Alligators, eels taken from Lindenhurst 'rainforest'
Man facing animal cruelty charges after police find alligators, turtles, emus in and around home
BY CHRISTINE ARMARIO AND SOPHIA CHANG
Newsday Staff Writers
September 20, 2006
Chief Roy Gross pulled up to the two-story home on a quiet, waterfront street in Lindenhurst yesterday and entered what he calls "a rainforest."
Eight alligators sat in cages, stacked on top of each other, with one cage hanging from the ceiling in the concrete basement.
A tortoise rested in a bathtub while sliding around in its own feces, Gross said. Two electric eels swam in a fish tank. Outside, emus roamed the backyard.
And that was just the beginning.
In total, the state Department of Environmental Conservation issued 23 charges against Steven Weinkselbaum yesterday, including possession, without a license, of endangered or threatened animals.
He was arrested by the Suffolk Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and charged with 13 counts of animal cruelty.
"It's like a reptile museum in a private residence," said Gross, chief of department for the Suffolk SPCA.
Gross said authorities raided the home yesterday afternoon after receiving a tip. Vita Raynor, a neighbor, said she alerted them after seeing Weinkselbaum receive a shipment of "Live Animal" crates last night.
The house was "like a rainforest, ground up," Gross said. "You can hear animals and birds. It's very damp in there."
In the room where the caged alligators were found, Gross said they also discovered a caiman and a Nile crocodile from Egypt. Caimans are similar to alligators but darker, he said. The crocodile species he described as "very, very aggressive."
Four dead animals, which might have been bait for the gators, were retrieved from a freezer. Boxes of endangered turtles also were uncovered. Two iguanas were free to crawl around the house. They even found a 7-foot Burmese python.
Gross said they also found shells of several dead turtles, and a mounted red tail hawk and sea turtle -- which could be federal violations.
Locally, Weinkselbaum was known as "Snake" and built up a reputation for his frequent attendance of town board meetings to champion environmental causes. In the early '90s, he had spearheaded a movement to put up turtle crossing signs on Ocean Parkway as a member of the Long Island Herpetological Society. "I used to jog on the road there, and I used to see all the turtles dead, and I felt sorry for them," he said in 1991.
"In a town of 220,000 people, he is one of those people who stood out," said Supervisor Steve Bellone.
Emergency animal specialists yesterday took the creatures out of the home -- the alligators' jaws tied shut with blue tape. The animals will be taken to an undisclosed zoological society in Massachusetts.
Rob Hudson, Weinkselbaum's next-door neighbor, spoke in his defense. "He took care of the animals," Hudson said. "He wasn't doing anything to threaten or harm them."
Raynor, a former pet store animal specialist, said she had seen Weinkselbaum "stepping up" what she suspects to be a business over the past year.
Gross said the SPCA is still investigating how Weinkselbaum obtained the animals and if he was involved in selling them. For each charge of animal cruelty, he could face up to a year imprisonment and a $1,000 fine. On each of the 23 DEC violations, he faces 15 days in jail and a fine of up to $250.
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