UK - Reward for identity of the Croydon Cat Ripper. Jan 2016.

[lizziginne]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/aug/31/police-issue-description-of-croyden-cat-killer

New description of the cat killer


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[jslk]

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/police-fear-croydon-cat-killer-11496861

Killer may graduate to humans [emoji852]

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[Bohemian]

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/police-fear-croydon-cat-killer-11496861

Killer may graduate to humans [emoji852]

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A case in point:

http://www.websleuths.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?490-Luka-Rocco-Magnotta-AKA-Eric-Newman

 

[MelmothTheLost]

A man has been arrested in this case.

Has the Croydon Cat Killer finally been snared? Police arrest 31-year-old man after five pets were decapitated in case linked to the serial slayer feared to have butchered 400 animals

A 31-year-old man has been arrested in connection with a spate of gruesome cat deaths - in which five mutilated bodies were found around Northampton over Christmas.

The man was detained in connection with cat mutilations and arsons in the Duston area and also offences in Kingsley Park, police said.

The five cats from Northampton were all dismembered in a similar way - with their heads cut off.

The man has been released under investigation. Officers have called for anyone with information to come forward.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5241473/Police-arrest-man-31-five-pets-decapitated.html

 

[simba16]

Great news of arrest of at least one deranged cat killer.

 

[MelmothTheLost]

This in the Independent:

Croydon cat killer: Man held over death of mutilated pets as police probe possible links to slaughter of hundreds of animals

A man has been arrested over a string of cat mutilations in Northampton, prompting police to investigate whether the attacks are linked to the so-called Croydon cat killer.

The 31-year-old was held after five cats were found butchered to death in the town between August and November last year.

Northamptonshire Police said the suspect, who was arrested in connection to arson attacks and cat killings in the Duston and Kingsley Park areas, has since been released under investigation.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...an-police-snarl-boudicca-rising-a8145636.html

 

[MelmothTheLost]

Great news of arrest of at least one deranged cat killer.

Innocent until proven guilty, eh?

He's merely been arrested. He has yet to be charged let alone convicted of anything.

Even if he's convicted in connection with these few cases that would not prove he was responsible for all the cat killings.

 

[MelmothTheLost]

An interesting comment frm the SNARL woman in today's Wail

But Boudicca Rising, of South Norwood Animal Rescue and Liberty (Snarl), said another animal’s mutilated corpse was found in Peckham, south London, just yesterday morning and that other killings were discovered on December 7, 8, and 9.


She said: ‘It is the same thing in Peckham, the cat was mutilated in the same way. It’s impossible to say but I am still not convinced that the man from Northampton is the guy responsible for all the killings, and police have not charged him.’

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5244845/Owners-cats-mutilated-pet-killings-tell-horror.html

As I've written before, there has been a problem up and down the UK for many years with mutilation of horses, especially mutilation around the hindquarters and genital areas of mares, but nobody has ever suggested that one person, THE Horse Ripper if you like, has been responsible for all of them. In those cases the local police have been very quick to look to local culprits - albeit "Satanists" rather than depraved teenagers and young men.

 

[badgersmythe]

The ‘Croydon cat killer’ hunt has lasted three grisly years. But is he man or myth?

 

[MelmothTheLost]

The ‘Croydon cat killer’ hunt has lasted three grisly years. But is he man or myth?

I've glad to see the rational explanation getting good coverage. I'm with Stephen Harris, the fox behavioural expert who makes a very good point - that there's no prospect of catching a killer if there is no killer, ie if there is no human culprit responsible for all of these events then clearly one can never be caught.

What strikes me is that Rising and Jenkins now have a massive amount of emotional capital invested in the idea of a single depraved human killer. They've nailed their colours to a very particular mast, garnered lots of publicity for themselves and got their photos in the media over and over again, and have gathered a substantial number of committed supporters. In other words, it makes two obscure individuals seem very important and feeds their egos.

If Stephen Harris is right and it's a fox (or many foxes) wotdunnit, this is in effect a perfect situation for Rising and Jenkins. Their 15 minutes of fame can be stretched out indefinitely.

