Suspect in slaying dropped off cat

The man who arrived at Santa Rosa's PetCare veterinary clinic the night of Sept. 21 was in an obvious hurry.

He thrust a carrier with a cat inside it across the counter to a receptionist and told her the animal was sick. After signing his name to authorize treatment and providing an address on Stony Point Road, he started for the door, saying he'd be back in five minutes.

"The doctor will be right out. Can't you wait?" the receptionist asked.

He said he could not and drove off as she watched from the parking lot.

Pet abandonment is not unheard of. What makes this instance unusual is that the man, 41-year-old Chris Lavis, is being sought by Santa Rosa police in the stabbing death of his mother, whose cat he brought to the clinic.

The animal was dropped off six days before the body of 63-year-old Connie LaSalle, a retired Exchange Bank employee, was discovered Sept. 27 in her Stony Point Road condo -- the address Lavis listed on the veterinary clinic form.

Police have not said when she was killed, but friends have said they began unsuccessfully trying to reach LaSalle on Sept. 14.

Police say they don't know why someone allegedly would kill his mother but be concerned about a cat.

"We won't know the answer . . . until we get an explanation from the person involved," police Sgt. Lisa Banayat said. "I have no idea why he would drop the cat off in that fashion."

Roger Bradley, a veterinarian and co-owner of PetCare, said he's had cases in the past where people accused of serious crimes seek care for their pets.

"They can be very disturbed and angry with a loved one but still like their pets," he said. "Their pets can be their only sort of compassion for them because they're not judgmental."

According to PetCare's records, Lavis had been to the clinic once before, in 2000, with an ill cat that died.

Detectives still were searching for Lavis on Friday after obtaining a warrant for his arrest on suspicion of murder. They say physical evidence and witness statements link him to the crime, but they have declined to elaborate.

The unemployed computer technician had a problem with drug addiction and apparently was angry with his mother for turning him in to police after she found syringes in her home.

Police consider Lavis armed and dangerous, which makes his apparent concern for his mother's cats all the more curious.

In his haste, Lavis gave the wrong name for the cat when he dropped her off at the clinic, listing it as Milly when, in fact, it's Nellie.

The gray, 10-year-old domestic shorthair weighs 16 pounds and suffers from diabetes. She also recently was diagnosed with lung cancer, said Mary Quinn, founder of All Aboard Animal Search and Rescue and a friend of LaSalle's.

LaSalle had another cat in the house named Fluffy, which she had plucked from the colony of feral felines she faithfully fed at Exchange Bank's nerve center on Aviation Boulevard, rising at 4 a.m. every day even after her retirement in 2005.

LaSalle's friends pleaded with police for days to let them into her home to look for Fluffy. On Thursday, Quinn said, they alerted police and got permission from LaSalle's half sister to enter the condo. Inside, they found large pools of blood in a bedroom and near a patio door, not far from a phone, but not Fluffy.

"I felt a complete terror," Quinn said. "I felt the violence. You could smell the death in the house."

A former neighbor of LaSalle's who was the first to find her body told Quinn that the victim was in the living room wrapped in five blankets.

Strewn about the condo Thursday were numerous bowls of cat food and water. Quinn said it was unlikely LaSalle put out so much for her two cats, raising the possibility that whoever killed her did.

Nellie, in the meantime, was turned over Friday to the Humane Society & SPCA of Sonoma County.

With insulin, the cat is doing fine and seems to be very friendly, Bradley said.

Quinn said she's hoping to adopt Nellie, whom she fears only has days to live because of the cancer.

"Connie would never go for her living in a shelter environment for the last few days of her life," she said. "That's the best I can do for Connie, get help for her cats."

You can reach Staff Writer Derek J. Moore at 521-5336 or derek.moore@pressdemocrat.com.