The Thurston County Cat Killer Is Allowed to Get Away with Stealing and Carving Up at Least Fourteen Victims Thanks to the Blasé Attitude and Ineptitude of the Law Enforcement Community

Callie Was Abducted, Killed, and Her Spine Ripped Out

"It's all just very evil and cruel."
-- Cassie Brinlee

An exceptionally clever, daring and, above all, brutal killer and mutilator has carved up at least fourteen cats in Olympia and its environs. As far as it is known, the first feline fatality was discovered on October 27th of last year at 6922 Mill Court Southeast in Olympia.

On January 28th and February 4th of this year an unspecified number of severed heads and limbs were found in a field near Clearbrook Drive and Yonkers Drive Southeast in Lacey, eight kilometers west of Olympia, but it has not been publicly disclosed if they were taken from only two or multiple victims. After that there were not any more reported killings until July when the killer struck twice more.

In August he went on a tear and killed and dismembered at least eleven cats plus one more in September. The bulk of the killings have occurred in Olympia but in addition to those in Lacey, cats also have been killed in Tumwater, five kilometers south of Olympia, and even one in Port Angeles, one-hundred-ninety-three kilometers north of Olympia.

Dubbed the Thurston County Cat Killer by the authorities, the assailant follows a predictable modus operandi that begins with him entering quiet residential neighborhoods late at night and abducting cats from either their owners' gardens or nearby alleyways. He then spirits them to an unknown location where he kills and dismembers them before later returning in order to dump their corpses and severed body parts at locations in close proximity to where he earlier had stolen them.

The particulars surrounding these abominable atrocities are sketchy and at times contradictory but that in no way detracts from their grisly nature. Piecing together the story has been further complicated by the probability that the authorities are deliberately withholding valuable pieces of data in a belief that doing so just might help to facilitate an arrest.

Little or nothing is known about the earlier killings and therefore for the purpose of this narrative the story begins on July 5th when a black cat named Callie was stolen from the home that she had shared for the past two years with Angi and Patrick Swan at 817 Cushing Street in southeast Olympia. She was immediately killed and thereafter her spine was cut out but it was not until a day or so later that her remains were found purposefully displayed for all to see in Decatur Woods Park.

To make matters worse, it apparently was weeks before the Swans learned what had happened to her. That was in part attributable to the fact that while her killer was removing her spine he also dislodged her implanted microchip.

Whereas it is well known that microchips do not afford cats so much as an iota of protection against those individuals and animals that are intent upon doing them harm, they likewise are of dubious benefit when it comes to even identifying the remains of those that have fallen prey to extreme acts of violence. (See Cat Defender post of May 25, 2006 entitled "Plato's Misadventures Expose the Pitfalls of RFID Technology as Applied to Cats.")

To say that the coldblooded murder and mutilation of the cat that their parents had adopted from Olympia Animal Services (OAS) was anything but traumatic for the Swans' three daughters, ages twelve to eighteen, would be a gross understatement. "Two outwardly cried, one went to her room and hasn't mentioned it since," Angi disclosed to The Seattle Times on August 24th. (See "Serial Cat Mutilations Leave Olympia-Area Residents Angry, Scared and Suspicious.") "We raised our kids in that park. Now the youngest one won't go there."

Even Patrick has had a difficult time coming to terms with such a despicable act of animal cruelty. "I said, 'what caused this? Did it get hit by a car?' They (OAS) said, 'no.' I said, 'did an animal like a raccoon or a coyote or anything?' And they said 'no'," he related to Fox-61 of Hartford on August 2nd. (See "Mystery Surrounds Mutilation of Cats in Washington County.") "Then they said, 'this was done by a human.' Then it dawned on me, something bad happened to my cat."

All the weeks of not knowing what had happened to Callie but nevertheless fearing the worst also took a heavy toll on the Swans. "It's been a challenge every morning. We call the cats in, and only one comes," he added to Fox-61. "Why would someone want to do this to a pet?"

