Crimes Against Animals: Sometimes Horrific, Sometimes Just Strange : Pets: The year’s incidents included dognaping, alleged sexual assault and cruelty toward 1,000 turtles.

The victims were named Bubu and Maude.

One had been sexually assaulted, the other kidnaped. Brutal crimes by any measure.

But what set them apart from other victims in the San Fernando Valley is that Bubu and Maude are dogs.

Aside from being a year marked by a citywide drop in violence, 1994 may be remembered as a year in which Valley authorities reported a host of bizarre and horrifying animal crimes.

The year began with the stealing of Maude, a 7-year-old Boston terrier, who was snatched from the fenced yard of her Woodland Hills home in mid-January. Maude’s owner, Sandy Kemp, received a message on her answering machine demanding a $500 ransom for her beloved pet.

Panicked and desperate for their pooch’s safe return, Kemp and her husband, Henri, arranged a clandestine meeting with Maude’s captors at a Ventura Boulevard parking lot. In a telephone conversation prior to the meeting, Henri Kemp tried to negotiate with the dognapers.

“I offered him $200 and he said he would shoot her, get rid of her or keep her for his own child,� Kemp recalled. The men finally agreed on $450 and the meeting was set.

Henri also invited Los Angeles police, who brought 15 officers and a helicopter to the meeting spot. They arrested Damani Grey, a 19-year-old Northridge man, and Maude was safely returned to the Kemps. Grey got 120 days in jail after pleading guilty to attempted extortion.

Not all the canine crimes had such happy endings.

Bubu, a German shepherd from Van Nuys, was caught on videotape being sexually assaulted by his owner’s gardener.

The story unfolded after Bubu’s owner was apparently tipped off by a housemate, who said he had witnessed encounters between Bubu and the gardener, said city prosecutors.

The owner watched as Arturo Methias, a Northridge gardener who worked at the apartment house on Mondays, allegedly assaulted Bubu for five weeks in a row, prosecutors said. The owner videotaped the final incident, which he turned over to police.

Methias pleaded not guilty in November to five counts of animal abuse and five counts of sexually assaulting an animal. The case is pending.

In the most gruesome reptile-related crime this year, the putrid smell coming from a van led authorities in May to 1,112 turtles, more than 100 of which died after being baked, crushed and starved inside burlap bags. Another 979 were found severely dehydrated.

“It’s probably the worst case of animal cruelty that I’ve ever seen,� said Deputy City Atty. Don Cocek, after filing animal cruelty and neglect charges in September against Mark Rommel Osterholt, the 28-year-old operator of a Canoga Park seafood company.

A tip led authorities to a refrigerator Osterholt had allegedly rented in Orange County, where authorities uncovered another 1,367 turtles inside five plastic containers. Nearly half were dead.

Then there is the Valley Christmas tree mogul and his son who are currently on trial in connection with the death of a European deer that they displayed at a tree lot.

One of a herd of eight deer died this summer at a Granada Hills house where Stuart Miller and his son, William, kept the animals, city prosecutors said. City animal control officers said that the deer that died had chicken wire and coat hangers tangled in its antlers and around its neck.

In addition to a charge of animal cruelty, the Millers were charged in September with possessing a wild animal without a license. They have denied any wrongdoing.

Ten days ago, a defense attorney for the Millers complained in court that the timing of the trial--in the week before Christmas--was an attempt to portray his clients as the Grinches who killed Rudolph. The judge refused to delay the trial.