THE CROYDON CAT KILLER
As the Metropolitan Police wind up their three-year investigation by concluding that the merciless moggymurderer is nothing but a product of cat lovers’ fearful imaginations, PAUL SIEVEKING surveys the crime scene.
In September the police announced that the “Croydon cat killer” [ FT341:4], aka the “M25 cat killer” – blamed for murdering around 500 cats over four years, initially leaving the mutilated remains near the homes of stricken owners in the south London suburb of Croydon – was a figment of the imagination [ FT372:2]. Concluding Operation Takahe, their long-running investigation launched in November 2015 and costing half a million pounds, the police asserted that the majority of feline victims were hit by cars before having their heads and tails removed by scavenging foxes. They announced that there was no evidence of human involvement, after a leading veterinarian reviewed six autopsies. However, Neenie Sadler, whose cat was killed, said: “This is all because the Met don’t want to put any more funding into this investigation.”
Dr Henny Martineau, head of veterinary forensic pathology at the Royal Veterinary College, had previously said the animals had died of “suspicious” blunt force trauma, but she has now revised these claims after finding fox DNA on five of the corpses, and previously undiscovered puncture wounds. Three separate instances of CCTV footage showed foxes carrying bodies or body parts of cats – in one case a cat’s head being carried into a school playground.
The legend of the Croydon bogeyman (named “Jack the Rippurr” by one Facebook group) spread internationally, as police and others warned that ‘he’ could be practising to kill humans. Serial killers with a predilection for animal torture include Albert DeSalvo (the ‘Boston Strangler’), David Berkowitz (the ‘Son of Sam’), Mary Bell, Ian Brady, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, Fred West and Dennis Nilsen.
Boudicca Rising (47), cofounder with Tony Jenkins (52) of SNARL (South Norwood Animal Rescue and Liberty), still insists humans are responsible for the moggie massacre. “We have expert evidence to back this up,” she said. “We know cats are killed in traffic accidents and that foxes scavenge the bodies. We’ve seen that plenty of times before and we’ve discounted more than 1,500 incidents as being non-human related.” Three veterinary practices in the South-East came out in support of SNARL’s theory about human involvement. Streatham Hill Vets in south London put a Facebook post up saying the police were “incorrect” in their findings, adding: “We have had several of these bodies brought in to us. They all consisted of clean, surgical type amputations or beheadings. They were NOT done by foxes or wild animals.”
In August, SNARL had handed police a list of nine suspects, all living in the London area. “Over the years we have had 50 people on the list,” said Ms Rising, “but we have now ruled a lot of them out.” Ms Rising was originally from South Africa; her father and former partner were both detectives. It was SNARL’s petition with more than 40,000 signatures that initially led to the official investigation in November 2015. “We are starting to get reports going back to 2013,” said Mr Jenkins (a former policeman). In January 2017 he said: “Two foxes were found beheaded and with injuries that exactly match the cats; one in Croydon, another in Bromley.” A specific mark – never revealed publically – left by the killer on dead animals is supposed to have linked suspicious cases… or so says Tom Foot in the Camden New Journal. According to the Sunday
Express (17 Dec 2017), “The Croydon Cat Killer… generally strikes in the middle of the night, often entering people’s gardens while they are asleep and lures cats towards him with food before bludgeoning them to death. Sickeningly, he stays by the bodies until they are cold, so that when he mutilates them there is no excess blood.” The Sun (4 Dec 2017) added
“The mutilated corpse is left on display in a specific position”
further details: “The killer has regularly struck twice in one night… Once clear of houses and CCTV cameras, he bludgeons the cat to death with a blunt tool before ‘precisely and surgically’ cutting off its head and removing its tail with a sharp knife. If he has time, he removes its organs and pelvis. The mutilated corpse is then left on display in a specific signature position for its owner to find… the cat killer was likely to have been violently or sexually abused as a child, and is probably known to authorities… the cat killer has been seen from a distance during sprees in Orpington, Kent, and Caterham, Surrey. He is described as a white male in his forties, [between 5ft 8in and 5ft 11in], with short brown hair and a pock-marked face who was dressed in dark clothing and carrying a rucksack, torch or headlamp.” He was said to make “kissing” noises while luring cats with food or toys. Criminologist Dr Adam Lynes said the killer was a low-paid worker who resents “idyllic suburban life”. He highlighted a similar massacre in 1730s Paris, by apprentices who resented their masters’ spoiled pets.
