JULIE STEWART
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

MOUNTAIN HOME — An old-fashioned law enforcement tool helped authorities catch William and Tammy Hanson, who officials said were on the run for more than three years in a notorious animal cruelty case in Baxter County.

Tipsters turned them in, officials said Wednesday.

Tammy Hanson was arrested in Caledonia County, Vt., in July after a caller contacted law enforcement officers and alerted them to her whereabouts, Baxter County Sheriff John Montgomery said.

Her husband was picked up Sept. 22 in Missouri, based on information provided by two callers.

The Humane Society of the United States paid rewards of $1,250 each to the pair who tipped deputies to William Hanson’s location, said Desiree Bender, the society’s Arkansas director.

The organization tried to pay a reward to the Vermont tipster, too. But the person wouldn’t give a name, and the Humane Society couldn’t cut a reward check without a name, Bender said.

The tipster wanted to give the reward money to the Caledonia County sheriff’s department, she said. But the sheriff’s office couldn’t legally accept such a payment directly from the Humane Society.

Montgomery said people have various reasons for snitching on suspects.

“Sometimes you’ll see it’s a good citizen who just wants them caught. Sometimes it’s people close to them. It could be a friend or relatives,” he said.

“We’ve had cases where people wouldn’t take a reward.”

In other instances, the tipster has a criminal record and decides to cooperate with authorities for reward or to get revenge against the person they’re turning in, the sheriff said.

Bender said the pair who turned in William Hanson didn’t want their names made public. She said she had no details about them, except that their information was correct and they knew a reward had been offered.

The Humane Society posted the reward in 2007, promoting it on its Web site and via the news media. The group is among numerous regional and national animal-welfare organizations that have publicized the Hanson case on their Web sites.

The case is among the largest instances of animal cruelty in the nation, Humane Society officials have said.

The Humane Society brought in hundreds of volunteers and said it spent more than $167,000 to care for and relocate more than 500 dogs rescued at the Hansons’ property in rural Baxter County in late 2005 and early 2006.

The process included inserting identifying microchips under the skin of nearly all the pets. The chips contain details about the dogs, including their stay at the Hanson property. The information can be “read” by a scanner passed over the animal.

Bender said William Hanson had more than 20 dogs in his possession when he was arrested last week, including at least four dogs that had been microchipped in Baxter County.

It’s just one more knot in a tangled case, she said.

“The saga continues, and the confusion continues,” Bender said.

Authorities said they have long suspected that while on the run, Tammy Hanson managed to obtain some of the animals that had been seized from her by court order in Baxter County.

Bender was unsure how the Hansons got the microchipped dogs. She speculated that Tammy Hanson obtained some from legitimate shelters that are now “too embarrassed” to admit their mistake.

Bender said Tammy Hanson represents the worst case of animal hoarding that she’s ever seen.

“She’s worse than a classic hoarder in my mind,” she said. “It’s like being a crack addict out of crack.”

Animal hoarders share four characteristics, according to veterinarian Gary Patronek, director of Boston’s Tufts University Center for Animals and Public Policy and founder of the Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium.

Patronek said hoarders keep unusually large numbers of animals, fail to provide minimal standards of care, don’t comprehend that failure and make obsessive attempts to acquire more animals.