Also in July, a handsome, longhaired, seven-year-old tuxedo named Tarot was killed and then cut in two. His remains later were found in the playground and picnic area of Shane Park in Port Angeles.

"He was a friend to not only other cats but dogs as well," his owner, Debbie Drake, told The Washington Post on August 6th. (See "A Serial Cat Killer Is Responsible for Seven Feline Deaths in Washington State, Police Say.") "I like to think he was the cat sheriff of the West Side. He wandered his turf and hung with his posse."

On August 2nd, the mutilated corpse of a fluffy, white, slightly overweight, and cross-eyed female named Olly was found on the front lawn of 1102 Langridge Drive Northwest in Olympia. Her spine had been removed and a necropsy later revealed that she had been strangled to death.

Killing her, however, proved to have been a far more difficult task than her abductor and murderer had anticipated. "Olly fought for her life, using her claws to try to get away," Erika Johnson of Thurston County Joint Animal Services (TCJAS) informed KCPQ-TV of Tacoma on August 3rd. (See "Possible Serial Killer Strikes Again in Washington, Investigators Say.")

Owner Rhiannon Stockert of the 1500 block of Division Avenue Northwest in Olympia, .48 kilometers north of where Olly's remains were discovered, was left shocked and saddened by events. "She's family," she declared to The New York Times on August 29th. (See "A Serial Cat Killer Is on the Loose in Washington State.") "It's definitely a creepy feeling to know that this person has that type of evil in them (sic)."

Tarot Was Cut in Half in Port Angeles

On August 5th, the mutilated remains of a twenty-year-old, deaf, brown and white male known as Harley were discovered on a lawn at 1705 Sixth Avenue Southwest in Olympia. That was a scant two-hundred-twenty-three feet north of where he lived with Kathy Harrigan and Stan Lewis at 604 Milroy Street Southwest.

Those individuals who found him promptly bagged his remains and deposited them in a nearby garbage can. They later were recovered but press reports have not delved into how that came about or why they were disposed of in such and callous and irresponsible manner in the first place. (See The Olympian, August 5, 2018, "A Seventh Mutilated Cat Has Been Found in Olympia.")

Officers from the Olympia Police Department initially concentrated their attention on a nearby alley as possibly having served as either the abduction site or the killing field but since Harrigan and Lewis had neglected to equip their residence with surveillance cameras that line of inquiry failed to bear fruit. Like Olly, Harley apparently put up quite a struggle and DNA was collected from underneath his claws and sent to a laboratory for testing.

His murder was especially sad in that he had led a troubled life. Most notably, he had been abandoned, perhaps multiple times, and thus forced to tough it out on his own until Harrigan and Lewis came to his rescue.

That occurred two years ago and rather late in his topsy-turvy life when the kindhearted couple found him emaciated and living underneath a neighbor's house. Claiming that he was too unsocialized to live indoors, they instead built him a heated house on their lawn.

Although commendable, a cat his age and with his disability does not have any business whatsoever living outdoors and especially at night. It is not always an easy feat to pull off but most cats, no matter how accustomed they may have become to living outdoors, can adjust to living indoors. (See Cat Defender post of July 24, 2017 entitled "A Rescue Group in British Columbia Compassionately Elects to Spare Grandpa Mason's Life and in Return for Doing So It Receives an Unexpected Reward Worth More than Gold Itself.")

If Harrigan is correct when she insists that he seldom left her yard, that would tend to suggest that his killer snatched him from either right underneath her nose or in a nearby alley. His boldness has, quite understandably, left her unnerved.

"This has been a very close community," she averred to The Seattle Times. "I haven't experienced this level of paranoia here in twenty years."

Such erroneous and self-serving thinking is one of the major obstacles that must be overcome before any real progress can ever be made in solving crimes perpetrated against cats like Harley. The disquieting truth of the matter is, as Charles Dickens pointed out in the opening pages of his 1859 novel,A Tale of Two Cities, that it is quite impossible for anyone to ever really know another individual. On top of that most individuals are extremely clever at concealing their true natures and some of them are downright evil to boot.