Already by the first half of 2016, the mutilated remains of cats (and sometimes foxes and rabbits) had been found across London – in Richmond, Streatham, Tottenham Hale, Ruislip, Coulsdon, Mottingham, Thornton Heath and beyond. SNARL logged mutilated cat reports from Frimley in Surrey, Farnborough in Hampshire, Luton in Bedfordshire, Orpington and Swanley in Kent, Bracknell in Berkshire, Brackley in Northamptonshire, as well as in Brighton and Birmingham. And in recent months, feline cadavres have been found in Sheffield and Manchester, Portsmouth, Isle of Wight, and Dover. Might copycats have been at work? Has there been a spike in such attacks, or is it all a matter of perception?
Samantha Glass, a Londoner whose daughter’s cat Harley was killed last April, said the police verdict blaming foxes was “unbelievable”, adding: “Words fail me. There is countless evidence from the Met saying cats have been mutilated by a clean slice. There have been decapitated heads lying across London.” However, many experts agreed with the police verdict, among them John Bryant, an expert in humane fox deterrence who has worked in the London area for more than 20 years. (See his article on urban fox-dumping legends, FT73:35-37). “I’ve been in hundreds of gardens helping people deter foxes and I’ve found cats’ heads in gardens, tails and bits of legs,” he said. “They scavenge a dead cat from the road or even a dead fox, break it up and the cubs play with it.” The urban fox population in London has doubled over the past 30 years, thanks to an increase in people feeding wildlife, with foxes also eating bird food and food left out for hedgehogs or badgers. •
The data on recent cat killings are in fact very various. In February 2016, the disappearance of a dozen pet cats in the Tonedale area of Wellington in Somerset was blamed on a panther-like big cat. Wildlife expert and local resident Alex Bowler had seen a spike in ABC sightings in the surrounding countryside, such as a railway track around Westford. •
In June 2016, six cats died of suspected antifreeze poisoning in Macclesfield, followed by two more in Orford, Cheshire. Within one week in October, 10 cats went missing from a single road in Kidsgrove, Staffordshire. Only one turned up; it had to be put down after being found in woodland two miles away, poisoned and with broken ribs. A cat that had gone missing from Harrogate, North Yorkshire, in February 2016 was found dead in a local park the following November, with its tail and ear severed. •
In March and April 2017, four cats living in Layton Road, Gosport, Hampshire, were found poisoned, and others mutilated in Southsea, Hampshire, and Redhill, Surrey. A cat was found decapitated in a garden in St Albans on 16 May. In July police investigated eight suspected cat poisonings in Cilgerran, Pembrokeshire, in one week alone. The supposed ‘felicidal maniac’ was blamed for the death of up to 20 cats in the village. The hoof and decapitated head of a wild deer were found in Warlingham, Surrey, on 16 July. SNARL said the attack bore the same “sick hallmarks” as the Croydon cat killings. •
That same month came a report that 18 cats in the village of Beacon, near Camborne, Cornwall, had been poisoned with anti-freeze over the previous three years. In one week in October, five cats were poisoned with antifreeze on an estate in Wigan, Greater Manchester, around the same time the decapitated head of a fox was found in a playground in Wallington, Surrey. In August and September, seven black cats disappeared from the neighbouring villages of Crofton-on-Tees and Daltonon-Tees in North Yorkshire. All were micro-chipped and none had been found dead on the roads. Some suspected they had been taken for use in witchcraft. In November, two pet rabbits were found mutilated in Hertfordshire. •
In December 2017, pet lovers in the Blue Mountains, New South Wales, were terrified that a gang was roaming the area killing their cats to “protect” native
wildlife. At least 65 cats had been killed and countless others had disappeared, been maimed, or discovered hanging in their owners’ front yards.
