Cat owners, be alert.

[Toffee]

James. I know I reacted badly to your post, for which I apologise to you. But the professor may have studied foxes for years and not come across anything like this. As I stated previously, although foxes have adapted to a human environment, they do not carry knives, or have the knowledge to know where an animal lives and to place the deceased animal back in its garden without leaving any teeth marks whatsoever. Forensic scientists are involved in this. Why would a lone fox or group of foxes continually wander the streets at night armed with knives and meticulously dismember another animal for no reason. Also, why would this group of foxes have a pattern to their killings. I.e why would they target Surrey, then move on to other parts of the country. Why woulda fox know to stragecially place a dismembered animal so as to cause maximum distress to humans. I am talking specifically where a cat was brutally killed and the body moved to a nearby children?s playground.

[James Barber]

Hi Toffee,

My guess is the Professor is probably correct about many of the incidents but SNARF describe some that are way different and not explained in this way. It seems most likely two different stations collated making both much harder to solve.

[rendelharris]

Toffee, there is no doubt that there are many foul individuals out there who have done awful things to animals, often as revenge on previous partners, neighbours with whom they've had disputes etc. No doubt at all. I recall some nasty little s&^t was expelled from my school after it was revealed that he'd been shooting cats with an air rifle and keeping their tails as trophies. Awful. However, there is legitimate cause to doubt the narrative that SNARL has created that there is a single person going round London and the southeast and beyond who's killed over 500 pets without once being seen on CCTV or even seen by a witness - when allegedly undertaking complex and vile dismembering and breaking into people's back gardens etc, when there's a significant police investigative force who've been trying to find him for years...there are a number of elements of this narrative which I don't believe hold up, especially as many experts, such as Professor Harris (no relation) and the RSPCA have suggested that many of the deaths SNARL insist are attributable to this "cat killer" are in fact roadkill later predated on by foxes. It really has become the Spring-Heeled Jack of our era, and I think it's highly disturbing that there's an attitude that if one questions SNARL's narrative one's as bad as this putative "cat killer" oneself. A glance at their Facebook page shows that they are massively aggressive towards anyone who challenges their conception of what's going on.

I absolutely adore cats, dogs and rabbits, there hasn't been a moment in my almost fifty years when I haven't had several of them around. If I'm wrong and there is a single individual doing such awful things then were I to come across him they wouldn't need a trial...but I'm afraid I just can't buy into the SNARL-promoted narrative of this lone psychopath carrying out hundreds of intricate killings and dismemberments undetected.

[Passiflora]

Only time will tell and somewhere along the line this person/s will get caught and put away for life! Let's just leave it to the Police and SNARL.

[lilolil]

So, you are saying that experts in their fields, forensic scientists,vets,a police team and SNARL are mistaken?

That an expert criminal profiler has got it wrong?

That signature wounds made on these poor creatures are all an unfortunate coincidence? Just asking.

He has been seen, there is a description,read the case carefully.

[rendelharris]

Deleted as actually haven't the time or inclination for a long debate on this. Opinion stated, if others disagree that's fine, though no need for the moral outrage that usually greets those who suggest SNARL might possibly, just maybe, have got it wrong.

[japseylarue]

It isn't just Snarl though - as stated in other posts above. There was a documentary about the case on tv - maybe watch it as it might clear up some misconceptions.

[Penguin68]

It seems to be that both the New Scientist correspondent (who seems clearly to be some sort of expert in the field) and SNARL may both be part right - there may well be (it seems pretty certain there is) a human agent responsible for some at least of the attacks, whilst the known habits of foxes as described in the letter may account for some of the other incidents. Foxes certainly appear to arrange things (e.g. shoes and other trophies) that I find on my lawn, and just a few such (possibly actually randon) arrangements may seem (wrongly) to have human intentionality. If the human agent is being credited with more 'kills' than are actually his/ hers then either the range, or timing, of the wrongly attributed events may be providing the actual perpetrator with unexpected alibis.