The trap that Harrigan has fallen into is the same one that ensnared fifty-nine-year-old Jordana Rebmann of Oberrohrdorf, thirty kilometers northwest of Zurich, after her truly gorgeous three-year-old Norwegian Forest Cat and British Shorthair mix, Runa, was kidnapped and beheaded last November 17th. "Wir wohnen seit vielen Jahren in Oberrohrdorf und pflegen ein gutes Verhältnis zur nachbarschaft," she declared. "Wir haben keine Feinde." (See Cat Defender posts of December 8, 2017 and February 28, 2018 entitled, respectively, "The Abduction, Brutal Slaying, an Diabolical Mutilation of Runa Leaves Her Owner Devastated and Strikes Fear into the Hearts of All Cat Lovers Living in a Small Town in Switzerland" and "The Hunt for Runa's Sadistic Killer Takes an Unexpected and Bizarre Turn but, Owing to the Polizei's Refusal to Take This Case Seriously, an Arrest Remains a Long Shot.")

She, quite obviously, had at least one mortal enemy and it unquestionably was one of her smiling and seemingly respectable bourgeois neighbors. Secondly, since the killer went to considerable trouble and risk in order to return Runa's torso, but not her head, to Rebmann's Grundstück that places him in the same category as not only the Thurston County Cat Killer but also that of several other cat killers and mutilators.

For example on June 1st, Victoria Marchante stumbled upon the severed head of a tuxedo near the intersection of Eleomore and Coliseum streets in uptown New Orleans. She looked around for the cat's torso but was unable to locate it.

"...it appeared that the cat's head had been deliberately severed with a sharp instrument and placed where others could see it, as if it were a trophy," the Humane Society of Louisiana (HSL), headquartered in the Big Easy, told The Times-Picayune of New Orleans on June 5th. (See "Decapitated Cat's Head Found in Uptown New Orleans, Humane Society Says.")

Both the HSL and the New Orleans Police Department pledged to look into the matter but, predictably, they did absolutely nothing in order to apprehend the cat's killer. The dénouement was the same in Dawson Creek, British Columbia, back in 2012 when the bodies of murdered cats and dogs, frozen solid in blocks of ice, started turning up on residents' lawns. (See Cat Defender post of April 13, 2012 entitled "A Serial Killer Who Freezes the Corpses of Cats and Dogs in Blocks of Ice and Then Exhibits Them on His Neighbors' Lawns Is on the Loose in Dawson Creek.")

The Thurston County Cat Killer struck again on August 19th and this time around the victim was an eleven-year-old cat named Midnight. His remains were found the following day in a field next to his owner's house in the 600 block of Lilly and Plummer roads in southeast Olympia.

His neck had been broken, his stomach sliced open, and several internal organs removed. "Found him on his birthday gone, so sad," his owner, sixty-three-year-old Ronda M. Woodworth, told Fox News of New York on August 28th. (See "Washington State Sees Twelfth Feline Mutilated Amid Fears of a Serial Killer.") "He was totally strewn out, flat as a pancake."

Olly Was Strangled to Death and Then Her Spine Was Removed

If she is correct in maintaining that he never strayed from her property he, like Callie, surely was abducted right underneath her nose. Moreover, given his personality that may not have been all that difficult of a chore.

"He was a friendly cat. You could call him and he'd come right to you," she told The Seattle Times. "I didn't think this would happen to my cat."

Of course, it is always possible that she and Harrigan did not know their cats quite as well as they imagined. Contrary to popular belief, cats require pretty much around-the-clock supervision and if their guardians are not available to both entertain and feed them they have a tendency to stray.

