The Missing Cat Mystery Clawing a Florida Community Apart

The first cat to go missing on North 30th Road in Hollywood, Florida, was a 3-year-old orange tabby named Toby.

Weeks later, a 4-year-old domestic shorthair mix named Juan Pierre who lived around the corner didn’t come home after his daily outdoor stroll. Two days after that, 14-year-old Kiwi failed to make it back, setting off alarm bells across the neighborhood off I-95.

The fear was heightened because other felines had been rescued from a nearby trap lined with catnip and food last September, and another cat named Chloe had vanished for a few weeks last year.

Pretty soon, the saga of the missing cats had consumed the Hollywood Hills neighborhood, a quiet, family-oriented community just 10 minutes from the beach. And it didn’t take long before a few residents zeroed in on a neighbor, David Capozzi.

“This neighborhood used to be a sanctuary for cats. Now it’s their worst nightmare,” Richard Lothian, who lives six houses away from Capozzi, told The Daily Beast. “The worst part is not knowing where the cats went and if they are still alive.”

There is no evidence linking Capozzi to the missing cats, but some of his comments and the fact that the trap was found under a boat in his front yard has put him in the center of an intense finger-pointing maelstrom. There have been police reports, complaints to local animal services, and a temporary restraining order for stalking.

Several locals have morphed into vigilantes, taking it upon themselves to surveil Capozzi’s home for trapped animals and post flyers warning cat owners to “beware” of their neighbor. The interactions between him and the patrolling neighbors are tense.

“Any cat that goes on my property, I trap it and it disappears,” Capozzi said during one confrontation that Lothian recorded, and later provided to The Daily Beast. Just before, Lothian had called him a “fat fuck.”

According to Broward County Animal Care and Adoption, a local ordinance states any property owner has the legal right to catch or trap cats on their property and bring them to a city shelter. As of this week, a spokesperson told the Daily Beast, “Capozzi has not brought any cats to the shelter.” The Hollywood Police Department also said that they are aware of the reports against Capozzi and his neighbors.

“We would hope that a neighborly dispute over cats would never result in beloved community pets ‘disappearing,’” Emily Wood, the director of Broward County Animal Care and Adoption Center, said. “We encourage people to be good neighbors and discuss their concerns if a cat wanders on their property.”

Capozzi says he has never harmed a cat, and described himself in an emailed statement as an “animal lover” who owns an adopted cat and two dogs.

He said he has removed “nuisance cats” from his neighborhood and had them “transported to the humane society.” (Capozzi later added that a “friend” takes the cats to the Humane Society of Broward County on his behalf, but would not provide the friend’s name. The Humane Society of Broward County told The Daily Beast it does not release information about residents who bring in trapped animals, but they would have been referred to a county facility.)

In response to his past comments about “disappearing cats,” Capozzi said in the email it was just a snippet of a longer conversation and that Lothian has “continued to invent and spread lies” about him. His trap, he explained, was his way of helping the neighborhood and protecting his property.

“I live in Hollywood, which is full of drug-dealers, prostitutes, and cat-hoarders,” Capozzi said. “These stray cats damage property and landscape, and disrupt household[s].”

Lothian admits that he had his eye on Capozzi long before his rescue cat Toby went missing.

It began last September, when their neighbor Erik Marino’s house cat Chloe went missing for about a month. Marino later told a local TV station that he believed Capozzi was to blame.

“I can tell you personally, he made my daughter cry every night so I’ll never forget that,” Marino said. (Marino did not respond to a request for comment about the cat and Capozzi denied taking his cat.)

Lothian said that he and his wife, Eda Lourdes Amador, are known on the block for opening their home to multiple adopted cats. So about a month later, when his outdoor cat Quinny did not show up for food over the course of the day, Lothian began looking around the neighborhood.

“As I was walking and calling for the cat a few houses down from me I heard Quinny meowing,” he said. He says he found her in Capozzi’s trap.

Capozzi lives toward the end of the block in a yellow one-story house with a screen door covered with signs that read “We don’t call 911. Violators will be shot” and “Smile! You’re on camera.” But Lothian said he didn’t think twice about knocking on his neighbor’s door to bring Quinny home and was surprised by Capozzi’s reaction.

“He said, ‘I trap any cat that comes in my yard, hit them on the head, and dump them in the canal,’” Lothian claimed. “I told Capozzi to let my cat go, which he did, and then I told him what he was doing is wrong. He told me to go fuck myself; I responded the same to him and left.”

Capozzi did not answer repeated questions about this incident, but said Lothian is a “cat hoarder” who should know how outdoor cats roam. “I have owned many cats over the years and some of them have gone missing, as cats do,” he added. “So it should be no surprise to anyone when one of these stray cats goes missing.” (Lothian denied being a “cat hoarder,” stating that he and his wife “rescue disabled or injured community cats that will be euthanized if surrendered to Animal Care, and give them a loving home.”)

