731 Animals Unaccounted For: Investigators Dig at Miranda’s Rescue as Remains Recovered

Sheriff Honsal and investigators look into an excavated pit on the Miranda’s Rescue Fortuna property.

After decades of allegations, investigators broke ground this morning at Miranda’s Rescue in Fortuna — and just as digging began, a source on scene told Redheaded Blackbelt, they had already recovered at least one animal part. Just before 2 p.m., reports from the scene indicate that the smell coming from the excavated earth is intense.

Humboldt County Sheriff William Honsal is on scene, moving in and out of a command center established on the Sandy Prairie Road property as the operation continues. A backhoe and a Bobcat skid steer moved through the field. Ground-penetrating radar swept the ground before excavators broke the surface. The technology uses radar pulses to image what lies beneath without digging blind. Marked and unmarked law enforcement vehicles lined the private road leading to the rescue.

The HCSO operation is now a collaborative effort involving the FBI, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the California Attorney General’s Office, the California Department of Justice, and the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California. Members of the Cal Poly Humboldt Anthropology Department, the Animal Legal Defense Fund, and private forensic veterinarians are assisting on scene.

“Through the investigation, it has been determined that hundreds of dogs were transferred or turned over to Miranda’s Rescue by private citizens and animal shelters,” the statement reads. “A significant number of those animals have not been accounted for.”

At a press briefing held around 2 p.m. this afternoon on Sandy Prairie Road — held on the same property where excavators were still working — Sheriff Honsal put numbers to that statement for the first time.

In the last year, Miranda’s Rescue took in 918 animals, Honsal said. Of those, 116 were recorded as adopted. Seventy-one dogs were on the property at the time of the May 1 search warrant. That leaves 731 animals unaccounted for.

Honsal told those at the scene that the remains of two animals have been located at this time. He said investigators are proceeding slowly, stating that when remains are uncovered, forensic veterinarians are then removing the dirt by hand before exhuming the remains. From there, an on-site autopsy will be done to determine cause of death and any other injuries the animal may have had. Law enforcement has yet to unearth multiple flagged areas identified using ground penetrating radar, Honsal explained.

The Day Many Have Been Waiting For

Investigators stand around an excavated area, some holding black bags.

For years, people have made allegations against Miranda’s Rescue only to be dismissed, discredited, or ignored — while the man at the center of those allegations continued to be celebrated as a community hero, honored by the Red Cross and the California State Assembly, and trusted with hundreds of animals and hundreds of thousands of dollars by shelters, cities, and families across the state.

They filed complaints with the sheriff’s office. They hired private investigators. They called animal control. They posted on Facebook and were dismissed as obsessed, vindictive, or simply wrong — and there are still those who believe that today.

Today’s excavation is the moment many of them have been waiting for — though whether it delivers the answers they’ve sought is another question entirely.

Miranda’s Rescue has been a community fixture for 31 years, built on a promise that drew in private donors, local businesses, city governments, and animal shelters from across California. The rescue’s own website stated: “An animal rescue/sanctuary takes on the expense at full cost and also doesn’t euthanize just because an animal becomes ill or to make room for new animals. When our rescue is full, we don’t take in any new animals.” Every dog too big, too scarred, or too broken for anyone else to take would find a home or live out its days at the 50-acre sanctuary on Sandy Prairie Road.

People trusted that promise with animals they loved and couldn’t keep. Some paid hundreds of dollars. Some paid thousands. They believed they were buying their pets a second chance.

“The reason we paid $1,000 instead of dumping him or leaving him at a shelter was because we believed this was a sanctuary that would protect him and give him the chance he deserved,” one pet owner wrote on a community tracking page dedicated to locating animals sent to Miranda’s. “I’m so scared that I accidentally sent him to his death. I’m clinging onto the hope that he’s out there still.”

She is one of hundreds asking the same question.

The organization All About the Animals says it raised money to hire a private investigator to look into Miranda’s operations back in 2013. Complaints logged by the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office date to at least 2023 — including a report that Miranda was accepting surrender fees and “just putting the animals down under false pretenses of rehoming.” Despite the allegations, in 2024, when Monterey County’s animal shelter asked Humboldt County directly about Miranda’s Rescue’s status they were told there were no known concerns. Transfers resumed.

The investigation that finally opened did so only after Moore and Jennifer Raymond — two animal welfare advocates who had spent years trying to be heard — crawled through a fence on the evening of April 26 and pulled eight dead dogs from a hole in the ground. The bodies were still warm. Several had what appeared to be bullet holes. One, a Cane Corso mix named Zora, had been texted to Oakland Animal Services the day before with a photo of her on a leash and the message: “Zora adopted.”

