LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Dozens of Las Vegas-area pets their owners paid to have cremated ended up dumped more than 100 miles away in rural Utah as the Nevada Attorney General’s Office appears to be looking into the now-closed business.
Last fall, NewsNation affiliate KLAS spoke to several people who paid 1st Call Pet Cremation to handle their dogs remains, saying they did not believe the remains given to them were their beloved animals.
As of Monday, at least one business contracted with 1st Call Pet Cremation to cremate animals was told to keep everything – including pets stored in freezers – as a state-led investigation gets underway, KLAS learned.
1st Call Pet Cremation officially closed on Oct. 31, 2023, records said. The company contracted with Angel Hutchings, owner of Forever Friends Pet Cremation outside St. George, Utah, to cremate some animals. She cremated more than 1,300 pounds of pet remains found at several dump sites in Utah and in a Las Vegas freezer, she said, and the Washington County Sheriff’s Office confirmed.
“It’s fair to say that these are dozens of peoples’ pets?” KLAS investigative reporter David Charns asked Hutchings sitting at her kitchen table clad with plastic bags of ashes.
“Oh, absolutely,” Hutchings said. “This is all the cremated remains from 1st Call Pet Cremation.”
“What was it like when you heard that there were animals that were dumped?” Charns asked.
“It was just awful as far as to think that people are paying for a service that doesn’t get performed and the disrespect,” she said. “And then things started adding up. Everything went to 1st Call Pet Cremation.”
Last September, KLAS reported when Natalie Smyers received photos of her deceased dog months after she was sent what she believed were her pet’s cremated remains.
After months of delays, Smyers received a box, a paw print and a certificate from 1st Call Pet Cremation. But then the co-owner of a Lake Havasu, Arizona-based pet cremation business sent her a message on Facebook, saying he still had her dog’s uncremated body.
“He also sent me pictures of my deceased dog, dead in a bag and it is my dog,” Smyers said about that conversation. Smyers eventually drove to that pet cremation business and picked up the remains herself.
The Arizona business owner claimed 1st Call Pet Cremation had not paid him for months and that he was trying to find the owners of the pets in his possession to alert them. As of Monday, he still had pets and ashes in his possession. At one point, he estimated there were as many as 50 pets in his freezer awaiting cremation.
“But what about everybody that has gone through this process since March?” Smyers said last year. “If I received fake remains that means a lot of other people probably received fake remains and what remains do I actually have?”
Others, like Landon Heins, never received their pet remains back: Pets like Gem and Darla.
“Tried calling him back — just kept getting messages,” Heins said more than half a year after paying 1st Call Pet Cremation nearly $800 for the services. As of Monday, Heins has received no remains and where his pets are is a mystery. They could be among the dozens discarded in Utah – the ones on Hutchings’ table.
“It’s nice to know that they’re hopefully cremated instead of just tossed aside and left to decompose somewhere,” Heins said.
After working with the Arizona cremation company, it appears 1st Call Pet Cremation outsourced with a second Utah-based pet cremation company. The woman who runs that company herself became overwhelmed and then allegedly dumped dozens of the animals in 1st Call Pet Cremation’s care alongside trash, Sgt. Lucas Alfred with the Washington County Sheriff’s Office said.
“She just had too much work and she couldn’t handle the load,” Alfred said.
That woman dumped the pets at least twice in remote sites north of St. George, Alfred said.
“I never would have thought that this could have ended up here in Washington County from Las Vegas, no,” Alfred said.
The woman faces three misdemeanors in Washington County Justice Court with a possible fine of about $1,000, records said. The greatest potential fine is for littering. She has pleaded not guilty.
The sheriff’s office collected the animals and paid Hutchings to cremate them. Deputies were able to identify a few microchip numbers but no names — the last four digitals of those numbers are 6366, 7204 and 9771.
“Is this just a case of someone whose business got out of hand?” Charns asked Hutchings.
“I think so. I would hope so,” she said. “Turning away clients is always an option.”
Hutchings also traveled to Las Vegas as recently as this February to retrieve animals still sitting in a freezer, she said. Now she is left with their remains that may never get back to their rightful owners. Hutchings said she too is owned money.
“It’s awful,” she said. “A lot of these pets probably were wanted back and so it’s just really sad.”
As KLAS reported last year, the company’s website, which was wiped, said it was Better Business Bureau accredited, though the business’ BBB profile had an F rating and said, “this business is not BBB accredited.”
A representative from 1st Call Pet Cremation said they would provide a statement for the initial story but never did. That representative did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