It is, I think, unhelpful to suggest that either view is wholly right or wrong - and to discount past experience is hardly a scientific approach. As for the 'ritual' element - we are programmed to look for patterns in events, so finding them is hardly surprising.

[Cardelia]

rendelharris Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Deleted as actually haven't the time or

> inclination for a long debate on this. Opinion

> stated, if others disagree that's fine, though no

> need for the moral outrage that usually greets

> those who suggest SNARL might possibly, just

> maybe, have got it wrong.

My next door neighbour's cat was killed a couple of years ago. She went missing on Friday and was returned on Monday evening. The body was placed outside our (shared) access point in a clear and obvious position. The body had been mutilated in a deliberate fashion, consistent with previous killings, including certain indicators whose details have never been made public.

Prof. Harris may well be a world-leading expert on fox behaviour. But unless he's seen some of the recent bodies to confirm that the markings are consistent with fox behaviour (not the ones from the 1990s mentioned in the article) then his opinion is worth about as much as mine or yours.

[singalto]

SNRL often mention cats which are victims of road accidents. They work closely with vets and the Met. What happens to some of these cats is appalling and not a result of fox activity. Cordelia, I don?t know if the cat you mention was the one I know of which was left two streets away from where she lived. I saw a fox a couple of weeks ago approach a cat on a garage roof. I was horrified until the two curled up together and went to sleep!

[singalto]

Another cat, 17 years old, has been killed in a gruesome way, this time in Beckenham.

[redjam]

Interesting article about this in the Guardian today:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/aug/08/croydon-cat-killer-hunt-three-years-man-myth

Have to say I'm now thinking it's highly unlikely all these deaths are the work of one invisible man. I felt differently when it first started and there were just a few cases - now I'm afraid I'm no longer convinced. Or maybe, as Penguin68 suggests above, there was one person who started it off, but now we're looking for patterns and seeing them everywhere. Just my opinion - I know many will disagree!

[rendelharris]

Thanks for an interesting link which I would have missed. Many will disagree indeed, but I must say the pernicious urban myth of a single cat killer really doesn't hold up, and SNARL are looking slightly ridiculous in their monomaniacal pursuit of this agenda. Sorry.

[Sue]

rendelharris Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Thanks for an interesting link which I would have

> missed. Many will disagree indeed, but I must say

> the pernicious urban myth of a single cat killer

> really doesn't hold up, and SNARL are looking

> slightly ridiculous in their monomainiac pursuit

> of this agenda. Sorry.

Having read that article (and thanks from me too, or I would have missed it) I must say I have to agree.

[Passiflora]

rendelharris Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Thanks for an interesting link which I would have

> missed. Many will disagree indeed, but I must say

> the pernicious urban myth of a single cat killer

> really doesn't hold up, and SNARL are looking

> slightly ridiculous in their monomaniacal pursuit

> of this agenda. Sorry.

As usual rendel, you have to use a couple of out of ordinary words to uphold your stance on things! i.e. pernicious and monomaniacal. I've had to google them myself!

Anything that SNARL can add to this investigation can only be a good thing.

[Sue]

???!!!

[rendelharris]

Well that's good, PF, you've learned something then and new knowledge is always a good thing.

If SNARL are spreading unecessary alarm as well as wasting police resources, that is not "a good thing." This passage from the article I thought was particularly striking:

Smith suspected Polly had been struck by a lorry on the busy road to which the path leads, before scavengers had swooped. He buried her in the garden. Six weeks later, Basil went missing. After a fruitless search, Smith got a ?horrible feeling? about a connection. When he reported Basil?s disappearance to police, and described Polly?s death, he says an officer arrived the same day. ?He said that, from the description of the injuries, he was satisfied that this was a cat killing,? says Smith, a former radio journalist, who now believes that the killer had come back for Basil.

