Cats mutilated, gutted, sliced in half
Worcester, MA (US)Incident Date: Thursday, Sep 15, 2005
County: Worcester
Disposition: Open
Suspect(s) Unknown - We need your help!
On Aug. 28, Bruce D. Skamarycz looked outside his window and saw the cat - or what was left of it. There was only a rear half, and it was lying in a neighbor's front lawn.
Later that day, he learned that the city's animal control officer had taken the cat to a veterinarian, and they suspected the cat had been cut in half. By a human. Possibly with a knife.
It was the beginning of an ongoing mystery for Animal Control Officer Lisa A. Gaudet. A second dismembered cat was found a mile away on Sept 13, and a third on Sept 15. Now, along with police and the Animal Rescue League of Boston, she is trying to find out what - or who - is doing this.
The day after the cat was found, the number 666 was spray-painted on the road a few homes down from Mr. Skamarycz' High Street house.
Right now, there's only speculation and difficult evidence. Ms. Gaudet doesn't know of a single eyewitness to the cat killings. So as the investigation goes on, she is urging calm.
It's entirely possible that wild animals killed the cats, she said. Human hands may have been involved, but there's no proof. The spray-painted number - often associated with Satanism - could be a coincidence.
"I would like to not have people get paranoid over this situation, because it still could be either way," she said.
Each cat has been different. The first had the cleanest cut, she said. The second, a front half found in the wooded area of a homeowner's property near Prospect and Charles streets, also had been sliced in two, but was covered with bugs and dirt. The third, a house cat found on the other side of the city near Heywood Hospital, appeared to have been gutted, and was not split in half like the first two.
Because of the injuries to the third cat, Ms. Gaudet suspects it fell victim to another animal - most likely a fisher, she said. That carnivorous member of the weasel family is commonly called a fisher cat and tends to hunt house cats.
The first two cats are more of a mystery, though. The mystery is complicated by where they were found.
The first cat was on a front lawn at High Street and Ida Hill Road, so a person could have dumped it there without going through people's property.
The site where the second cat was found would have required the killer to travel through multiple people's land and risk being noticed, Ms. Gaudet said.
For that reason, Ms. Gaudet suspects an animal might have killed the second cat. Nobody in the area saw a suspicious person going through the property, but an animal could have gone by undetected.
But the cat's owners, Frank Norton and Cristina Ferrara, are convinced a person did it.
The cat, Calico, suffered a clean cut, Mr. Norton said - swift and knifelike, not the work of an animal. He said there was no blood in the dirt nearby, and no sign of a struggle.
Another one of their cats disappeared about two months ago. It has yet to be found.
"What scares me the most is that, even if it's kids doing it or whatever, it can lead to other things in life," Ms. Ferrara said. "And these kids need help. Whoever's doing this needs help."
Animal experts have said it's too soon to tell who or what killed these cats. It's not a situation they face often.
"It sounds like a very interesting but difficult problem," said Ellie Horwitz, a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Department of Fisheries & Wildlife.
It's uncommon for wild animals to eat only half of a cat or to sever one cleanly, although it's not impossible, she said. The department is not involved in the Gardner investigation, so Ms. Horwitz could not speak specifically about the situation.
A spokesman for the Animal Rescue League of Boston, which is helping Ms. Gaudet, said he had no information to share about the cases yet.
"It would be very infrequent that we see anything like this," said Thomas Adams, the spokesman.
Ms. Gaudet said she did not want cat owners to get too nervous, especially because the suspect could be human or animal. Concerned owners, she said, should train their cats to stay indoors. References« MA State Animal Cruelty Map
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