José Ramos, who lives in upscale Fleetwood, was the first to notice the tiger idling on Ivy Wall Drive. Before calling 9-1-1, Ramos posted a photo to one of Fleetwood’s chat groups. That’s the kind of neighborhood Fleetwood is: With just about anything, a resident’s first impulse is to let the neighbors know.

On HoustonChronicle.com: How Mattress Mack's family came to the aid of India, Houston's infamous tiger

Wes Manion, an off-duty Waller County sheriff’s deputy who lives in Fleetwood, saw the post. Fleetwood’s security cameras and paid guards usually seemed overkill in a place full of half-million-dollar houses, kid-sized Adirondack chairs and tiny bikes with handlebar streamers, but neighbors say Manion never relaxed. On evenings and weekends, he patrolled the leafy streets in his golf cart, scanning landscaped lawns for threats.

Now Manion rushed to the scene. The tiger was on the south side of the street, meandering in the scruffy grass of a house being renovated. Bystanders, most inside parked cars and trucks, shot video with their phones.

India wore a collar. “It’s someone’s pet!” a kid deduced.

Manion positioned himself in front of the house. “He brought a gun,” said a man.

“Don’t kill him!” said a girl — worried not about Manion, but the tiger.

India ambled past a purple construction dumpster in the driveway, and in Manion’s general direction. “Holy cow, holy cow,” said a woman shooting video from an upstairs window across the street. “Oh, my gosh, oh my gosh: He’s going to shoot it! He’s going to shoot it!”

Manion backed into the yard of a tile-roofed house, aiming his weapon at the tiger as it uncertainly crossed Ivy Wall Drive. India drew close — maybe 10 feet away — then walked right past him, toward the tile-roofed house.

Victor Cuevas, a 26-year-old in a white T-shirt, came out the front door. The Fleetwood moms recognized Victor as the new guy who rode his motorcycle too fast on Ivy Wall. His wife, Giorgiana Rosas Cuevas, stood inside the door.

“I’ll get him! I’ll get him!” Victor told Manion — obviously more threatened by Manion than by the tiger. He kissed India’s forehead, grasped the cat’s collar, and led him inside like a wayward puppy.

People at the scene posed three questions that soon, people would wonder not just in Fleetwood, but all around the world.

“Is that your f---- tiger?” Manion yelled at Cuevas.

“There’s a tiger in the neighborhood?” piped a kid watching from a car.

“Why,” asked the young woman at the upstairs window, “is there a tiger?”

Weeks after the incident, the answers still aren’t clear. But at a minimum, the tale of the tiger involves a first-degree murder charge, a Venezuelan beauty queen, mixed martial arts, capuchin monkeys in dresses, and Houston’s royal furniture family. It includes lies, half-truths, and things that lawyers say. And somewhere, behind everything, lurks a lot of money that no one has explained.

‘All up in everyone’s business’

The Fleetwood Foxes are probably the chattiest of Fleetwood’s chat groups. The 70 or so Foxes — moms, mainly — organize holiday celebrations, including golf-cart parades and a roving house-to-house Christmas celebration called the Fleetwood Foxtrot. They trade memes and gossip, and frequently drink wine in each other’s in driveways as kids run from yard to yard.

“We’re all up in everyone’s business here,” laughed Laura Jones, one of the Foxes. The neighborhood wasn’t always that way, she said. Built in the ’70s and ’80s oil boom, its architecture emphasizes privacy, with lots of modern facades that reveal little interior life. But then came Hurricane Harvey. When the area’s dams closed, the neighborhood unexpectedly flooded. Bass boats carried stunned families to safety.

Most houses on Ivy Wall had to be gutted, and many owners chose not to return. Those who stayed and rebuilt cemented their new bond with black humor. Some Foxes’ husbands made baseball caps that say “Fleetwood Yacht Club.” The logo is a stick man bailing water out of a boat.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Where's India? How a missing tiger revealed Houston's underground exotic animal trafficking ring

Remarkably, lots of new people moved in — many with young children — and the presence of young families seemed to attract even more young families. The Foxes aggressively checked out and welcomed newcomers, learning the names of people and their dogs as they stroll the neighborhood, or peeking into houses as kids trick-or-treat.

