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Croydon cat killer unmasked after three years


Still Waters

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For a nation of animal lovers, it was one of the most gripping whodunnits of the modern era. Reports in November 2015 of cats found mutilated around the Croydon area of south London, with their head and tails removed, sparked media headlines that a “Croydon cat killer” was on the loose and fears the fiend might strike again.

But almost three years on, after postmortems on deceased cats and two rabbits, forensic examinations, DNA tests and the studying of CCTV, Scotland Yard announced that humans were in the clear – and that the most likely culprits were foxes or other scavenging animals.

The initial publicity had encouraged more people to report cases, and the number of mutilated cats soon grew to more than 400 across London and the home counties. Animal welfare experts and a small team of police officers were looking for patterns as the body count mounted.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/20/croydon-cat-killer-unmasked-after-three-year-investigation

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Well, I'm relieved evidence doesn't point to a serial cat killer. The penalties for torturing and killing house pets are shockingly lax, though. Not sure about the UK, but in the US, you tend get more jail time for being caught with a bag of weed than murdering a cat...That's shameful, IMO.

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Taxman hunts rich people, rich people hunt foxes, foxes hunt cats, cats are a metaphor for the taxman sitting round getting fat on cream, which causes taxman to feel guilty and hunt rich people in the first place. It's your basic snake-eating-his-tail eternal cycle.

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7 hours ago, Seti42 said:

Well, I'm relieved evidence doesn't point to a serial cat killer. The penalties for torturing and killing house pets are shockingly lax, though. Not sure about the UK, but in the US, you tend get more jail time for being caught with a bag of weed than murdering a cat...That's shameful, IMO.

I fully agree with you

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This investigation has shown the modern British police "services" to be nothing more than laughing stocks. How embarrassing.

Edited by Black Monk
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Not everyone is happy with the verdict.

Quote

'Unbelievable': campaigners dispute police verdict 'M25 cat killer' is foxes

There has been outrage online but Croydon locals seem unfazed and experts say real issue is cars

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/21/unbelievable-campaigners-dispute-police-verdict-m25-cat-killer-is-foxes

 

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'Foxes don't carry knives' - SNARL founder promises to keep searching for Croydon Cat Killer

https://www.croydonadvertiser.co.uk/news/croydon-news/foxes-dont-carry-knives-snarl-2031800

 

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1 hour ago, Black Monk said:

This investigation has shown the modern British police "services" to be nothing more than laughing stocks. How embarrassing.

How so? 

They investigated, gathered the evidence and reached conclusions from that. 

Kind of what the job is. 

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2 hours ago, Still Waters said:

Not everyone is happy with the verdict.

 

 

"Foxes are natural scavengers and I don't dispute the fact that a lot of activity is down to foxes. What I do dispute is that foxes can cleanly remove heads and tails in a surgical manner."

Dispute it all you like, but foxes actually chew off the heads of their prey first. If you find a headless or tailless carcass then it's almost certainly a fox.

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1 hour ago, Setton said:

How so? 

They investigated, gathered the evidence and reached conclusions from that. 

Kind of what the job is. 

Their job is to investigate crimes, not to investigate obvious fox predation. A complete waste of time, money and resources. Embarrassing.

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7 minutes ago, Black Monk said:

Their job is to investigate crimes, not to investigate obvious fox predation. A complete waste of time, money and resources. Embarrassing.

If people report it, and there is some evidence suggesting a crime, they should investigate. 

It's not a laughing stock to do your job and prove a crime didn't happen. 

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On 20.9.2018 at 7:45 PM, Seti42 said:

 in the US, you tend get more jail time for being caught with a bag of weed than murdering a cat...That's shameful, IMO.

The same here!

What a disgrace.

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22 hours ago, Setton said:

If people report it, and there is some evidence suggesting a crime, they should investigate. 

It's not a laughing stock to do your job and prove a crime didn't happen. 

Not necessarily. Numpties often report bizarre things to the police that definitely should not be investigated at all.

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23 hours ago, Black Monk said:

"Foxes are natural scavengers and I don't dispute the fact that a lot of activity is down to foxes. What I do dispute is that foxes can cleanly remove heads and tails in a surgical manner."

Dispute it all you like, but foxes actually chew off the heads of their prey first. If you find a headless or tailless carcass then it's almost certainly a fox.

They remove heads from lambs in this manner, sometimes they remove the front feet and nose the reason is they're doing it as the lamb is being born.

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Thousands of police manpower hours have been wasted, countless articles have been written, and many online documentaries have been made, over what turned out to be hysteria. No evidence has ever been presented to suggest that a killer was to blame. There was no CCTV, no DNA and no credible eyewitnesses to the killings.

All the police ever had to go on was one vague description, offered by two people to the local press, describing ‘a white man in his forties with short brown hair, dressed in dark clothing, possibly with acne scarring to his face’. (I could go down to my local pub tonight and find at least seven men fitting that description.)

The spectre of a bogeyman seems to have overwhelmed common sense. These mutilations were the work of accidental collisions with cars and foxes looking for an easy lunch. While Brits like to see foxes as adorable Basil Brush-like creatures, they are, in fact, predators and scavengers who have no qualms about devouring your dead pet. In the end, it was fox DNA that was found on the cats’ corpses, and foxes who were caught on CCTV.

The panic over the Croydon Cat Killer is a symptom of a wider problem in society: we see danger and human evil around every corner. 

http://wp.spiked-online.com/2018/09/21/the-croydon-cat-killer-a-modern-urban-myth/

 

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3 hours ago, hetrodoxly said:

They remove heads from lambs in this manner, sometimes they remove the front feet and nose the reason is they're doing it as the lamb is being born.

Had the Blair Administration not banned fox hunting these people's cats may well still be alive.

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I have no opinion on these reports but they have NOT "solved" the mystery. It's still speculation.

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weren't they able to see from wounds that it was not a human??  i mean it is not that heard to see a difference between teeth marks, and knife\gun\club...... something that people use to kill

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So the police and vetenarians have been investigating this on a period of 3 years... If the case was as simple as recognizing scavenger marks, why would it take authorities so long to conclude?

Why doesn’t the news organization investigate for themselves instead of repeating the police’s report?  Can’t they give us some  the details seen by the victims and the vetenarians?

Well the only people digging around are local news, and paranormal investigators!

http://www.whtimes.co.uk/news/potters-bar-woman-speaks-out-following-croydon-cat-killer-conclu-1-5704427

 

Edited by Still Waters
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On 2018-09-22 at 9:05 AM, Black Monk said:

"Foxes are natural scavengers and I don't dispute the fact that a lot of activity is down to foxes. What I do dispute is that foxes can cleanly remove heads and tails in a surgical manner."

Dispute it all you like, but foxes actually chew off the heads of their prey first. If you find a headless or tailless carcass then it's almost certainly a fox.

Well just for your information, the vetenarians dispute it.

I don’t get why your so 100% convinced it’s foxes, when the police and vetenarians have been baffled by the case for 3 years, and that the media as made little to no effort to report any details of the investigation...

“In one mutilated cat case, there was a beheading. It was surgical. The wounds were symmetrical and looked as if they had been done with a scalpel.” – Dane Walker, Clinical Director, Streatham Hill Vets, South London, U. K., Sept. 23, 2018

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