Attorney General Jason Miyares has opened a criminal investigation into the whereabouts of the two baby giraffes missing from the Natural Bridge Zoo, it was revealed in court Wednesday.
That announcement came amid an all-day hearing on contempt of court charges against three people involved with the zoo: two members of the family that has run the Rockbridge County attraction and an animal property rights activist. They were charged with impeding court orders to cooperate with moving the four adult giraffes that had been awarded to the state after an animal cruelty trial.
Circuit Judge Christopher Russell found former zoo owner Karl Mogensen and his daughter, Gretchen, who now runs the facility, guilty and sentenced both to suspended jail time, along with a fine. The contempt charge against the Missouri-based activist was dismissed.
A hearing on a separate contempt charge against the Mogensens for failing to notify the state that two pregnant giraffes — awarded to the state but still housed at the Natural Bridge Zoo at the time — had given birth was postponed after the criminal probe was revealed.
Still unresolved is the question of who owns those missing baby giraffes. Michelle Welch, the senior assistant attorney general who heads the office’s Animal Law Unit, insists that the state does because the court awarded the state custody of the two pregnant giraffes, and it’s settled law that an animal’s offspring belong to whoever owns the animal. John Lichenstein, one of the attorneys for Gretchen Mogensen, suggested otherwise since the court order never made mention of who would own future baby giraffes.
The two sides appeared prepared to argue those points over ownership Wednesday until the existence of the criminal probe came out during otherwise routine testimony. Amy Taylor, an investigator for the attorney general’s office, described how she showed up for an unannounced but court-approved inspection in early April; Gretchen Mogensen, who wasn’t present at the time, put off the inspection until the next day and then consulted a lawyer before allowing Taylor and her team to enter the zoo. That’s when Taylor found that the two female giraffes were no longer pregnant and the calves were missing.
Welch asked the investigator if she had asked Gretchen Mogensen about the newborn calves.
“I did not ask her anything,” Taylor said. “She was represented by counsel.” It was unclear if that meant the lawyer was with Mogensen during the inspection.
“Are you actively looking for the giraffe calves?” Welch asked.
“I have an active criminal investigation,” Taylor replied.
That news seemed to take the attorneys for the Mogensens by surprise. They asked for a recess, which was then followed by a conference of the lawyers for both sides. When court resumed, there was no more mention of the baby giraffes except for a reference about how that contempt charge would be taken up at a separate hearing that has not yet been scheduled.
Shaun Kenney, a spokesman for Miyares who was contacted after the hearing, said his office could not talk further about the criminal investigation.
The sheer size of the adult giraffes — males are generally 16 to 20 feet tall, females 14 to 17 feet — has complicated the Natural Bridge Zoo case from the beginning. The case began in December 2023 when the attorney general’s office led a raid on the zoo and confiscated animals as part of an animal abuse investigation. Four that weren’t seized were the giraffes; the state placed legal claims on them but kept them at the roadside zoo because it had no way to move them.
In March 2024, a Rockbridge County jury ruled after a weeklong trial that the state could keep 71 of the animals while 29 should be returned to the zoo because there wasn’t sufficient evidence to support abuse charges involving them. Among the 71 animals that the state was given custody of were the four giraffes still at the zoo, one male and three females. Two of the females were pregnant, which complicated a possible transfer.
By late summer 2024, the details of how and when to move those giraffes prompted more court action. On Aug. 26, a lawyer for the state told Russell that Karl Mogensen had been making threats to those typically involved in moving giraffes from one zoo to another. On Sept. 5, the court entered an order banning Mogensen and his wife, Debbie, from having “any contact” with giraffe transporters until the giraffes had been moved out of the Natural Bridge Zoo that they once owned but later transferred to their children.
On Oct. 2, the court issued an order to allow the state to move the giraffes to the Georgia Safari Park in Madison, Georgia, about an hour’s drive east of Atlanta. One giraffe — the male, Jeffrey — was moved the next day. The three females were moved in May. The controversy surrounding that October move of Jeffrey prompted some of the allegations that were in the contempt charges heard in court Wednesday.
The attorney general’s office presented evidence that Karl Mogensen had threatened to shoot transporters and veterinarians involved in the move; he told a state police investigator he was joking. There were also allegations that Gretchen Mogensen, who livestreamed the event, and Sondra Scott, who runs an animal group called Two by Two 4, “fomented” harassment by encouraging their online followers to harass those involved in the move, the attorney general’s office alleged. (You can read more details in a previous column I wrote on the case; all those incidents were cited in testimony Wednesday.)
Much of the day Wednesday was spent with the state playing video clips from livestream videos Gretchen Mogensen and Scott had made, in which they asked followers to help them identify the giraffe movers and share that information online. Welch said those clips had prompted threats “against the attorney general and our office” that she had to take to the Capitol Police. She also said that Mogensen and Scott had inspired followers to harass the state’s “rescue partners” online by posting untrue statements about the Georgia Safari Park, the Oakland Zoo (which supplied an expert adviser) and others, and that such harassment continues to this day.
Attorneys for the Mogensens contended that none of their clients’ actions actually interfered with the move; the attorney for Scott argued that she shouldn’t have been charged because she’s not named in the original court order, which covered the zoo owners and caretakers.
Throughout the day, the judge made it clear that he had little patience for the online activities of Gretchen Mogensen and Scott and that they should be found responsible for “all this trash that people put on the comments” and “this kind of juvenile conduct of people who post these vile comments on social media.” He was particularly critical of Scott, who he said had “inserted” herself into the case from Missouri and “apparently conducted herself as a teenager on social media.”
Several times he interrupted Scott’s attorney, Sandra Nicks. At one point, Nicks began to say of her client that “she has a First Amendment right to —.” The judge cut her off: “Not to incite violence. Why don’t you sit down, Miss Nicks?”
Later, in closing arguments, Nicks said she understood the judge’s “angst and anger” but “I ask you not to take that out on my client for her comments.”
“Who should I take them out against?” the judge asked.
In the end, he said that while he found Scott’s behavior “the most disturbing” and hoped that she would never be called as an expert witness in future court cases around the country, he would dismiss the contempt charge against her because he agreed with her lawyer’s argument that Scott shouldn’t be charged because she was not named in the court’s order. The Mogensens were covered by that court order, though, and the judge found them guilty of contempt.
Welch, from the attorney general’s office, asked for jail time for the Mogensens and a fine. The judge gave each suspended jail time, meaning they could serve time if they are found to further violate court orders. He gave Karl Mogensen 90 days suspended, with a $2,500 fine, of which $500 was suspended. He gave Gretchen Mogensen 60 days suspended, with a $1,500 fine, of which $500 was suspended.
The next court case will apparently be the yet-to-be scheduled on the contempt charge against the Mogensens for not notifying the state about the giraffe births, and whatever court action comes out of the criminal probe about their whereabouts.
