A Gentle Woman, a Violent Death

Late last spring was the last time I spoke to Melanie Flannery. During the six years I knew her, I probably spoke to Melanie only three or four times a year.

Now I am glad that the last time I called was to thank her for taking such good care of our dog, Fred. She sounded surprised that someone would call the dog groomer just to say, “Thanks. My dog had a good time with you. I appreciate it.”

Melanie is gone. A gentle person in a gentle profession has met a violent death in Los Angeles, one more casualty of a violent city and an increasingly violent society.

I don’t know the details of her death other than what was printed in The Times on Nov. 1, a small blurb that said she was found beaten to death in her little shop.

After a time, I phoned the West Hollywood Sheriff’s station, but they did not tell me anything.

I hardly knew Melanie, really, but when Fred started looking shabby or succumbing to fleas, it was comforting that in a big impersonal city there was a person I could call and say, “Can you see Fred today?” and she would remember me, my husband and my dog.

Flannery’s, Melanie’s dog grooming shop, was on the second floor above a pet shop on Santa Monica Boulevard. It was the West Hollywood business my husband and I continued to patronize after our move from there to Los Feliz four years ago. It was inconvenient to drive Fred there for a shampoo and clipping and then have to go all the way back hours later to pick him up. But Fred liked Melanie and we trusted her with our dear old dog, and that’s what counted.

The shop smelled warmly of herbal tea and pungent flea potions. Typically old-style West Hollywood, Flannery’s was a rickety clapboard walk-up with creaking wooden floors and steamy windows. Cats roamed about, visiting the dogs who waited in the kennel cages for their owners to pick them up. Needlework graced the walls.

At any given time, Melanie would be caring for several cats and dogs until she could find good homes for them. I was shocked when she told us that sometimes people would bring in pets and leave them for a week or more--or never return to pick them up.

I was outraged that anyone would treat a pet that way, but Melanie shrugged gently and said, “I just wait for the people to come for the pet and finally, when they don’t come, I start trying to find a good home.”

We shared a passion for needlepoint--a pursuit as gentle and quiet as Melanie’s love for animals. Her extensive needlework depicted Egyptian design and subject matter. She liked to say she had a love of all things Egyptian.

Melanie was a part of our Christmas tradition. Every year on the day before Christmas we took Fred to Melanie for a shampoo and clipping so he wouldn’t shed in the car during the long drive to the family celebration. She always tied a festive Christmas ribbon to his collar. He also wore half a dozen “I love pets by Flannery’s” tags on his collar, which jingled as he walked.

Earlier this year when Fred almost died, Melanie was filled with sorrow and concern when we told her of his ordeal. “Why didn’t you call and let me know sooner?” she asked. When we had our first baby, she suggested we hire someone to walk Fred, “just so he won’t feel left out.”

The last time my husband took Fred to see Melanie was last summer. He said Melanie and a girlfriend were wrestling a plumber’s wrench bigger than either of their forearms, trying to fix the enormous antique claw-footed bathtub that dominated Flannery’s Dog Grooming shop.

Last year, the pet shop below Flannery’s closed. The last couple of times we took Fred there, we sensed a desolate atmosphere, and we worried that the shop was no longer safe for a woman alone. It was none of our business, I suppose, but now I wish I had said something--maybe urged her to move her business or at least to be more careful about keeping her doors locked. But how can you tell a highly individualistic woman who owns her own business, and one whom you scarcely know, a thing like that?

In the cold morning after her murder, I imagined Melanie’s shop as it had been--brimming with life and imbued with the warmth of pets and their keeper. I think of Melanie and her recipe boxes stuffed with cards bearing the names of her many customers, loyal customers like us who will never go there again.

I reflect sadly on the life and warmth fading a little more each day in the once-cozy shop and wonder to what extent she will be forgotten.

According to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Jose Raymond Cabrera, 29, turned himself in to police in Benson, Ariz., on Nov. 2 and confessed to the murder of Melanie Flannery .

Cabrera told police that he had served two years for armed robbery in a California prison and that some time after he was paroled in August, 1991, Melanie Flannery hired him as a handyman in her dog grooming shop.

Cabrera told the Benson police that he fell in love with Flannery but that she did not return his feelings. He said that on Tuesday, Oct. 29, he became enraged when he thought Flannery was seeing another man and that he sneaked up behind her as they worked in her shop and beat her.

Cabrera said he fled to Arizona and decided to turn himself in on his 29th birthday.

Cabrera was returned to L.A. on Nov. 15. He has been charged with murder and is being held at Men’s Central Jail on $1 million bond.