How, the Foxes wondered, could they have failed to notice a tiger? Or the equally spectacular people it lived with?

Tiger emoji

It’s illegal to keep a tiger inside Houston city limits, but it’s only a Class C misdemeanor, with a top fine of $500. Victor, though, had other secrets from the neighborhood: He was awaiting trial on charges of first-degree murder.

As Fort Bend County prosecutors describe the July 2017 killing, it sounds like a scene from a cartel movie. Oseikhuemen Omobhude, a 20-year-old University of Houston student, was getting into his car outside Sushi Hana, a restaurant in a Sugar Land strip mall. Witnesses heard shots, then saw two men cover their faces with masks and drive away on “sport motorcycles.”

The Fort Bend County Sheriff’s office arrested Victor and a man named Milton Egbe, charging both with murder. Victor pleaded innocent. His lawyer, Michael Elliott, argued that the shooting was self-defense, not murder.

Cuevas says his lawyer won’t let him talk with the media yet. “I do want to eventually do a interview,” he said via Instagram messenger, “so the media can hear what I have to say and get a feel of the person I am, not who the media painted me out to be.”

Presumably Victor’s Instagram presents the side of himself that he wants the world to know. His profile photo shows him lying on a bed, hugging India, their heads touching. The page describes him as an “MMA FIGHTER - Husband - Christian - India Papi.” There’s a tiger emoji before “India Papi,” and a heart emoji after it. Since the news about India broke, Victor has occasionally posted video or photos of India as Instagram Stories, which disappear after 24 hours.

Victor’s more permanent Insta posts display other things that he obviously loves: dogs; Giorgi; expensive shoes; motorcycles; and MMA superstar Conor McGregor, who has a tiger tattooed on his stomach.

Friends with money

Awaiting trial, Victor was out on bond, which meant that even a piddling misdemeanor charge could send him back to jail. After bringing India inside the tile-roofed house, he loaded the tiger into a white Jeep Cherokee and drove away, past the Houston police who’d just arrived. They followed the Jeep, but without lights and sirens, and soon lost it.

Roughly 24 hours later, police arrested Victor at his mother and stepfather’s house in Richmond and charged him with evading arrest. India, though, was nowhere to be found — and was still at large on Friday, May 14, when Victor’s court date at Fort Bend County gave the world a peek into India’s life.

It wasn’t the first time, since being charged with murder, that Victor risked losing his bond. He’d already been in and out of jail five times after violating bond conditions. Mostly, said Elliott, the violations were “stupid stuff” — failing to charge his ankle monitor, curfew violation, and riding his four-wheeler in a place where he shouldn’t, then fleeing police who told him to stop.

The various bonds revoked before the tiger came to light were for $125,000, $125,000, $35,000, and $125,000. After the tiger arrest, he was released on yet another bond, this one for $300,000.

It’s a lot of money. At Victor’s bond hearing, Giorgi testified that her husband makes a living as an MMA fighter, a barber and helping with a friend’s AirBnB. Sherdog.com, which tracks MMA fights, shows no professional fights for Victor; and the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation shows no barber’s license.

But Victor, it seems, has friends with money. Before that bond recent hearing, Elliott, Victor’s lawyer, was speaking to a gaggle of reporters when a white Bentley pulled up behind him and Victor emerged in a beautifully tailored three-piece suit. Asked who the Bentley belonged to, both Elliott and Giorgi said vaguely, a friend of Victor’s. Neither knew the friend’s name.

In Fleetwood, speculation about Victor’s friends leans heavily toward upper tiers of the drug trade. “We’re not talking about the street-level guys in ‘The Wire,’” said one of the Foxes. “This has to be ‘Ozark’-level.”

