The owner of a now-defunct pet crematorium in San Marcos has been arrested on suspicion of grand theft after customers complained they gave the owner their pets and money but were never provided cremains.
Christopher Settle, 39, was taken into custody on Tuesday outside his Temecula home by sheriff’s deputies serving an arrest warrant, sheriff’s Sgt. Agustin Rosas said in a news release.
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Investigators said Settle had operated his business “without the legal or physical ability to complete orders customers paid for,” noting that gas and electricity were cut off in July and his permit to operate the incinerator expired in March 2024.
Settle was the owner of Angel Paws Cremation, which operated out of a business park on Pacific Street, until he was evicted in November after he stopped paying rent. Neighbors complained of odors emanating from the business after some animals in freezers were allowed to defrost, and in September, the city of San Marcos got a court order to enter the premises and hired a contractor to clean up the biohazard.
On Tuesday, Settle was booked into the Vista jail. He was released on bail and is expected to be arraigned next Wednesday. He could not be reached for comment.
Customers began noticing problems with the business in late summer when their messages went unreturned. Some offered to help Settle, thinking he had simply fallen behind and needed help packaging up ashes and contacting pet owners.
They later learned that gas had been shut off at the business, meaning Settle was allegedly taking in pets he was not able to cremate. When the landlord took possession of the building in November, he said he found at least 150 animals stored in around 20 freezers.
“It’s about time they arrested him,” customer Janie Emerson said Wednesday night. “I hope there are other charges to follow. The situation at Angel Paws has been horrific, and there have been some bright lights, but most of it has been a total horror show for all the owners.”
Emerson had taken her beloved West Highland white terrier named Liz to be cremated by Angel Paws after the dog died in July. About a month later, Settle gave her a cedar box and told her it contained Liz — but she later learned her dog had not been cremated. She was able to retrieve the dog’s partially frozen body and took it to another cremation business.
According to court documents, Settle allegedly operated his cremation business even after the gas and electricity were shut off between July 9 and Sept. 6 due to nonpayment. He also did not have a valid permit from the San Diego County Air Pollution Control District to operate the incinerator after it expired in March 2024, according to an affidavit filed by a sheriff’s official in support of the arrest warrant.
Sheriff’s investigators said they heard from 46 Angel Paws customers complaining about the business, with 20 victims claiming Settle took their money between July 9 and Sept. 6. Those victims’ combined loss exceeded $4,700, far above the $950 threshold to charge grand theft.
Some pets also came into the business through outsourcing agreements Settle had with veterinary clinics. Those customers weren’t counted in the victim list, the affidavit said.
While some pet owners were able to get their pets back, others were left waiting.
Landlord Juan Manuel Villanueva told reporters and customers in November that he would try to reunite people with their pets, but he warned that the business was in disarray. After going through the freezers, Villanueva said he was unable to identify many of the animals.
In a Nov. 19 email sent to customers, Villanueva said he was able to confirm the identity of around 50 pets, but he said others were severely decomposed and in such poor condition their features were no longer recognizable. “The heartbreaking truth is that the conditions caused by Chris made it impossible to identify many animals, no matter how hard we tried,” he wrote.
Villanueva told CBS8 San Diego that he ended up “communally cremating” about 4,000 pounds of animals stored at the business. Villanueva declined to comment Thursday, saying in a text message he was “done with that topic.”
Linda Logan, a longtime customer who has communicated with other pet owners in a Facebook group, said she was frustrated that so many pets were cremated together without giving people the chance to reclaim them. Logan had used a borrowed microchip reader to scan pets in the freezers in hopes of identifying owners. She said many of the animals she saw were in “decent condition,” and she believes more could have been returned to owners.
“We found out about the mass communal cremations on the news, and (Villanueva) promised to give us back our pets,” she said. “We paid to have our pets privately cremated and to have the ashes returned to us.”
She has called around to other crematoriums in neighboring counties and was told by a Newport Beach company that it had cremated some pets from Angels Paws and disposed of the ashes at sea.
Logan plans to bring the last of the cremated remains that were at the Angel Paws business to a celebration of life event at Kit Carson Park in Escondido on Sunday. She said she signed a release to get the cremains from Villanueva. The ashes are in several dozen clear bags with pet names printed on gold labels.
She said she hopes to return them to owners who attend the event, which organizers are calling “a day of memories, laughs, tears, joy, support and hugs.”
Staff writer Teri Figueroa contributed to this report.