Pets Bear First Violence
by Vickie Chachere
Originally published by The Associated Press, February 29, 2004
TAMPA — Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer's first victims were the dogs he killed, severing their heads for a macabre display behind his childhood home.
School shooter Luke Woodham, who killed two classmates and his mother in 1997, wrote in a journal about killing his dog by setting her on fire, a violent act he called "true beauty.''
And "vampire cult leader'' Rod Ferrell, who is serving a life sentence for the bludgeoning death of a Florida couple, first drew the attention of law enforcement in Kentucky, where he was charged with breaking into an animal shelter where two puppies were tortured, killed and mutilated.
Criminologists have long believed there's a link between animal cruelty and violence toward humans. A recently published book by University of South Florida Professor Kathleen Heide and animal activist Linda Merz-Perez provides new research into the connection.
Study Sees Evidence
The study of 45 violent inmates in Florida prisons and 45 prisoners serving time for drug and property offenses found more than half of the violent offenders had committed animal cruelty as children. By comparison, just 20 percent of the nonviolent offenders had a history of attacking animals.
"A lot of people who want to victimize, they want to start with something they can really control,'' said Merz-Perez, a former animal shelter director and public school teacher. "The easiest thing in the world to control is a puppy. It's a matter of escalation; they work their way up.''
Their findings from the nearly 10-year-long project were the subject of "Animal Cruelty. Pathway to Violence against People,'' an academic work geared toward criminologists or for use in university courses dealing with children and violence.
Heide is a criminologist who has drawn national acclaim for her 20 years of research into children who kill. Merz-Perez, who now lives near Vancouver, Wash., said she proposed the project after spending 10 years as a public school teacher and also as an animal shelter director who saw the aftermath of animal cruelty cases.
Their work also has taken on new significance in Tampa, where a rash of animal cruelty cases has drawn public attention.
In January, in rural Hillsborough County, Snow Girl, a pregnant 3-year-old Arabian crossbred horse, was found shot, her throat slit, skinned and slaughtered. Her owners say the horse was so gentle the killer probably had to do little to coax her near him.
In December, two Tarpon Springs teenagers were arrested in the brutal beating of Phil, a pig being raised as part of an agriculture class at the local high school. The 55-pound pig was hit in the face with a concrete block; the teenagers were arrested after $8,000 in reward money was posted. Phil is now recovering and the boys are facing felony cruelty charges.
Merz-Perez got the idea for the study while working as an art teacher at a Palm Harbor elementary school. A little girl with tears in her eyes approached Merz-Perez to tell of a boy in her class who had spent the lunch hour telling her how he had tortured and killed a puppy.
"To say that a child is going to hurt an animal and end up being a future Ted Bundy, we have to be careful with that; it pegs a child,'' she said. "But it's very clear in the book that this type of violence against animals, to mutilate an animal, is a warning sign.''
Heide said they worked with the Florida Department of Corrections to randomly select the pool of inmates. By delving into their criminal records and backgrounds, and then sitting with each inmate for lengthy interviews, they were able to glean data showing links between crimes against animals and later violence against humans.
They broke the incidents of violence down into four categories: violence against wild animals, farm animals, strays and pets. They found a connection between those who are violent to the most trusting of animals, the family pet, and cruelty to other people.
The Key Difference
Heide said inmates serving time for both violence and nonviolent offense have incidence of animal cruelty in their past, but the key difference is the nonviolent offenders came to understand hurting "feeling, breathing beings'' is wrong.
One particularly violent inmate, a 30-year-old serving a life term for a murder in which he set his victim on fire, told researchers he had enjoyed torturing cats over the years. The inmate seemed to enjoy telling the story, the researchers said.
Other prisoners from badly dysfunctional homes told the researchers of seeing others torturing pets and being able to identify with the injured pet. One burglar told them of having killed a neighbor's pig with a pellet gun and learning his lesson when his grandfather forced him to work at the man's home to repay him for the lost swine.
"When dealing with youths who have done this, the critical piece is helping them develop empathy,'' Heide said. "If all we did was punish and lock these kids up, you would see kids graduating into greater violence.''
Heide and Merz-Perez said their work should serve as a warning in jurisdictions where animal cruelty cases are not vigorously investigated or prosecuted.
Many law enforcement agencies do not take animal cruelty cases lightly, said Hillsborough County sheriff's Maj. Gary Terry, who oversees investigations and is himself an expert on serial murders.
"You can't do that anymore,'' Terry said. "A lot of us recognized these are indications of violence that might be in the future and maybe even the not-too-distant future.''
But given the difficulty of investigating such crimes, the demands of solving crimes against people and new domestic security tasks, even large agencies such as Hillsborough find the resources limited it can devote to animal cruelty.
In the case of the slaughtered horse, Snow Girl, investigators have been hampered by a lack of witnesses, Terry said.