 

[badgersmythe]

I've glad to see the rational explanation getting good coverage. I'm with Stephen Harris, the fox behavioural expert who makes a very good point - that there's no prospect of catching a killer if there is no killer, ie if there is no human culprit responsible for all of these events then clearly one can never be caught.

What strikes me is that Rising and Jenkins now have a massive amount of emotional capital invested in the idea of a single depraved human killer. They've nailed their colours to a very particular mast, garnered lots of publicity for themselves and got their photos in the media over and over again, and have gathered a substantial number of committed supporters. In other words, it makes two obscure individuals seem very important and feeds their egos.

If Stephen Harris is right and it's a fox (or many foxes) wotdunnit, this is in effect a perfect situation for Rising and Jenkins. Their 15 minutes of fame can be stretched out indefinitely.

Great post. You’ve put into words what I was struggling to. I found the part that mentioned a similar string of cases in the late 90’s interesting, it’s also very telling that the police failed to comment, I’m wondering if they’ve arrived at the same conclusion.

 

[MelmothTheLost]

Great post. You’ve put into words what I was struggling to. I found the part that mentioned a similar string of cases in the late 90’s interesting, it’s also very telling that the police failed to comment, I’m wondering if they’ve arrived at the same conclusion.

I was struck by the comments about students of history and moral panics. That's a really important area to take into consideration.

 

[jslk]

From the article:

Rising and Jenkins have no doubt about what they are dealing with. They reject suggestions that such frequent killings might even be the work of multiple people, never mind cars or foxes. Rising says mapping of the crime scenes suggests a solo killer’s movements, while Jenkins lists incidents in which fox involvement would seem impossible: a decapitated cat statue in the garden of a missing pet; a head left on the penalty spot of a garden football pitch. “That wasn’t a *advertiser censored****g fox that did those,” he says.

I see both sides... could both be true? Could some of the cases be wrongly attributed to a killer and some be the work of 'the cat killer'?

 

[MelmothTheLost]

I see both sides... could both be true? Could some of the cases be wrongly attributed to a killer and some be the work of 'the cat killer'?

Do I think it impossible that a few of the dead cats were killed by a human? No, of course not. You can never discount the individual agency of a random person doing a random act, but one thing I've noticed from press reports of cases here in the UK involving known abuse of cats by humans, it is almost always a group of teenagers involved and rarely a single teenager working on their own or an older individual. But in an age where CCTV cameras and phones with cameras are almost ubiquitous, it's difficult to see how a group of teenagers could have been involved without them being spotted on CCTV or one of their number bragging about it to an outsider or uploading the video to Arsebook or wherever.

I find it much more credible that those individual cases where human activity was involved are simply the result of a teenager opportunitistically finding and mutilating the body of an already dead animal. Plenty of cats are killed by traffic. Maybe some are fatally injured in fights with dogs, foxes or other cats and don't make it home.

If somewhere in the 300+ reported cases of dismembered cats there are one or two that genuinely were killed and mutilated by people, we have to be wary of believing that every such case has to be the same. It's very easy, too easy, to extrapolate a norm or universality from an isolated case. Even if there was an isolated case in the first place.

 

[MelmothTheLost]

Police issue description of ‘Croydon cat killer’

New description of the cat killer - "He is said to be a white man in his 40s"

Police fear 'Croydon cat killer' could attack vulnerable women and girls

Killer may graduate to humans

Does anyone else find this a bit off? I'm finding it difficult to put my thoughts into words here but:

Deliberate animal abuse or cruelty tends to be a crime of the young before they graduate to crime on humans. As we know it's one part of the dark triad which can be a sign of a future serial killer. We know that a child that starts by abusing animals may have an period of overlap in which they continue to abuse animals while in the process of moving on to abusing other children and later teens and young adults, but generally psychopaths graduate to abusing humans and stop abusing animals because abusing animals is no longer enough for them.