So let's just follow that through: the guy thought his cat had been hit by a lorry then predated by scavengers. Very sad, but he buries it and nothing untoward is suspected. Then six weeks later, his other cat goes missing, he calls the police (because he has "a horrible feeling") and a copper, without examining the body or having any other evidence, says oh yes, that's the cat killer. Leaving aside the fact that such an operation on the part of the alleged killer would require Hannibal Lecter levels of research and staking out, and that the body of the missing cat never appeared, we suddenly have two victims chalked up to the cat killer on the basis of a policeman's interpretation of a verbal account of the remains of one of them. SNARL immediately accept this and also attribute it to the cat killer, to the extent that, in a frankly disturbing scene, the male half of SNARL takes a frozen decapitated cat head to the owner and defrosts it in his kitchen to see if it's his cat (it wasn't). This isn't a logical or evidence-based investigation, it's hysteria.

[redjam]

Yes, that story rang almighty alarm bells with me, too.

[katanita]

From SNARL's fb page (for information, no personal knowledge of this myself, but it does seem odd that not just SNARL but the police and the vet forensic pathologist would be so certain this was human action if there was nothing to it).

South Norwood Animal Rescue and Liberty - SNARL shared a post.

8 hrs ?

I'm resharing this one after the Guardian article published today

South Norwood Animal Rescue and Liberty - SNARL

18 July at 21:34 ?

Statement regarding New Scientist article by Professor Stephen Harris

We have been made aware of an article published last week in the New Scientist magazine, by a behaviourist, Professor Harris.

Without wishing to cast aspersions on that publication's journalistic integrity, it is unfortunate that they didn't speak to us before going ahead and printing it. It might have saved a few red faces.

Anyway, the operation that Stephen Harris refers to was Operation Obelisk which indeed ran at the end of 1999. His view on the issue was taken as gospel and the investigation was closed.

He is not and was not a forensic pathologist. I can't comment on why he was asked to look at bodies.

Whilst it's true that Professor Harris tried to put a stop to Operation Takahe in the early days, it is also true that he refused to meet with the investigation team and the pathologist when it was clear that the killings were not the result of fox predation and due to his perceived eminence, they felt they should at least pay him some respect by explaining their findings.

He is not and never has been, as has been claimed on some groups on social media, part of the forensic team investigating these incidents.

Finally, what wasn't documented in 1999 were the behavioural aspects of this case. However clever foxes are, they are, as far as we are aware, unable to:

- enter a hutch with closed slide bolts, killing and decapitating a rabbit, putting the body back in the hutch afterwards, arranging the body as if he or she was asleep and sliding the bolt back afterwards and leaving no blood anywhere.

- killing an animal, leaving a trail of fur leading to where they've placed an internal organ, in an elevated position in another place in the garden, and the next night replacing that organ with a collar.

- killing an animal, removing two leg bones via neat little incisions, stripping them cleanly and entirely with no bite marks, returning to place them upright at the scene a couple of days later (as shown on the documentary).

- killing animals on clearly defined journeys in and out of South London. If these incidents were all down to foxes, we would have reports from all over, not just in places off main roads which we are able to map. Foxes just are not that clever.

There are plenty of other pieces of documented behaviour which we can't disclose but they and all of the above are a matter of investigative and most importantly, police record.

Which is why, despite Professor Harris's efforts, we and police have continued with the investigation for two and a half years.

We hope this clarifies things and puts paid to some of the sillier speculation going out there.

Boudicca and Tony.

[rendelharris]

In the article it seems there are a number of experts who do not share this opinion. As I stated elsewhere on this thread, there is no doubt that there are horrible people out there who do horrible things to animals, often to take revenge on neighbours, ex-partners etc. Some of these events are doubtless committed by humans. It's the overarching narrative of a single person doing this that is highly questionable in my view. This person has supposedly ritually slaughtered over 500 cats and other animals in and around London and elsewhere, without ever leaving a footprint, a shred of clothing, a DNA trace, nothing? In the most heavily CCTV'd city in the world, he's never been caught on camera? It just doesn't ring true to me and examples such as the one from the article, where two unexplained cat deaths are attributed to the "cat killer" on the basis of a policeman's interpretation of the owner's description of the remains of one of them, don't make me any more convinced.

