For nearly 20 years, animal advocate Jennifer Raymond was convinced something suspicious was going on at Miranda’s Rescue, but her repeated cries for authorities to investigate the Northern California animal sanctuary fell on deaf ears, she said.
She could see they were getting paid handsomely to take in hundreds of shelter dogs annually, based on public records requests she filed. But she couldn’t understand where all these dogs were then going, given how tough it can be to find foster homes for rescue dogs in this rural area of Humboldt County, she said.
But after moving in next door to the Fortuna rescue, she claimed she saw large objects being dumped into a deep hole on the property, and had a sinking feeling she had figured it out. On the night of April 26, Raymond and a fellow animal advocate Jenna Moore decided to take matters into their own hands, trespassing onto her neighbor’s property in pursuit of answers, she said.
“We waited until dark and had our headlamps and shovels and gloves and phones and headed out to the hole and jumped in and started digging,” she said.
An investigation into allegations of fraud and animal abuse at the rescue are ongoing, according to authorities. No charges have been filed against its owner, Shannon Miranda, who did not respond to The Times’ request for comment on Thursday. In an earlier statement on his organization’s website, he urged that there not be a rush to judgment.
As Raymond and Moore started to dig, they systematically uncovered blood-soaked furry bodies, several of which had bullet holes in their head, Raymond said.
“Each time we uncovered a dog, we uncovered part of another dog, and so we just kept following the dog trail,” she said. “We knew by the time we were to our fifth or sixth dog that we weren’t leaving them there in this mass grave.”
In total, they took eight dog carcasses home that night and later handed them over to the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office, which served a search warrant at Miranda’s Rescue on May 1. A copy of the search warrant affidavit obtained by local news outlet Lost Coast Outpost corroborates the details of Raymond’s account.
Since then, the Sheriff’s Office has opened a sprawling investigation into allegations of felony animal abuse, animal cruelty, fraud, and conspiracy associated with the animal sanctuary.
Detectives learned that between January 2025 and May 2026, Miranda’s Rescue accepted more than 900 rescue animals from animal shelters and private citizens, but so far investigators have only been able to track down adoption records for a limited number of them, Sheriff William Honsal said at a Tuesday afternoon news conference.
For each animal Miranda’s Rescue took in, the organization charged a fee of $500 to several thousand dollars, he said.
Currently, around 730 animals remain unaccounted for, Honsal said Tuesday.
In a June 18 statementon the organization’s website, Miranda described the sanctuary as a “no-kill rescue” that does not euthanize animals to make space, but does euthanize in extreme circumstances such as a terminal illness or if an animal attacks staff.
He asked that people consider all the facts before reaching conclusions. “Allegations made without a full understanding of the circumstances can harm not only my reputation but also the future of an organization that has served this community for decades,” he stated.
On Tuesday, the Sheriff’s Office began using ground-penetrating radar to search the soil at Miranda’s Rescue in Fortuna for carcasses.
They brought a mobile refrigerator unit on scene to store the bodies as they were pulled from the earth.
“We are thinking worst-case scenario,” Honsal said, “and we are here to book and uncover whatever evidence we could possibly find.”
The Sheriff’s Office finalized its search Thursday afternoon, but has not yet disclosed the total number of animals found.
Raymond said she watched the search and counted at least 45 animal carcasses unearthed.
“It is just heartbreaking to see these totally innocent creatures, in various states of decomposition, be taken out and put on a tarp and put in the black plastic garbage bag for evidence,” she said.
For Raymond, who said she had been asking the Sheriff’s Office to investigate the facility for years, this week’s search brought mixed emotions. She was elated that authorities are taking allegations against the rescue seriously but overwhelmed by the “horrible darkness” of the carcasses discovered.
When asked at Tuesday’s news conference whether the office dropped the ball in investigating prior complaints, Sheriff Honsal said, “We are looking into those previous cases to see what was investigated, how it was investigated, to see if we did not do our job enough.”
In addition to excavating the property, investigators have seized financial records, adoption records and business records.
Currently, around 50 animals are still living at the sanctuary, which does not require a license to operate. As no criminal charges have been filed, Miranda is allowed to continue operating his business at this time, Honsal said.
Both Honsal and Raymond said they hoped the investigation would shine a light on the broader problem of animal overpopulation in California.
“The state has ignored this issue for many, many years,” said Honsal. “I hope that this case opens the eyes of many people and we are able to have spay-and-neuter clinics go and help.”
Raymond has founded two spay-and-neuter clinics in Humboldt County that treat from 3,500 to 5,000 dogs and cats every year, collectively preventing tens of thousands of animal births, she said.
She is also an advocate for making spaying and neutering, which typically costs several hundred dollars, more affordable. And although she wants more oversight of rescues, she said the most important thing is to eliminate unwanted animal births.
“We have been doing animal shelters in California for over 150 years and we have not solved the problem,” she said, “because we’ve never addressed the cause.”
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