So surely a man in his 40s should have graduated onto humans long before now and left animal abuse behind as no longer satisfying the needs that caused him to escalate to humans. That's not to say that adults do not abuse animals. They do, but that abuse is generally aimed at their own animals, eg a man kicking his dog or dragging it along the ground, or in contexts such as abattoirs where we know that rough handling and/or outright abuse of animals for slaughter can and does happen.

(And there are the odd outlier events, such as the widely reported case a few years ago in the UK of a middle aged woman caught on CCTV picking up a cat, dropping it into a wheelie bin and closing the lid. Abuse, yes, but not comparable to killing and mutilating an animal or kicking and beating an animal in an abattoir. )

It seems very unlikely to me that a man in his 40s, or maybe late 30s when this all started, would suddenly have started to abuse cats. What would cause such an individual to start killing and mutilating cats if he had no prior behaviour of this type? Or are we talking about a man who has been killing and mutilating cats or indulging in similar activities but who has hitherto operated under the radar? And if we are, why has he not graduated to humans before now?

Dunno. It just doesn't fit the patterns we know to look for.

 

[jslk]

Does anyone else find this a bit off? I'm finding it difficult to put my thoughts into words here but:

Deliberate animal abuse or cruelty tends to be a crime of the young before they graduate to crime on humans. As we know it's one part of the dark triad which can be a sign of a future serial killer. We know that a child that starts by abusing animals may have an period of overlap in which they continue to abuse animals while in the process of moving on to abusing other children and later teens and young adults, but generally psychopaths graduate to abusing humans and stop abusing animals because abusing animals is no longer enough for them.

So surely a man in his 40s should have graduated onto humans long before now and left animal abuse behind as no longer satisfying the needs that caused him to escalate to humans. That's not to say that adults do not abuse animals. They do, but that abuse is generally aimed at their own animals, eg a man kicking his dog or dragging it along the ground, or in contexts such as abattoirs where we know that rough handling and/or outright abuse of animals for slaughter can and does happen.

(And there are the odd outlier events, such as the widely reported case a few years ago in the UK of a middle aged woman caught on CCTV picking up a cat, dropping it into a wheelie bin and closing the lid. Abuse, yes, but not comparable to killing and mutilating an animal or kicking and beating an animal in an abattoir. )

It seems very unlikely to me that a man in his 40s, or maybe late 30s when this all started, would suddenly have started to abuse cats. What would cause such an individual to start killing and mutilating cats if he had no prior behaviour of this type? Or are we talking about a man who has been killing and mutilating cats or indulging in similar activities but who has hitherto operated under the radar? And if we are, why has he not graduated to humans before now?

Dunno. It just doesn't fit the patterns we know to look for.

Very good points.

 

[jslk]

Croydon Cat Killer investigation may end due to lack of money

Funding running low.

 

[c4rtm4n]

Police suggest Croydon Cat Killer may not actually be killing cats at all

Who would have access to lots of dead cats?

 

[Curious.1]

It must be really awkward for SNARL, fundraising all these years and maintaining that it was always one man killing cats, swans, rabbits all over England. Now the police have backed off and experts are saying it is foxes mutilating bodies of cats that have probably been hit by cars. Seems more likely than one man evading every single CCTV camera and ANPR camera over a huge stretch of the country for 3 years and hundreds of killings. That would be extraordinary.

 

[MelmothTheLost]

It must be really awkward for SNARL, fundraising all these years and maintaining that it was always one man killing cats, swans, rabbits all over England.

This is what I meant in an earlier post about "emotional capital". They've invested so much time, effort and publicity into one particular explanation that they will find it almost impossible to change tack. Kinda like Flat Earthers who, shown footage and photos of a round earth floating in space, will just claim the images are faked rather than reevaluate their beliefs. It's a psychological defence mechanism designed to protect the worldview (literally in the case of Flat Earthers) above all else.

Now the police have backed off and experts are saying it is foxes mutilating bodies of cats that have probably been hit by cars. Seems more likely than one man evading every single CCTV camera and ANPR camera over a huge stretch of the country for 3 years and hundreds of killings. That would be extraordinary.

Exactly what I've been saying since we started discussing this topic here on WS