A week after his brutal murder, friends of murdered ‘animal angel’ Al Chernoff are finally coming around to asking themselves, ‘Did he have a sordid secret life?’
A 14-year-old girl has been arrested in connection with Chernoff’s slaying inside his home in Philadelphia, but so far no-one can answer the question of what she was doing there in the first place.
‘I just can’t imagine for one minute that Al was the type of person who would have had an inappropriate relationship with a 14-year-old girl — but at the same time I can’t think of anyone ever having a reason to kill him,’ fellow cat rescuer Ashley Foresta told DailyMailTV.
‘The sad thing is I don’t know if we will ever know what happened. What was a 14-year-old girl doing in his house?
‘To be honest, maybe part of me doesn’t want to know the whole truth.’
Albert Chernoff, 59, was killed with a blunt weapon around 10.30pm last week at his home in Rhawnhurst, Philadelphia
Chernoff – an animal rescuer who lived with 11 cats – was found in his home, naked and tied to his bed, with a head wound and other injuries (pictured is his tattoo)
Chernoff, 59 — who had appeared on NatGeo’s Rescue Ink and called himself ‘Alley Cat’ — was found naked tied to his bed in the duplex that he shared with 11 cats, three frogs and two turtles. His face had been smashed in by a 2×4 embedded with nails. He also had several cuts to his chest.
His house was covered by exterior cameras and one inside his kitchen caught a young woman go to the sink, wash her hands and then look inside the refrigerator for food after his death.
Fellow cat rescuer Ashley Foresta told DailyMailTV that she ‘can’t imagine’ Chernoff would have had an inappropriate relationship with a 14-year-old girl
Teen Ajahnae Smaugh gave herself up to police on Thursday last week.
She has been charged with murder, robbery, tampering with evidence, obstruction of justice and possessing an instrument of crime. She is due in court for a preliminary hearing on November 27.
Her lawyer Howard Taylor described her to CNN as a ‘troubled girl.’ When asked whether his client was a victim, Taylor said he ‘wouldn’t put it to that extent, but added: ‘He wasn’t totally innocent, either.’
‘There is a reason police aren’t saying much,’ he added. Taylor, who said Smaugh is currently in juvenile custody, did not return DailyMailTV’s calls.
Authorities have not yet decided whether to charge Smaugh as a juvenile or an adult.
Foresta said she had heard that Chernoff may have been paying Smaugh to work as a housekeeper. ‘He was divorced and lived alone with 11 cats, so there would have been plenty to clean,’ she said.
But Tony Branconi, Chernoff’s neighbor in the duplex in the Rhawnhurst section of north-east Philadelphia, said he had never seen the girl before.
‘I know nothing about the girl at all,’ Branconi, 70, told DailyMailTV. ‘But I certainly don’t think of Al as perverted in any way, shape or form,’ he added without a reporter even bringing up the possibility.
‘He was just a regular guy. We’d been buds for 20 years.’
Branconi alerted police in the early hours of Tuesday last week. ‘I heard a racket,’ he said. ‘I have heard such noises before but this was in the middle of the night. It was like he was building something.
Branconi called cops and then went outside and noticed Chernoff’s car was parked right up against the wall of the house. ‘He never parked like that. He always parked it back a few feet,’ he said.
When the neighbor looked inside the car, he said it had been ransacked. ‘It was in complete disarray — rooted through.’
Police say Smaugh’s parents arranged for her to turn herself in after they recognized her from the video.
Police released this surveillance video showing a suspect wandering around what appears to be Chernoff’s home. Cats can be seen lounging and walking around in the background
The suspect, believed to be Ajahnae Smaugh, 14, can be seen here reaching over to open the fridge, before rummaging around it
Smaugh turned herself in to police with her lawyer after authorities released surveillance video of a suspect in his home after the killing
This is the home where Chernoff was found dead with his face smashed in by a 2×4 embedded with nails. He also had several cuts to his chest
Philadelphia’s Acting Police Commissioner Christine Coulter described the case as ‘extremely troubling.’
‘It was a brutal murder and to think that there was anybody doing this but a child,’ Coulter added. ‘But you have to look to why did this happen and that’s what the investigators are going to try to find out.
Animal rescue activists throughout Philadelphia were shocked by Chernoff’s death.
‘If you help animals in Philadelphia you’ve met Al. He is a wild veteran, who loves motorcycles and will talk your ear off about his motorcycles and cats,’ Blake Martin of the city’s Animal Care and Control Team told ABC6.
‘His generosity was incredible. You don’t see a lot of that anymore especially towards the animal community.’
Foresta, a board member of City of Elderly Love, a Philadelphia rescue service that specializes in finding homes for older cats, described Chernoff as ‘a great guy.’
Chernoff was found dead in his duplex that he shared with 11 cats, three frogs and two turtles. Pictured are Chernoff’s cats Jack (left) a 13-year-old tabby and five-year-old Nicki (right)
Foresta questioned why the 14-year-old was in Chernoff’s house but said he may have been paying Smaugh to work as a housekeeper
‘He was always even keeled. He was always down to earth,’ she told DailyMailTV. ‘It wasn’t just about helping the cats. He was a veteran, one of the sweetest people you would ever meet.
‘I’d been friends with Al for more than 10 years and I can honestly say I have never even heard him raise his voice.
‘We rescue animals, that’s what we do,’ said Foresta. ‘Some of the people we encounter are pretty terrible and deserve to have voices raised against them, but that wasn’t Al.
‘He cared about everyone and was always trying to help. Anytime anyone had a problem he was the one you would go to and he would drop everything.’
‘Al was a character,’ she added. ‘He was always nice and genuine and would tell it like it is — ‘I’m a single 60-year-old man and I spend my free time at home with my cats’ — and he was proud of that.
‘He was a tattooed, veteran, crazy cat lady in a male body. That was Al, there was no sugar-coating it, he was proud of to be that guy.
Foresta said Chernoff spent nearly all his spare time helping animals and served as a sergeant in the Army in the 1980s
‘He cared about everyone and was always trying to help. Anytime anyone had a problem he was the one you would go to and he would drop everything,’ Foresta said of Chernoff
Chernoff, a divorcé with no children, worked as a building maintenance supervisor at Philadelphia International Airport.
Foresta said he spent nearly all his spare time helping animals. He served as a sergeant in the Army in the 1980s.
‘He must have rescued immeasurable number of cats over the years, certainly in the hundreds if not the thousands. He did a lot of feral cat work. He was really well known for making feral cat shelters to keep them alive through the cold winter months.’
She said animal rescue organizations in Philadelphia rallied round and placed his 11 cats in homes as a priority as soon as they heard of his death.
‘We made it a kind of personal mission to see that all his cats were placed in some kind of rescue that would get them out of the shelter and back into a home.’