Moore and Raymond turned the bodies over to law enforcement on May 1. A search warrant was executed that same day. Since then, investigators have interviewed dozens of shelters, received hundreds of tips, and determined that a significant number of the animals transferred to Miranda’s remain unaccounted for. In the nearly two months since that first warrant, however, no one had touched the ground — a fact that had frustrated advocates who argued the field itself was the only thing that could answer the questions everyone was asking. That changed this morning.

“For more than 20 years, members of this community raised concerns, filed complaints, shared stories, and sounded alarms regarding Miranda’s rescue,” Moore told the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors earlier this month.

Today, the truth of what is beneath the fields is being uncovered.

Too Good to Be True?

The numbers Sheriff Honsal laid out Tuesday are difficult to reconcile with the operation Miranda’s Rescue claimed to be running.

Miranda’s Rescue holds a conditional use permit capping its capacity at 60 dogs on the property at any given time. Nearly 1,000 animals came through in roughly a year. Seven hundred and thirty-one of them are unaccounted for. Of 245 dogs sent by Oakland Animal Services alone — one of the largest single sources of transfers — exactly one was recorded as adopted.

Those figures dwarf even what community researchers had previously documented. In the weeks following the May 1 search warrant, volunteers tracking public records requests independently confirmed more than 600 transfers in 2025 from the shelters that had responded at that time — a figure that itself seemed staggering. Dozens of shelters had not yet replied. The number Honsal presented Tuesday suggests the full picture is worse.

Peter and Tinkerbell — two Rottweilers whose family paid $3,500 after their owner’s mother died.* They were reportedly never posted for adoption. They have not been confirmed alive. They are two of 731.

For a 60-dog operation to accept nearly 1,000 animals in roughly a year and place them in homes — in a rural corner of Northern California — would require something close to a miracle of animal placement, animal advocates say. Or, investigators allege, something else entirely.

The rescue’s tax filings show gross receipts climbing from $858,643 in 2015 to nearly $1.9 million in 2023. The search warrant affidavit estimates Miranda took in approximately $510,000 in shelter transfer fees in the past year alone.

Nobody was required to verify where the animals went. Shelters that transferred dogs to Miranda’s counted those transfers as live outcomes in their statistics — numbers that support grant applications and ease pressure on overcrowded facilities. The incentive to transfer was structural. The incentive to verify what happened afterward was not.

What Is and Isn’t Illegal — and What Today Could Prove

The excavation underway today could yield evidence of animal cruelty, evidence of fraud — or evidence of nothing beyond a rescue operation that buried its dead on-site, which Miranda has said has always been his practice.

The law is more complicated than the outrage.

In California, private rescue organizations are not required to use a licensed veterinarian to euthanize animals. The state’s Veterinary Medical Board has confirmed that rescues, as owners of the animals in their care, are exempt from the Veterinary Medicine Practice Act. Shooting a dog is not inherently illegal. California Penal Code 597(a) prohibits killing animals by methods that cause unnecessary suffering — but a quick shot to the head occupies a legal gray area that Miranda’s defense will likely lean on heavily.

Zora was featured as the dog of the month at a local bank. A search warrant claims Zora was among the bodies of animals killed at the rescue after being reported as “adopted.”

What would cross into criminal territory is killing healthy, adoptable animals specifically to create space for more paying transfers. That is precisely what investigators allege. The search warrant affidavit states that HCSO Detective Julian Aguilera believes Miranda “intentionally killed Zora in order to receive more dogs and the funds that came with the dogs.” Proving that intent — that the killings were financially motivated rather than the result of genuine emergency — is where the criminal case will be built or broken.

The fraud track may offer firmer ground. California Penal Code 532(a) makes it a felony to obtain money or property through knowingly false representations. To convict, prosecutors must show Miranda made false statements he knew were untrue, that those he told relied on them, and that they suffered losses as a result. The text message Miranda sent to Oakland Animal Services — “Zora adopted,” sent the day before her body was pulled from the ground — is exactly the kind of written false representation that statute targets.

Animal advocates have documented what they allege are additional examples: adoption photos they say appear staged, individuals they say appear across multiple listings. In one case, a local woman told the Redheaded Blackbelt that she was featured in a photo with a dog that was allegedly later used as proof of adoption — but she says she never adopted the animal. She says Miranda asked her to pose with the dog during a visit to the rescue inquiring if Miranda could accept two dogs she found abandoned. Additionally, Moore has identified at least two cases in which Miranda told shelters a dog had been adopted, then later acknowledged the animal had been euthanized — without ever notifying the shelter.