• Meanwhile in England on 8 December, a 31-year-old man, believed to be an East European truck driver, was detained in Duston, Northampton, after the discovery of five dead cats in the area between August and November, along with a number of arson attacks. The five cats had all been dismembered in a similar way. One, a cat called Rusty, was left in a plastic bag on the owner’s doorstep on 28 August, and was discovered by the family’s 14-year-old daughter. One or possibly more of the other corpses were also found in plastic bags, so foxes can be ruled out. The suspect’s DNA matched a sample from one of the mutilated cats. The deaths of other animals, including rabbits, foxes, deer and even a squirrel were also linked to the case, and all linked to the busy “M25 cat killer”. Boudicca Rising was sceptical of a connection with the Northampton killings, as there had been cat mutilation discoveries in the London area on 7,8, and 9 December, two on Christmas Day (in Carshalton and Wallington), and another on 7 January 2018.
• On 13 March 2018, two cats were discovered outside Truro Cathedral in Cornwall, skinned, decapitated and limbless. A 24-year-old man was arrested and released pending further inquiries. In September 2018, Lisa Walker found her 13-year-old tabby Tiger-Lily in her garage in Bristol, choked to death with a cable tie.
• Then there’s cat-shaving. In June 2014, there were reports that someone was snatching domestic cats from around Southport, Merseyside, and shaving off their fur with an electric razor ( FT319:8). On 7 March 2018, a six-year-old tabby called Clyde returned to its
owner in Bourne, Lincolnshire, with its belly shaved. By 25 March the hunt was on for “Jack the Clipper” after more than a dozen pets within six miles (10km) of each other in the Cotswolds had been left with patches of fur missing. The same thing had happened two years earlier with a similar number of cats. No arrests were made.
The name Operation Takahe for the Croydon cat killer investigation was reportedly chosen at random. Takahe happens to be the name of a near-extinct, flightless bird in New Zealand. The day after I compiled this gruesome survey of feline mutilation, a packet of clippings arrived from our correspondent Len Watson in Queensland. This included some yellowing pages from Wild Life, Australian Nature Magazine, dated February 1949, with a two-page feature on the Takahe ( Notornis hochstetteri) entitled “‘Extinct’ Bird Re-discovered”. Make of that what you will.
D.Mirror, 14 June 2014; Western Daily Press, 12 Feb; D.Mail, 26 April; Times, 4 June, 15 Oct; Sun, 6 Aug; BBC News, 9 Nov 2016; <i> 14 Jan; The News (Portsmouth), 8+11+12 April, 2 Sept; D.Mirror, 18 April, 21 July, 1 Sept, 28 Oct, 16 Dec; D.Telegraph, 20 April, 4 Oct; Herts Advertiser, 25 May, 9+16 Nov; Metro, 30 Aug; Guardian, 1+30 Sept; BBC News, 16 Sept, 27 Oct; Times, 4 Oct; Sunday Sun, 22 Oct; Sun, 8 Nov, 31 Dec; (Sydney) Sunday Telegraph, 18 Dec 2017; Times, 8 Jan; D.Telegraph, 17 Mar, 21 Sept; Sun, 8 Jan, 17 Mar, 21 Sept; Sunday Mirror, 18+25 Mar; D.Mail, 8 Jan, 5 May, 27 Aug, 21+29 Sept; Lincolnshire Echo, 15 Mar; Sunday People, 25 Mar; NY Times, 18 Sept; D.Star, 21 Sept; Metro, 20 Sept; Guardian, 22 Sept; Sunday Express, 23 Sept; Camden New Journal, 27 Sept 2018. For some interesting material on previous cat flaps as moral panics, see: https://magoniamagazine.blogspot. com/2013/11/catflaps.html + https://magoniamagazine. blogspot.com/2013/12/morecatflaps.html.
By 25 March the hunt was on for “Jack the Clipper”