Ideally, they should only be allowed outside during daylight hours and even then it is best that they be both supervised and confined to their owners' gardens. If they are allowed to roam, owners should endeavor to find out exactly where it is that they go and, above all, if there are any cat-haters in the neighborhood. Above all, they never should be allowed to remain outdoors overnight under any circumstances.

Also as it has been demonstrated time and time again, cats should not be overly socialized. A healthy distrust of humans is beneficial to their well-being and longevity.

On August 29th, a brown and black cat named Purrfect was stolen from the property of sixty-eight-year-old Paul Richard Braget. Her remains were discovered a day later on the lawn of neighbor Cari Brinlee at Steilacoom Road Southeast near Salmon Lane in west Olympia and the boundary with Lacey.

The killer apparently dropped off her remains at around 3:30 a.m. August 30th because that was when Brinlee's dog commenced raising a ruckus. "She started barking, not her usual annoying bark, but a very fierce bark," she told KOMO-TV of Seattle on August 31st. (See "Search for Thurston County Cat Killer Intensified after Thirteenth Dead Cat Found.") 

If she had either gotten out of bed and investigated, promptly telephoned the police, or had had surveillance cameras in situ, the killer very well could have been apprehended right then and there but, alas, that was not the case. "I should have taken the dog more seriously," she afterwards lamented to KOMO-TV. "Certainly feels like a violation. I don't feel very safe."

As hard as it may be to believe, Brinlee insists that she was not aware of the fact that a serial cat killer was wreaking havoc in Olympia. She therefore initially failed to even notify the police after discovering Purrfect's remains because she believed that she had been killed by an animal.

"She would go on walks with me," Braget recalled to KOMO-TV about the cat that he had raised from a kitten after she was abandoned in his yard. "She was a good cat."

As far as it is known, the killer's last victim was a one-year-old white cat named Mystic whose remains were found September 13th along Pacific Avenue near Pacific Ridge Drive in Lacey. He had been sliced open from his groin to his sternum.

For its part the Thurston County Sheriff's Office, which is leading the effort to nab the killer, is on record as stating that he was mowed down by a motorist and that is an assumption that his owner, Crystal Worden, vociferously disputes. "I saw that he had been cut open. This wasn't from an animal...his skull was shattered," she testified to KIRO Radio of Seattle on September 21st. (See "Another Cat Found Dead in Olympia Area.") "It was just his skull. His legs weren't broken. It as done by a person."

If the response from the Sheriff's Office sounds familiar it is because Scotland Yard recently concluded that the Croydon Cat Killer does not in fact exist and that the more than five-hundred cats killed and mutilated in south London and surrounding areas over the course of the past three years or so were instead killed by motorists and foxes. (See The Guardian, September 20, 2018, "'Croydon Cat Killer: Hunt Ends after Three-Year Investigation.")

Like Worden, cat owners in and around London have not accepted either Scotland Yard's explanation or its decision to wipe its hands of the entire matter. (See The Evening Standard of London, September 21, 2018, "Croydon Cat Killer: Outraged Pet Owners and Animal Charities Insist Killer Is 'Still Out There' Despite Police Saying No Evidence of Any Human Involvement.")

At least seven other cats besides Callie, Tarot, Olly, Harley, Midnight, Purrfect, and Mystic have been killed and mutilated in and around Olympia but, regrettably, it has not proven possible to obtain any information concerning them except for a brief mention in press reports of a cat named Tubby who was killed in Olympia. He is especially important nevertheless because his killer carelessly left behind a surgical glove with his mutilated corpse.

Furthermore, it is entirely conceivable that this diabolical monster may have killed far more than fourteen cats. First of all, some owners care so little about their faithful companions that they do not even bother to search for them once they go missing.

Harley Was Twenty Years Old and Deaf but He Still Fought for His Life

Secondly, that problem is compounded by residents like Brinlee and those who found Harley who, apparently, are incapable of telling the difference between those that have been attacked by wild animals as opposed to those that have been carved up with surgical precision by a human. Thirdly, since homeless cats do not have anyone to look after them and the general public regards them with something worse than disdain, the killer could have killed scores of them without hardly anyone caring enough to even mention it any of them.

