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Cat Crazy Dept.
As she awaits a retrial on animal-cruelty charges in New Hampshire, Missing Persons frontwoman Dale Bozzio’s troubles continue in Southern California, where she faces eviction from her San Fernando Valley home over $4400 in missing rent payments.

As she awaits a retrial on animal-cruelty charges in New Hampshire, Missing Persons frontwoman Dale Bozzio’s troubles continue in Southern California, where she faces eviction from her San Fernando Valley home over $4400 in missing rent payments.

The eviction comes just five months after Bozzio was sentenced to jail time for having abandoned at least 14 felines to die in her rented home in the woods of New Hampshire while she toured last fall. (She has since appealed the case and was scheduled to return to the Granite State this week to once again fight the charges.)

According to Carroll County, New Hampshire, Superior Court documents, the case was continued indefinitely earlier this month due to Bozzio’s concert schedule and appeal deadlines that would interfere with her right to “a proper defense.”

The New Wave rocker — whose bold look influenced the likes of Gwen Stefani and Lady Gaga — told the Phoenix earlier this year that in fact she was trying to save the mostly feral felines, and that the neglect was not intentional. This summer, after a stint living in Newton, the Medford native headed back to the West Coast, where in the 1980s she achieved fame with Missing Persons.

Now her current landlord, Marlon Polanco, is seeking $4400 in rent he says Bozzio failed to pay between August 1 and September 30. In a phone call to the Phoenix on October 9, he claimed Bozzio has rented from him since July 15 and has paid only half a month’s rent and half a deposit.

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Can an '80s pop icon find peace in New Hampshire in a house full of feral cats? Apparently not.
With her bold style, high-pitched voice, multicolored mop-top, and MacGyver-like ability to make mesmerizing bras out of things like electronic parts and bubble wrap, Missing Persons frontwoman Dale Bozzio planted herself firmly in the spotlight in the 1980s.  

With her bold style, high-pitched voice, multicolored mop-top, and MacGyver-like ability to make mesmerizing bras out of things like electronic parts, bubble wrap, and Plexiglas gardening equipment, Missing Persons frontwoman Dale Bozzio planted herself firmly in the spotlight in the 1980s.

Slideshow: Crazy cat house uncovered UPDATE: Dale Bozzio sentenced to jail

Even as a teen in Medford, Bozzio (née Dale Consalvi) commanded attention. Her picture was posted on the bulletin board of her namesake father's furniture store, Dale's Barn, in the '70s, remembers Boston-based media consultant and Phoenix Special Projects Manager David Bieber. "The store owner told me that she was his daughter," says Bieber, "and she wanted to be a model."

Later on in that decade, the petite, brassy bombshell did find modeling work when she posed for Playboy (she was a bunny at the Boston Playboy Club in Park Square) and Hustler. Around that time, Frank Zappa discovered Consalvi in LA. He invited her to sing on his operatic Joe's Garage albums and in 1979 she married Zappa's drummer, Terry Bozzio. The couple then teamed up with Zappa guitarist Warren Cuccurullo to form the visually outlandish new-wave band Missing Persons, which went on to record a string of hits, including "Destination Unknown," "Walking in LA," and "Words."

Today, at age 54, Bozzio is facing up to a year in a Carroll County, New Hampshire, jail after being convicted on one of 13 animal-cruelty charges stemming from a case of severe neglect that left 14 felines dead.

Whatever happened to . . . ?
The peculiar, shocking story unfolded far from the LA new-wave scene. Around 2000, following a divorce from her second husband, Bozzio and her two sons moved to a farmhouse in the village of Chocorua, New Hampshire. There, according to her mother, 85-year-old Hazel Antonelli of Newton, Bozzio would leave the back window open so feral forest cats could come in and out of the house for food, water, and warmth. (Neither Bozzio nor her lawyer, Dennis O'Connor of North Conway, New Hampshire, returned calls seeking comment on this story.)

Antonelli describes her daughter as a kindhearted, lifelong animal lover who couldn't say no to a sick or hungry animal. "[Dale] found a cat in the snow, brought her in the house, fed her, and gave her the medicine that she needed," recalls her mother. "And she survived — a wonderful, beautiful cat and one of many, many, many. She tried to take care of them, and I think it just got maybe a little much for her. I don't know."

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