Cat sleuths on the trail of Croydon’s serial killer

Ms Boudicca Rising, an animal activist and a cat rescuer (South Norwood Animal Rescue), has joined up with her partner, Tony Jenkins to work in partnership with the police and the RSPCA to collect evidence left behind by the Croydon serial cat killer in an attempt to catch him before he progresses to killing people.

Ms Rising and Mr Jenkins feel that they are working against the clock:

“He may or may not be using the murder of animals as a platform for harming humans…We don’t know. But we need to find him before he flips.”

Psychological and geographical profiling by the police informs us that he’s probably a loner with mental health issues; the usual profile it seems.

“We don’t know yet whether this guy has been very good or very lucky.”

CCTV has yielded nothing by way of evidence. The police are looking for some breakthrough evidence perhaps a person seeing the criminal doing something suspicious.

Recently Ms Rising found another mutilated cat. She had been told about the evidence and raced to the scene which was an allotment off Croydon Road where a family were waiting to show her the grim discovery which was found in the undergrowth by a children’s trampoline.

What they saw was something that looks like half a cat. There were two back legs and a tail which Ms Rising said looked “unmistakably feline”.

She put on her surgical gloves and checked to see whether the cat was microchipped. There was none. She bagged up the body parts which will join the body parts of 45 other mutilated cats which are being kept in cold storage by the police. She recognised that the cat had been cut up by a person rather than eaten by an animal because the cuts were straight.

The so-called Croydon Cat Killer had struck again. This was the fifth corpse in a fortnight. Most of the cats had been decapitated. One cat had his stomach slit. Another three cats were missing both head and tail. Sometimes a cat’s paw’s have been found in the street and sometimes the only clue was the tail.

The latest findings fits the usual pattern: deliberate cuts and no blood. The cats had been killed from ‘blunt force trauma” before being mutilated.

Usually the body parts are laid out on doorsteps, footpaths and public places in macabre displays to provoke a public reaction.

Some members of the public are becoming unnerved. As one member of the public said,

“I’m not sure what is most disturbing… Knowing there’s someone who’s doing that or knowing that they have been here.”

Ms Riding is angry. She seen the distress it causes to owners. She says that it takes away one’s sense of safety. This is what he wants, she says.

The hunt for the killer has become a full-time mission for Ms Rising. It has not just happened in Croydon. Since October the decapitated and mutilated remains of cats and sometimes even foxes have been found in other areas of London such as Streatham, Tottenham, Ruislip, Thornton Heath and even further afield.

The discoveries of the body parts usually comes in ones and twos and then there’s a quiet spell before more dead pets appear.

Alex Stoll, the veterinary pathologist to perform the post-mortem examination said:

“It’s like a 19th-century murder mystery. We know the ‘what’. It’s now about the ‘who’. It’s really shocking.”

Perhaps the most unnerving aspect of this cat serial killer is the fact that he may progress to doing something similar to people. This is an aspect of human behaviour that the CIA in America have accepted and the reason why they are prioritising animal cruelty. It is something that goes beyond simple animal cruelty. It is about disturbed people who are a danger to society in general.

Source: Cat sleuths on the trail of Croydon’s serial killer | | The Times & The Sunday Times