With the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office now involved, federal wire fraud statutes are also in play. Miranda’s Rescue solicited donations online, communicated with shelters by text and email, and operated a website that described its no-kill mission and veterinarian-approved euthanasia practices. If those electronic communications were used to advance a fraudulent scheme — and crossed state lines, as they did — federal exposure could be significant. The California Attorney General, confirmed as an active participant, has primary responsibility in this state for protecting charitable assets and prohibiting deceptive charitable solicitations.

Over 31 years of operation, a rescue that regularly euthanizes sick and dangerous animals would be expected to have a significant burial site. The question is what “significant” looks like against the scale of what investigators allege was happening. How many graves the excavation finds — and what the animals in them died from — may be the most consequential question this investigation has yet faced.

It may also, depending on what investigators find, begin to support Miranda’s account rather than undermine it.

Miranda’s Position

Miranda has denied euthanizing adoptable animals for profit. In what appears to be his only on-record interview since the investigation began, published by the North Coast Journal, Miranda described each of the eight recovered dogs as animals that posed genuine safety risks or had been involved in attacks, and said shooting them was both legal and the most humane option available.

He has said he buries all animals that die at the rescue on the property rather than send them to a landfill, and that the field has been used throughout the rescue’s history.

In a public statement posted to Miranda’s Rescue’s Facebook page, Miranda wrote that he had devoted 31 years to the rescue, that not everything being reported was true, and that he intended to “vigorously defend” himself. He said he had been advised by counsel not to comment further.

Shannon Miranda has not been charged with any crime.

The Investigation’s Status

Those on scene are documenting the investigation on what lies beneath the ground at Miranda’s rescue as this multi-agency investigation continues.

The renewed search comes after weeks in which some supporters claimed the investigation had stalled due to a lack of evidence.

Miranda’s defenders have argued that even if dogs were killed, these were animals nobody wanted, and that the real problem lies with the people who acquire animals and surrender them when they become inconvenient. The pet overpopulation crisis is real, and Miranda didn’t create it.

But Miranda did offer himself as a part of the solution to it. His website promised that no animal would be killed to make room for the next one. He marketed the rescue as no-kill. Though California has no legal definition for that term, it carries significant weight with donors and the public. The website’s promises went further, stating explicitly that euthanasia was performed only by licensed veterinarians and only for animals that could not be saved. If investigators can show those claims were false when made, and that donors and shelters relied on them when sending animals and money, the website itself becomes potential evidence of fraud.

Sheriff Honsal addressed the stalled-investigation claims directly in a June 11 email to Redheaded Blackbelt.

“This is an active criminal investigation,” Honsal wrote. “I have two detectives and a sergeant assigned to work full time on this investigation. Additional Sheriff’s Office personnel are also actively working on this case, along with personnel from several other government agencies.”

District Attorney Stacey Eads confirmed in a June 2 email that her office had not yet received investigative reports for review. “I believe the investigation is ongoing,” she wrote. At the time, Honsal confirmed that the DA’s Office, the California AG’s Office, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office had all been consulted but that the case had not yet been submitted to any charging authority for review.

An hour ago, Honsal stated an investigation of this nature takes time. The sheriff’s office, he said, is not in a rush to judgment. Honsal said investigators are “here to get all sides.” He reiterated that investigators are interested in interviewing any witnesses with information regarding the case.  No arrests have been made in connection with this investigation that remains open and active, he said.

The excavation today, will continue. The answers, Honsal made clear, will take time. But for the people who have spent years trying to be heard, it is something.

“They weren’t digging before,” Moore said. “Now they’re digging.”

Shannon Miranda has not been charged with any crime. As with anyone under investigation, Miranda is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in a court of law.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office tip line at (707) 268-2539 or submit anonymously at [email protected].

Note: This article has been updated after publication to correct a placement date error. Our apologies for any confusion.

Earlier:

• Search Warrant Served at Miranda’s Rescue in Fortuna Amid Animal Abuse and Fraud Investigation
• Paid to Save Them, Accused of Killing Them: The Investigation Into Miranda’s Rescue
• HCSO: Miranda’s Rescue Investigation Remains a Priority
• Miranda’s Rescue Case Sparks Outcry at Supes Meeting
• HCSO Executes New Search Warrant at Miranda’s Rescue, Brings Heavy Equipment to Property