ON THE TRAIL OF A SERIAL KITTY KILLER

‘Croydon Cat Ripper’ suspected of mutilating 400 animals in the UK

LONDON

IN what has become a grim ritual, Tony Jenkins examines the mutilated remains of a domestic cat — and says the south London serial killer has struck once again.

Nobody is surprised when Jenkins, the co-founder of Snarl, a animal rescue and rehabilitation shelter, arrives at a veterinary surgery to confirm the find.

In the last two years, Snarl has identified more than 400 suspected victims: mostly cats, but also some foxes and rabbits.

Jenkins enters an examination room where a plastic bag lies on the table. He pulls on a pair of gloves and opens the bag, removing the corpse of a black cat with white paws.

The head and tail are missing, having been cut off, and the belly has been sliced open — trademarks betraying the killer’s surgical skill. Even Jenkins, who has seen this several times before, is disgusted.

“It’s a definite victim,” he said. “It’s the classic head and tail removal: clean cuts on both, with a bit of additional mutilation to the stomach area.”

The hunt for the killer started in September 2015.

Intrigued by a series of suspicious deaths cropping up locally on social media, Jenkins and his Snarl co-founder, Boudicca Rising, started investigating.

They canvassed veterinarians, pet owners and residents for information, piecing together a map and a timeline of the attacks.

They took their findings to Scotland Yard, which opened its own inquiry, as did the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Britain’s biggest animal welfare charity.

Snarl’s Facebook page has a grim roll call of victims of the “Croydon Cat Ripper”, as the killer was initially nicknamed, referring to the south London area where the first hit occured.

Jenkins and Rising have identified patterns of behaviour in the killings, discovering that some bodies are posed near schools and in parks, or even under their owners’ windows.

Post-mortems following the first spate of attacks found that the cats died from blunt force trauma and the mutilations occurred after death.

The National Crime Agency and the ArroGen Veterinary Forensics pathology laboratories are on the case.

Two groups, including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, are each offering a £5,000 (RM27,180) reward for information leading to the culprit’s capture.

Snarl has published a profile of the killer based on the evidence they have gathered. The group believes he is a white man in his 40s, around 1.8m tall.

“It’s somebody who either grew up in Croydon or lives there,” said Rising, noting his ease in operating around the suburb.

The killer is a skilled, methodical and forensically aware person with sufficient knowledge of police procedures to avoid detection, said Vincent Egan, associate professor in forensic psychology at University of Nottingham.

“The person involved has to be able to entice the animal, capture and kill it without being scratched or bitten. Dissect in the skilled way reported, put the body in a place where it can be seen, and do all of this surreptitiously.”

One question becomes more pressing: is this just the first step for someone bent on killing?

“There is a known link between serial killers and harming animals, when you look into their dark history,” said Detective Sergeant Andy Collin,

“The concern is they will cease getting that gratification and escalate the attacks to humans, specifically women and girls.” AFP