Miss Tourism Venezuela

The Foxes hadn’t really noticed Giorgi before that hearing, and later, they were astounded to hear that they’d missed an honest-to-God Venezuelan beauty queen and model. In 2016 Giorgiana Carolina Rosas, representing the northeastern state Anzoátegui, was crowned Miss Tourism Venezuela. As a pageant competitor, Giorgi said she hoped to use the competition’s platform to “reach more people regarding animal care.” Later YouTube videos from red-carpet events in Los Angeles show flashbulbs popping as Giorgi strikes poses in short, skin-tight dresses. An Instagram page devoted mostly to her modeling shots was last updated in May 2019. It includes a photo of her snuggling a white lion cub.

Among the many things that aren’t clear: how Giorgi and Victor met. In court, the prosecutor pressed Giorgi, 22, about what she allegedly told police the night India got out: that Victor was her boyfriend/fiancé, but that she knew very little about him, that she lived in L.A. and he was a “Tindr crush” she’d met in person only three days before. Giorgi testified that she didn’t remember saying that. Manion had so terrified her, she said, that she’d had an anxiety attack. She and Victor, she said, had been married since August.

It remains unclear where Giorgi and Victor acquired India or whether the couple technically owned him. During the bond hearing, Elliott insisted that Victor wasn’t India’s owner, but was merely taking care of him for its real owner, “D,” a shadowy man who Victor met when buying a dog. Elliott even showed a reporter from ABC-13 a death threat that he said D had texted Victor. But later, after Giorgi arranged to turn the tiger over to authorities, there was no more talk of D.

According to the Houston Police Department, Giorgi said that she and Victor had had India for nine months. That would mean that they acquired him as a kitten soon after they were married — a couple of months before Victor rented the tiled-roof house on Ivy Wall Drive in November.

Victor signed the lease “Nick Halden,” and presented an ID with that name for the landlords’ criminal-background check. (“Nick Halden,” it turns out, is an alias frequently used by the suave con man from the TV show “White Collar.”) Victor didn’t pay a pet deposit, and until the Mother’s Day incident, the landlords had no idea that one was needed. When they tried to schedule routine maintenance — to check the A/C or the plumbing — Victor would have his own people do it, then send receipts showing the work had been done.

The couple largely seems to have kept to themselves. A video that Elliott released shows a baby India, about the size of a Labrador retriever, rumpusing with Victor in the sleek, modern kitchen and living room. India lies on his back, clutching a rope toy in his mouth and front paws, as Victor, holding the other end, runs in a circle, spinning the tiger as if it were a frisky housecat.

But they did go out sometimes. Around the time Victor and Giorgi moved to Fleetwood, a Club Westside member took them to visit the astounding place: a tennis club/family entertainment center whose amenities improbably include a giraffe, flamingos and other “animal ambassadors.” Owner Linda McIngvale, wife of furniture tycoon “Mattress Mack,” told KHOU’s Adam Bennett that she didn’t exactly become friends with Victor and Giorgi, but after a couple of visits to the club, she could tell they shared her love of animals.

The couple showed McIngvale photos of India. “I treated it like a mom thing,” she laughed. “Like, ‘I don’t think you should keep that animal long-term,’ ‘that cat is going to get too big for you,’ or ‘they’re cute as babies’ — things like that. They knew I was like, ‘You can’t keep a tiger. That’s crazy.’”

But McIngvale was looking for a home for a couple of aggressive capuchin monkeys, and Giorgi and Victor volunteered. “They took them thinking they’d be able to handle them,” McIngvale said, “but I think they were too aggressive for them too.” She believes they found another home for the capuchins, but that may not be the case. On Cinco de Mayo, only a few days before the tiger got loose, a Fleetwood resident photographed a man who definitely looks like Victor. The man was at Lupe Tortilla’s restaurant, accompanied by a monkey wearing a dress.

