who were camping in Black Cat Wood.
Ian Hodnett, for Lister, said he had tried but failed to film Corfield and another friend chasing the horse on his mobile phone.
He said Lister’s only other involvement was to chase Maggie around the paddock.
Corfield and Lister both admitted causing unnecessary suffering to Maggie. Corfield was given five months in a young offenders institution but was released after just eight weeks. His father, Peter Corfield, told a local newspaper that he believed his son “had definitely paid his debt to society”. He added that his son had been rehired by his employer, a building company.
Sentencing: Corfield – five months in a young offenders institution. Ordered to do 180 hours of community work.
Lister – 12-month community order and 180 hours’ community service.
CONVICTED (2005) | Derek Thomas Monkton, born c. 1943 (deceased as of December 2021*), of 49 Broad Street, Bromsgrove B61 8LL – kept three ponies in diabolical conditions.
Monkton pleaded guilty to charges of causing unnecessary suffering to the ponies.
The neglect suffered by the three young colts was so bad it resulted in one having to be put down because of the irreparable damage done by the growing tendons on his legs.
Chief Field Officer at the International League for the Protection of Horses (ILPH) Paul Teasdale, speaking after the court hearing, said he had visited a property at Upton Warren on July 1, 2003.
“I visited this property with an RSPCA inspector, Simon Dix, and found three colts, virtually imprisoned, in filthy conditions, in tiny pens.
“The conditions these ponies were kept in was diabolical, filthy and disgusting,” he added.
The barn the ponies were kept in was described as ‘dark, airless and acrid with the smell of ammonia and droppings.’
“Their hooves had clearly not been trimmed for over 12 months, they were the worst feet I have ever seen,” said Mr Teasdale.
The other two ponies have been left unrideable because of their distorted lower limbs.
Monkton agreed to sign the ponies over to the ILPH and they were taken to the Glenda Spooner Farm, at Hoarwithy, in Herefordshire.
No evidence was brought against Victoria Jean Manns, of the same address, who was also charged with the same offence.
Sentencing: concurrent seven-week custodial sentence. Banned from keeping domestic animals for life.
