The Humane Society's Lockwood argues that the details of animal abuse cases -- often ignored by police -- are essential to understanding a person's motivations for cruelty and, ultimately, finding ways to successfully treat their conduct disorder. Lockwood recalls the case of a Kansas City teenager who was convicted of setting fire to a dog, an act he and his friends had videotaped.
"One of the things I found particularly disturbing in that video is one of the boys saying, 'Man that's gotta hurt.' Here's a guy who's intentionally setting fire to an animal, fully aware of the pain he's causing it, and laughing while he's doing it," Lockwood says.
Jon Lagow
To David and Trisha Carmichael, the death of their cat Oscar is like the unsolved murder of a family member whose body was left for them to find.
To David and Trisha Carmichael, the death of their cat Oscar is like the unsolved murder of a family member whose body was left for them to find.
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While Felthous worked with inmates, Lockwood and his colleagues brought new understanding to the way animal cruelty relates to family violence.
In his landmark 1983 study, Lockwood examined 57 pet-owning families under treatment for domestic violence in New Jersey and found that in 88 percent of them, at least one member had abused the family pet. In two-thirds of the cases, the batterer had injured or killed the animal, while children were the abusers in the rest of the cases. Oftentimes, the batterers attacked animals as a way to intimidate their wives or children. In some cases, the battered person killed his beloved pets to spare them pain and suffering. The findings have been supported in more recent research.
Just as the research into family violence led to new laws, including those establishing mandatory reporting requirements, Lockwood says laws that require cases of animal cruelty to be "cross-reported" to other social service agencies could uncover new cases of domestic abuse and ultimately save lives. But so far, Lockwood says, California is the only state where animal cruelty investigators are trained and required to report domestic abuse.
"Over the last 30 or 40 years, what's happened is our response to violence has become very fragmented," Lockwood says. "We have the child-protection people, the domestic-violence people, adult protective services people, and animal-care societies who are often dealing with exactly the same perpetrators, [and they] are not working together."
Though the effort to enact new laws grinds slowly forward, some gains are being made. Today, Ascione and his co-editor Phil Arkow, chairman of the Latham Foundation's Child and Animal Abuse Prevention Project, report that some 21 states have made various types of animal cruelty felony-level crimes.
For now, Lockwood says police and mental-health professionals would benefit by asking animal abusers better questions so they can more effectively measure their mental state, and thus, their capacity for violence.
"One of the things that distinguishes animal cruelty as a warning sign is the frequency, the severity, and the use to which that violence is put," Lockwood says. "If it is this kind of experimentation, 'Gee, I wonder if I can pick that bird off the wire,' that's one thing. But if you routinely stalk the neighborhood blowing birds out of trees, that's very different."
And sometimes, Ascione notes, taking animal cruelty cases seriously when they happen can pay off immediately. As an example, he points to a 1997 case in which a 14-year-old boy in Kobe, Japan, stunned the world when he decapitated an 11-year-old-boy and placed the head in front of the school gate for his classmates to see. Using FBI profiling methods, the local police zeroed in on the boy after investigating reports of animal abuse in the area. As it turned out, the boy had a habit of killing small animals, including cats, and leaving their corpses at the school.
Back in Bent Tree West, David Carmichael is doing his part to spread the message that there is, as he puts it, "a wacko living in the neighborhood."
In recent weeks, he has spent hours distributing flyers door to door, hoping to raise neighbors' awareness about the case and let them know there's a $15,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer. He figures there's always the chance the information may jar somebody's memory about some weird behavior they've witnessed.
At the very least, they might be convinced to keep their cats inside at night. Better yet, they might think twice next time when they see some kid taunting a cat.
Carmichael has also helped organize a group called Neighbors Against Pet Cruelty and Abduction -- a community crime watch, of sorts, for pets. The group's members are collecting money to increase the reward, and they're raising awareness about the importance of taking animal abuse seriously.
In the process, Carmichael says he's done something he should have done months ago. "I met all my neighbors since this cat thing happened."
It's a hell of a way to say hello.
