Britain’s ‘Jack the Rippurr’ cat killer case is solved

WILLIAM BOOTH

LONDON— The fiend was dubbed the “Croydon Cat Killer.” It had a nice ring.

The brute left their victims scattered alongside the motorways around the capital city, the fringes of remnant woodlands and the gardens of suburban towns.

Police reported signs of “blunt force trauma” — and much, much worse. It wasn’t enough to kill a beloved tabby. No, the perp often eviscerated the victims. It was as if the cat killer were an animal. Eating them. Playing with them.

Distraught pet owners found the tails removed. In some cases, so were the heads. Sometimes, the furry companions were left at the doorsteps of their own homes. Or a school yard.

For three years, Britain’s Metropolitan Police force has been trying to solve the crimes.

In a 2017 article, headlined “Jack the Rippurr,” the Sun reported that police were warning that “Croydon Cat Killer is ‘likely to kill humans’ as horrifying attacks on moggies rise.’”

The tabloid revealed, “Over 400 pets have been mutilated in exactly the same way — with the monster decapitating them, removing tail and organs, and putting corpses on display.”

On Monday, finally, the police announced there they had taken another look at those autopsies and had a glimpse at the scientific research on predation. (You might have thought that would have been the first thing they did, three years ago, but it was not.)

“Officers working alongside experts have concluded that hundreds of reported cat mutilations in Croydon and elsewhere were not carried out by a human and are likely to be the result of preda- tion or scavenging by wildlife on cats killed in vehicle collisions,” the police admitted.

In other words, imagine this, vehicles struck the free-roaming pets — causing blunt force trauma — and then foxes retrieved the road kill.

“In three instances where CCTV was obtained, footage showed foxes carrying bodies or body-parts of cats,” police said.

A forensic veterinarian concluded “the mutilations had been caused by predation and/or scavenging, and highlighted that fox DNA had been found around the wound sites on all five bodies.”