A UCLA Cardiologist Warns Leo Grillo Could Die in a Cell
The Government's Case Rests on a Fraud Suspect.
Leo Grillo built the world's largest no-kill animal sanctuary over 47 years. About 1,500 dogs, cats, and horses live on a ridge above Los Angeles because he made them a promise no one else would. Most are unadoptable. If DELTA Rescue fails, they have nowhere to go.
Since March 3, Grillo, 77, has been held in federal custody without bail on a single charge of attempted kidnapping. He has no criminal record. He has serious heart disease.
His cardiologist of fifteen years, Adel K El-bialy, MD — a UCLA professor who treated him after a 2011 heart attack — has put it in writing: Grillo's arrhythmias can stop his heart without warning, his blood pressure collapses at medication doses that wouldn't affect an ordinary patient, and he cannot get the care he needs behind bars. In the doctor's words, continued incarceration places him at substantial risk of sudden death.
The case against him rests on one man: James Clark, a precious-metals dealer whose business collapsed owing elderly retirees their savings, and who is himself under federal fraud investigation. The FBI's own affidavit acknowledges he cooperates in hopes of favorable treatment on his own case. A man who made his living taking money from seniors found a 77-year-old in financial ruin and handed the government a defendant.
James D. Clark (above) swindled more than 115 senior citizens and faces years in prison through phony gold schemes.
The recordings the government is relying on captured only a fraction of what was said. The video failed. The most important moments were never preserved.
Grillo has not been convicted of anything. He is presumed innocent.
And he is, by his own doctor's account, dying by inches in a 6-by-8 cell while a fundraising-ready sanctuary collapses without him and the animals he promised to protect wait for a man who may not come home.
There is a simple, humane question in front of the court: whether a sick 77-year-old with no record, charged on the word of a fraud suspect, should be left in a cell where his cardiologist says he may not survive.
The editors of Frank Report and Artvoice feel it is important to put this on the record in advance of a potential calamity.
Grillo founded DELTA Rescue 47 years ago.