As Penguin sagely noted above, once you start looking for patterns you can see them everywhere. A small example from my own experience: in our last flat we had an empty rabbit hutch at the end of the garden (the rabbit was supposed to live in it but within a day of arrival he was living indoors and ruling the roost!). One day I found a largish and very neatly decapitated rabbit on top of it, clearly had been someone's pet. Extremely upsetting; the same day a neighbour came round and said she'd seen a fox come through several gardens carrying this body, and it had been spooked as it went over our fence and dropped it, coincidentally on top of the hutch. Now if she hadn't seen it, I might well have thought someone was doing something foul, and had it been this day and age I might well have attributed it to the cat killer. It's easy to construct a narrative, it's not so easy to deconstruct one once it's in the public imagination. Incidentally, the bloke we got to come and remove the remains said he'd seen several pet rabbits decapitated in this way, "amazing how clean it is, you'd think the buggers had carving knives."

I'm not trying to upset anyone and as a devoted pet lover myself I feel for everyone who's lost a pet from whatever cause, but I do think there needs to be more rational analysis of this alleged phenomenon.

[rendelharris]

Incidentally, "- killing animals on clearly defined journeys in and out of South London. If these incidents were all down to foxes, we would have reports from all over, not just in places off main roads which we are able to map."

Seriously? Where in London can things happen that are not close to main roads? Another example of constructing a narrative and trimming the facts to fit.

[Penguin68]

My concern (and thanks for the endorsement rendel) is that by attributing all the attacks to one person (or possible several people acting in concert) police will look for culprits who could have been responsible for them all. Whereas there may have been fewer intentional killings - with some being the result of fox activity as suggested following accidental deaths. I think it's clear that human agency is very likely in some of the killings - probably mainly amongst those in SE London. But not necessarily all. If we had proper data on cat disappearance and injury (I doubt we do) an epidemiological approach could throw up where there are statistical anomalies - too many deaths against a normal trend - which might help locate 'additional' activity over and above the normal accidental (i.e. traffic related etc.) death toll. It is clear that fox activity following an accident might well account for some of the apparently 'odd' appearances of cat bodies.

As I have already said, we are 'trained' to see patterns (it is how we cope with events) - and we therefore are very open to pattern suggestion. We also prefer to see agency rather than blind chance, so again the SNARL narrative plays well with us.

[lilolil]

I think we need to leave this to the experts who are investigating this.

There is enough forensic evidence to suggest that it is the same person who is responsible for these killings.

Obviously not all of the details are in the public domain.

[redjam]

Yes (to Penguin68/Rendelharris) - one of the examples of 'proof' that SNARL stated in the Guardian article was an animal head left on a penalty spot in a garden football pitch. That rang another alarm bell for me in terms of seeing evidence in what is likely to be just natural behaviour (or sheer coincidence, of course). Foxes are well known to leave a pile of poo in the most ostentatious spots (they regularly leave us a little present directly outside our back door, on the step) so it doesn't seem unlikely they would leave a corpse somewhere highly visible. Our cat does it too - she has more than once carefully positioned a dead mouse right in the centre of our circular rug that has concentric rings on it, as if enacting some weird Satanic ritual. She's clearly placing it deliberately for maximum wow factor. A head on a penalty spot, as gruesome as it sounds, cannot be taken as proof of anything unless someone has actually seen a human actually place it there.

I agree some of these deaths may well be attributable to a human - maybe even the same human - but I suspect it's only a fraction of the number that SNARL states.

[Sue]

redjam Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Yes, that story rang almighty alarm bells with me,

> too.

And with me.