Roots of Cruelty

Worst killers often have history of violence to animals: Research

by Philip Lee-Shanok, Toronto Sun

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, a pair of Colorado teens, used to smash in the heads of mice and set them on fire.

In the spring of 1999, they gunned down 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School.

Kip Kinkel decapitated cats, vivisected squirrels and blew up cows.

In 1998, after killing his parents and rigging the family home with explosives, Kinkel methodically shot 25 people at an Oregon high school.

Luke Woodham of Mississippi beat and burned his dog to death. He called it a "thing of true beauty."

In 1997, after he had slashed his mother's throat, he went to school and shot nine students.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has long shown the link between early animal cruelty and future aggression.

Clifford Olson, Paul Bernardo and a long list of other killers committed atrocities to animals before turning to humans.

Marc Lepine slaughtered pigeons before murdering 14 women engineering students at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal in 1989.

In May 2001, Toronto Police and Humane Society investigators found the body of a skinned, headless cat hanging in a fridge of a Bathurst-Queen Sts. roominghouse.

They also found a 17-minute videotape of Jesse Power, 22, Anthony Wennekers, 25, and a man named "Matt" methodically torturing a stray cat, hacking and slashing it to death with knives and dental tools as it dangled by the neck from a cord. At times the trio could be heard saying, "This is good stuff!" and "Beautiful, man!"

Det. Gordon Scott, who led the police investigation, says this kind of animal abuse should send up red flags.

"Animal abuse is one of the three arms of the 'homicide triangle' which, in general, indicates a person's propensity for interpersonal violence," Scott says, adding the other indicators are pyromania and sexual deviance.

While law enforcement agencies view animal abuse as an indicator of future violence, this week a sentencing judge called the cat killing "a misguided venture" and deemed Wennekers and Power "not the worst offenders."

The FBI has linked serial killers to acts of animal abuse prior to the age of 25.

Jeffrey Dahmer used to impale frogs and decapitate cats and dogs. Ted Bundy, David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz and Albert DeSalvo -- the Boston Strangler -- were also animal abusers at first.

While not all kids who throw stones at dogs grow up to be serial killers, cruelty to animals is a clear warning, says Robert Ressler, who developed FBI serial killer profiles.

"Murderers very often start out by killing and torturing animals," he says. "These are the kids who never learned it's wrong to poke out a puppy's eyes."

Amy White, of the Toronto Humane Society, says the authorities should keep close tabs on Wennekers and Power.

"We know there's a link between violence towards animals and violence towards people," White says. "I don't think we've heard the last of these two."

She's also worried since the third man named "Matt," seen in the video wearing a sweatshirt with the words Legalize Murder on the back, is still at large.

Wennekers already has seven convictions prior to 1998, including weapons and violent offences, as well as property and drug-related charges. He was living on the street until he moved in with Power.

Kicked cat

His lawyer, Andrew Czernik, says Wennekers, who has a history of drug abuse and appears on the video kicking the cat repeatedly, "doesn't have an explanation for what occurred."

But in White's view, Power was the architect of the cat's pain.

"He masterminded the plan. He came up with it and the others followed it," she says.

Power's lawyer, Andrea Tuck-Jackson, succeeded in getting him a blended jail sentence of 90 days served on weekends -- so he can continue to attend the Ontario College of Art and Design -- followed by an 18-month conditional sentence.

In making his ruling, Judge Edward Ormston relied heavily on a report by Dr. Philip Klassen, a psychiatrist with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health who often provides expert testimony in Crown cases.

Klassen said Power, the son of two well-off Quebec artists and the alumnus of private schools, admitted he was trying to "pass off" or "spin" the cat killing as art.

While Klassen found that Power was venturing down a road to an "increasingly underground lifestyle" of drug abuse and poorly focussed anger from "an egocentric morality" he found him "a low risk of future violent behaviour."

White disagrees, claiming Power's fascination with killing animals -- he worked at a slaughterhouse and defleshed carcasses at the Royal Ontario Museum -- would have gone on undetected if he hadn't been caught.

"Clearly his behaviour was escalating. We are taking a huge risk letting him out and ... it's one we shouldn't take," she says.

Humane societies in Canada and the U.S. claim that people who torture and kill animals are "practicing" before they graduate to humans. They say torturing animals becomes a pattern that should be broken with aggressive penalties.

The Toronto Humane Society is using the cat-skinning case in its campaign to toughen up animal cruelty laws, which haven't been changed since 1892.

An animal cruelty conviction is now punishable by a maximum six months in jail, a $2,000 fine and a two-year ban on owning animals.

Bill C-15B would increase that to five years in jail.

"We're trying to get ... the penalties increased, but in this case we didn't even get the maximum under current legislation," White says.