Unrepentant Coweta animal hoarder takes his show on the road–Peachtree City woman rescues doodle dogs from hot car

The insistence of one Peachtree City woman rescued two doodle dogs from a life of suffering at the hands of a known animal hoarder.

You may have heard of the massive case of animal hoarding in Coweta County on January 3. Over 150 dogs were rescued from a home and vehicles after living in deplorable conditions according to stories by both the Newnan Times-Herald and Fox5. In that case, all sources report that authorities said it was the worst case of animal abuse they had seen.

Coweta County resident John Harold Palm, 68, was arrested, along with his wife, on felony animal cruelty charges and got out on bond. Did he stop mistreating dogs? No, he did not.

The Citizen was contacted by a Peachtree City woman whose office is in Buckhead at 3379 Peachtree Street Northeast. This high rise of offices houses many companies, and one of them employs John Palm, a business called Volkert.

But Ann (her name has been changed at her request) didn’t know about John, or his case of animal hoarding. She goes to work to run her business, and would usually mind her business. But not on this Tuesday.

What she saw was was a car in the corner of her parking garage on Tuesday morning with the hazard lights flashing. She noted it, and moved on. She had to move a box to her car at lunchtime. The car was still there and she hears dogs. Then she sees a couple of doodle mixes in the car. She said, “They’re going crazy. They were jumping up on the dashboard. So I went to the doorman and said, there’s clearly dogs that are not supposed to be there that are, and the windows are up. There’s no AC or ventilation. They’ve been there for hours.”

Building personnel told her this wasn’t the first time he’d had dogs in his car. “He has been bringing the dogs in. He goes to work for the whole day and just leaves them there. But he hides, he parks in areas where the cameras aren’t. Another tenant has to bring it to their attention. Apparently they didn’t want to get involved. So I was like, well, I’m going to call 911 or the non-emergency number.”

That’s exactly what Ann did. She first tried the nonemergency number and got no one. A 911 call got a visit from a police officer. By then, Ann had ammunition. Someone had pointed out to her John Palm’s identity. She googled him and was horrified by the news stories of his animal cruelty and hoarding. And it was happening again. Ann wasn’t having it.

So when the officer seemed indifferent, Ann pressed the point. The officer said we’d have to call Animal Control. So Fulton County Animal Control was called in. They came in about an hour, perhaps also because they’d heard of the infamy of John Palm and how he treats dogs.

While Ann waiting for Animal Control to arrive, she reached out to Newnan Police to report John, since he’d been arrested in Coweta County and was only just out on bond. And she continued to scroll the internet as the dogs were still stuck in that hot car. “So I’m just kind of looking and Googling and I’m like, can someone that has this kind of charge have animals? It just was disturbing as the hours went on.”

When Fulton County Animal Control arrived, the animal control officer did a temperature check of the vehicle and told the police officer that he needed to break a window to get the dogs out right away. The officer declined and said the fire department would need to be called. They were, and came sirens blazing. All the noise got building security back. Security knew which floor John Palm worked on and the police officer went to go get him.

He came down, claimed he was taking the dogs to the vet. His excuse didn’t seem to convince them, and he was cited by animal control. He surrendered the dogs to animal control. Ann said the dogs coming out of the car were wild. One bit the animal control officer, the other cowered the minute John opened the door. “You could tell these dogs were abused,” said Ann. “it was so sad.”

It also wasn’t the result that Ann expected after reading about his case. “I thought he was going to get arrested. Well, apparently they can’t arrest him because he’s just out on bond still. It’s so close to him posting bond, that charges haven’t happened. So I don’t know what’s going to happen. They’re going to submit the citation to Newnan Police. She said it’ll definitely help the case because it’s obviously showing that he’s continuing to abuse animals. He has not taken this serious at all. And they’re obviously still collecting animals.”

Ann called The Citizen right after the dogs were saved, while she was still up in Atlanta. “This guy needs to be exposed. People need to stop selling him dogs. How is he getting these dogs still? And he’s still doing it. Clearly. He’s just bringing them to work and what happens when it’s hot? They’re going to be dead. The animal control said that they could stroke out in four to six minutes.”

How at risk were those doodles if they hadn’t been rescued? According to Becky Smith, Director of Shelter Operations at Royal Animal Refuge who took in 14 of the over 150 hoarded dogs from the January case, they were in appalling condition, “They were in pretty bad shape when we got them. All of them had feces caked in their fur. It looked like they had poop dreadlocks all over them. So all of them had to be groomed. A few of them were underweight.”

Some of the dogs were in such bad shape that they had to be pelted with nearly all their fur removed. Smith also said that all the dogs had respiratory infections and none of them had been spayed or neutered. Since that case, Royal Animal Refuge has restored the health of the dogs they received, gotten them all spayed and as of yesterday adopted them out. But here Palm is, still keeping dogs in bad conditions.

Smith said she thought all the dogs had been taken, but that it wouldn’t surprise her if the Palms had gotten more dogs after the big original rescue, as that’s what hoarders do.

Ann didn’t feel like her story had full closure. But she was told by the Newnan detective that she spoke to that he should be either arrested on site for this, or have a warrant issued for his arrest after this second citation came to light, considering he’s only just now out on bond in the first felony case. After the citation was issued by Fulton County Animal Control, John Palm walked back up to his office to finish out his work day.

Lt. Tom Bush, the Animal Services Supervisor for Coweta County Animal Control said he got a call from Fulton County Animal Control as they were pulling up to the call that Ann had made yesterday. They asked some questions about the Palm hoarding case. He said he is waiting on Fulton County Animal Control to share their results with him before he can proceed to do anything about the new allegations.

And he’s still working hard on the original hoarding case. Some 160 dogs and three horses were involved in that according to the county’s statement. It’s a big case. And may be getting bigger by the day. Lt. Bush did share that all of the animals found on that day in January were adopted out by several different rescues, including ones as far as Savannah.

No matter what, Ann spent the majority of her workday doing the right thing for these dogs, and others must have just walked by. She’s the hero of our story today.