FOR

three years, police have been hunting a serial killer thought to be responsible for the slaughter and mutilation of more than 500 domestic pets.

Dubbed the ‘Croydon Cat Killer’ and the ‘M25 Cat Killer’ after the locations of some of the more vicious attacks, the culprit somehow managed to evade capture.

At one point, a team of 15 Scotland Yard officers was working on the case but the hunt was hampered by a lack of hard evidence, such as forensics.

When the killer extended his spree beyond South London as far as Brighton, Manchester and the Isle of Wight, several police forces became involved and a reward of £10,000 for information leading to an arrest was offered. Even this wasn’t enough for the actor Martin Clunes, a cat lover, who wrote to then Met Commissioner Bernard Hyphen-Howe in February 2016 urging him to assign more coppers to the investigation.

Now, after conducting post- mortems on ten dead cats and a number of rabbits, police have concluded that in all probability they are not dealing with a modern Jack the Ripper.

They think the killings and mutilations were probably carried out by foxes. The breakthrough came after a woman saw a fox carrying a cat’s head into a school playground — in Catford.

Another one I don’t know whether to file under Mind How You Go or You Couldn’t Make It Up.