Newsweek

Serial Cat Killer Tops 500 Victims, Police Clueless

A serial cat killer in Britain has stumped the police, leaving the investigation to a dogged pair of animal rescuers and their band of volunteers.
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A killer is stalking the streets of England, taking more lives than Jack the Ripper, Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy combined. Police, ­pathologists and amateur investigators are scrambling to solve the case as mutilated bodies pile up between winding rows of terraced houses, parks and even schools—more than 500 at the latest count.

The victims are not people; they all walk on four legs: Foxes, rabbits and hundreds of cats. After each is bludgeoned, the killer slices off trophies, often taking the head, the tail or a paw. The bodies, or just the dismembered parts, are then displayed in places children are sure to find them—in front of homes, in the family rabbit hutch or, in one case, outside the gates of a school.

While no one knows for sure, the attacks appear to have begun in 2015. That’s when London tabloids began covering the killings, eventually dubbing the assailant the U.K. Cat Killer. A series of postmortems by a specialist vet in the early days of the Metropolitan Police’s investigation confirmed how the animals were killed, but they have yet to come up with a suspect. In August, a new body turned up almost every day, but with no witnesses,

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