Prince George’s County Zebra Owner Escapes Animal Cruelty Conviction

PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, MD — A Maryland man whose three zebras were on the loose for three months, providing a delightful respite from the pandemic in 2021, was acquitted Wednesday of animal cruelty charges stemming from their escape.

Jerry Lee Holly, who owned the zebras, had been charged with three misdemeanor animal cruelty charge, one of each of the animals that broke free from his Upper Marlboro farm in August 2021.

Two zebras were captured and returned, but a third died after being caught in a snare just feet from an enclosure where Holly kept his herd of 36 zebras, according to police reports. Snare traps are illegal in Prince George’s County. It was discovered about three weeks after the zebras broke free by a Girl Scouts forest groundskeeper.

They were part of a herd of 39 zebras Holly surreptitiously moved to his Bellefields estate from Florida in the middle of the night in 2021. He didn’t obtain the permits Prince George’s County officials require for people who want to keep exotics, authorities have said. The escape of the zebras wasn’t reported until a few days later, when neighbors started reported seeing them in their yards.

The farm has long been on animal welfare experts’ radar. Holly, 78, has been to trial at least six times now on criminal charges related to his animals, and was found guilty in all but one of the trials, The Washington Post reported, citing court records.

In a Washington Post investigative report published earlier this week, animal welfare experts said those cases, along with hundreds of other allegations of inadequate animal care from local, state and federal inspectors, should have been enough to strip Holly of the USDA license that allowed him to have zebras in the first place.

According to The Post, the zebras were among hundreds of exotic animals Holly has kept over 50 years. They have been kept largely out of public view at sprawling estates, mainly in Maryland and Florida, where Holly bought, bred and sold for profit. Customers included game farms, including in Texas, where exotic animals can be legally hunted for sport.

Other criminal cases against Holly are also related to escapes of exotic animals. For years, state and federal inspectors have accused him of inadequate veterinary care and neglect, citing specific examples of rotting cages, feces-covered enclosures and poor record keeping — practices consistent with illegal wildlife trafficking.

» For more, read the Washington Post investigative report.