What did the couple do with the rest of their time? At the bond hearing Giorgi testified that she’s a UCLA student, and during the pandemic, had been studying remotely from Houston. She said that she’s a pre-med double-majoring in computer science and physics, and this summer would do a subclinical neurosurgery internship at Houston Methodist Hospital. After the hearing, however, UCLA could find no student under any variation of Giorgi’s name, and a Houston Methodist spokesperson said the hospital system had accepted no interns with a name that resembled Giorgi’s, and no interns at all from UCLA.

Strangely, Giorgi did not mention her verifiable credits as a beauty queen and a model.

‘GRRREAT!!!’

A few days after India disappeared, an official at BARC, Houston’s animal shelter, asked Linda McIngvale whether she could reach out to Victor and Giorgi and arrange for India to be turned over. McIngvale wasn’t sure whether the number she had belonged to Victor or to Giorgi, but she texted it, and whoever responded said they weren’t sure where the tiger was. But on Saturday, May 15, Giorgi contacted McIngvale and arranged for someone — it’s not clear who — to drop off the tiger at Club Westside. McIngvale left a back gate open.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Missing Houston tiger found safe and now in custody, police say

A few minutes after the drop-off, Giorgi arrived separately, anxious to see India before turning him over. On Instagram, Victor posted a video that shows Giorgi feeding India bottles and cooing, “You are such a big baby.” When HPD arrived, India looked nervous, so Giorgi accompanied Commander Ron Borza to BARC. HPD tweeted a video that showed Giorgi bottle-feeding India there. India wore a rhinestone-studded teal collar. Borza stroked his back.

At a news conference that night, Borza said Giorgi wasn’t facing charges, but that HPD would continue its investigation.

Soon India was at his new home: The Cleveland Amory Black Beauty Ranch, a Humane Society sanctuary in Murchison, Texas. On Facebook, a week after India first got loose in Fleetwood, the sanctuary posted a photo of his empty rhinestone-studded collar. “India won’t be treated like a pet on a leash anymore,” the sanctuary wrote. “His collar is now off and he can be the wild animal he deserves to be.” On May 27, a Humane Society Facebook Live video showed India splashing in the pool inside his half-acre enclosure, then approaching the chainlink fence where the sanctuary director stood, and writhing like a housecat that yearns to be petted. “Our goal is to provide him with a lot of space and natural resources so he can learn to be a wild tiger again,” she said.

On Instagram, Victor posted a photo of India as a kitten, roughly the size of the bed pillow he was sleeping near. “Miss my little boy so much,” he wrote.

Victor’s jury trial for the murder is scheduled to begin in December. At the bond hearing, his stepdad testified that until then, Victor will live at his house and will work for his small computer-security business.

After Mother’s Day, Victor and Giorgi never returned to the house with the tiled roof. Lawyers told the landlords that the lease had been violated so flagrantly that eviction proceedings wouldn’t be necessary. The landlords rushed to repair sheetrock and other damage left by India and the monkeys.

Victor and Giorgi had left behind motorcycles, safes and dresses and diapers for the monkeys. The landlords arranged a time when those belongings could be picked up, and didn’t ask questions of the men who loaded the things into expensive vehicles.

The empty house where India was first spotted loose — the one that had a purple dumpster in the driveway — had been on the market. A few days after it appeared in videos all over the world, the Realtor added a line to the sign in its front yard: “THIS HOME IS GRRREAT!”

It sold soon after. *

During the week of heavy rains in May, Fleetwood’s chat groups were full of tiger-in-a-boat memes, probably from the Life of Pi: The neighborhood’s new logo, people joked. A subgroup of the Foxes is planning a tiger-themed party.

The Foxes continue to monitor Fleetwood, but now with less certainty that they know everything about everyone there. “If this could happen here, where we’re all up into everyone’s business,” said Laura Jones, “just imagine what’s going on everywhere else.”

lisa.gray@chron.com, twitter.com/LisaGray_HouTX

 

* An earlier version of this story said that the "GRRREAT!!!" house had been sold. Though it's not currently listed on har.com, it is in fact still available, says Realtor Kiki Baker-Rios. She promises a ribbon-cutting and a big-reveal open house when renovations are finished.