After saving Quinny, Lothian said, he and his wife began to check Capozzi’s yard almost daily. The trap, he said, remained closed until two months ago.

On April 9, Amador said, she confronted Capozzi after she noticed Toby had vanished. According to her, Capozzi would not confirm or deny that he took the orange outdoor cat—but he did admit he would make any captured cats “disappear.”

The accusation quickly spiraled into the infamous recorded confrontation. According to Capozzi, the conversation lasted about 30 minutes, in which he told his neighbors that he could never hurt an animal but complained that their neighborhood was overrun with felines. (Lothian provided two videos of the April 9 confrontation to The Daily Beast, which depicted about five minutes of the conversation outside of Capozzi’s house. It is not immediately clear how long the conversation lasted.)

“I explained to him that when one of these nuisance cats begins to bother me and my family and damage our property and disrupt my household and family, I do as animal control instructed me to do,” Capozzi said in an email, adding that he only used the word “disappear” with Lothian “in an effort to encourage him to keep his horde of stray cats away from me and my family.”

“I told him if he had a better solution to the problem, that I would welcome any suggestions. I mistakenly thought that he was honorable, and that we had reached an understanding,” he said.

Instead, Lothian seemingly escalated the matter when he called the police again about missing cats. An April 27 police report says he complained to an officer that his neighbors “harass him constantly.” The next day, he filed a temporary restraining order petition against Lothian, alleging he and Amador “stalked and trespassed onto my property, stole and destroyed property on my front yard.” (The petition for the restraining order, which Lothian called “absurd,” was dismissed without prejudice on May 10 after Capozzi failed to appear in court for the hearing.)

For Javier Rodriguez, who also lives on the block, the “very hectic” fighting over the missing cats has gotten out of hand.

“The neighborhood has gone crazy over this thing,” he said. “I almost sold my house and left at one point.”

He said Capozzi is “rough around the edges” and may not be “the most amicable guy” in the neighborhood, but noted there is no evidence his neighbor has harmed any animals.

“I don’t trap cats, but I understand his point of view. He is just protecting his house. If he was doing something illegal, and I knew about it, I would say something,” Rodriguez added.

Rodriguez also argued that Amador is hardly the perfect neighbor anyway. He provided The Daily Beast with a security camera video that he said showed Amador showing up to his home in the middle of the night, asking about the whereabouts of her cats. He also said Amador walks in the area at night with a flashlight looking for cats. (Amador told The Daily Beast that she was simply looking for her cat the night she knocked on Rodriguez’s door, and that her neighbor “yelled” at her. She did confirm that she uses a flashlight at night to look for her cats because it is “really dark.”)

“Control your cats and this all goes away,” Rodriguez added. “Instead, they are presenting him in a very bad light. What they are going to do is inciting violence against David.”

The first sign of Lothian and Amador taking their fight public came in the form of a flyer. When Kiwi did not go home on April 23, the couple posted leaflets with Capozzi’s name. “It advised that he makes stray cats and also cats [that] belong to surrounding neighbors disappear,” according to a police report filed against Capozzi.

“Please be careful with your family members,” the flyers, which also called Capozzi an “evil person,” added in a bold font.

Julia Johnson, a teacher and owner of missing rescue cat Juan Pierre, told The Daily Beast that when she saw the flyers, her stomach dropped because she had been looking for her cat for weeks. Johnson has no proof that her cat ended up on Capozzi's property, but she said she is terrified about what could have happened to her cat after learning about other missing felines.

“My cat wouldn’t run away,” she said. “My family is heartbroken but even more than that, we are traumatized.”

Capozzi denied taking Johnson’s cat and said that going missing “is a common occurrence with outdoor cats.”

Lothian said the push to get evidence is one reason he made a formal request for an investigation by Broward's Animal Care and Adoption Division in April. In an email to the agency, he said that he and other neighbors are “willing to testify against Capozzi.”

Animal Care field supervisor Philip Goen responded and said that one of Lothian’s neighbors submitted a similar complaint and that the agency was “presently looking into the findings of Hollywood Police as well as Code for consideration in our investigation.” But Goen added in the email that the agency “cannot see any evidence” of cat-napping “other than [Capozzi’s] own self admission of intent.”

A spokesperson for the Hollywood Police Department also told The Daily Beast that they “have been looking into complaints about missing cats” on North 30th Road. The investigation has not gotten very far, since there is no evidence and Capozzi recently removed his traps.

For his part, Capozzi said all he wants is for his neighbors to leave him alone and to stop the “fabrications.” There was a glimmer of hope this week, when Lothian and Amador put up a new flyer promising they will “end it” if Capozzi tells them where their two cats are.

Capozzi said in an email he responded to Lothian and Adamor in a written note—which also was reviewed by The Daily Beast—saying that he rejects their offer because he believes they’re only “trying to incite harm” against him and his family. So the saga continues, to the dismay of at least one neighbor.

“Honestly, we have bigger problems than these cats,” Rodriguez said. “This just needs to stop.”

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