Belatedly arriving at the terrifying conclusion that there is a sadistic cat killer either living or working in the midst of their middle-class, upscale neighborhoods not only has left residents unnerved but, quite understandably, deeply suspicious of each other. "We get numerous calls from people saying this person was petting a cat as they were walking through the neighborhood," Johnson of TCJAS told The Seattle Times. "Tips on possible suspects, naming people with strange behavior, or maybe this person remarked that they hated cats, or what they did to cats when they were younger."

Even so much as munching on a can of sardines in public nowadays qualifies as sufficient reason in order to place a person under a cloud of suspicion. "'Oh, it's my lunch' (one man replied before he) just kind of walked away," Johnson said of a fellow who was stopped on the street by a resident and called upon to account for his culinary taste and habit of dining al fresco .

Citizen patrols also have been organized and Jason Cox even has taken it upon himself to comb through not only Olympia but Tumwater and Lacey as well with his coonhound Abigail and a Chihuahua named Nico. "I'll find the exact location in which it (a dead cat) was placed and let her (Abigail) be able to smell it in the hopes that she picks up that scent and maybe is able to find the kill site, or any kind of evidence," he explained to KOMO-TV on September 14th. (See "Citizen Patrols Start to Hunt Down Thurston County Cat Killer.") "If I happen to stumble across that one opportunity where I unfortunately find someone leaving a cat behind, it's just 9-1-1 all the way."

At least US$53,000 in reward money has been put up by the likes of Peace4Animals of Calabasas, Posado's Safe Haven of Sultan, the Seattle Humane Society, the Humane Society of the United States in Washington, D.C., the Animal Legal Defense Fund of Cotati, KCPQ-TV news anchor David Rose and, believe it or not, the inveterate cat killers at PETA. For all the good that initiative has done the money might just as well have been locked away in a Swiss bank account in that there have not been any takers.

Initially the TCJAS and the Olympic Police Department had been forced to go it alone in the hunt for the Thurston County Cat Killer but during the third week of August they belatedly were joined by the Thurston County Sheriff's Office and the police forces in Tumwater and Lacey in order to form a joint task force. In a classic case of too little, too late, by that juncture twelve cats already had been killed and the trail had all but grown cold.

None of those considerations had any deterrent effect whatsoever on the outpouring of hot air which was still circulating every bit as freely as the Santa Ana winds that are now fanning the Hill and Woolsey wildfires in southern California. "The men and women in this office and adjacent law enforcement offices are committed to finding this individual," Thurston County Sheriff John Snaza pledged to KCPQ-TV on September 5th. (See "Thurston County Cat Mutilations: Your Questions Answered.")

The task force's lead investigator, detective Ben Elkins of the Sheriff's Office, seemed initially to be on the right track. "We treat it as a crime scene, we cordon it off, look for leads, look for evidence of that crime, canvas the neighborhood, look for witnesses," he amplified upon his boss's pledge to KCPQ-TV. "Just like you would any type of major crime. You (sic) treat it as the same."

To his credit, such an approach is truly light years ahead of the response that members of the public normally receive from the law enforcement community whenever a cat is killed. Au contraire, all that they usually are entitled to is a load of malarkey coupled with absurd appeals for them to do the cops' jobs for them.

Another major first obstacle to be overcome in such investigations is not to allow the law enforcement community to shirk its duty by packing off blame on wildlife as Scotland Yard recently was allowed to get away with doing. Moreover, that surely must have been a tempting expedient in this case, especially considering recent history.

For instance, during the summer of 2006 a pack of raccoons killed at least ten cats and attacked four others in the vicinity of the Garfield Nature Trail at Harrison Avenue West and Pools Street Southeast in the western part of the city. (See Cat Defender post of August 28, 2006 entitled "A Marauding Pack of Vicious Raccoons Rips Ten House Cats to Shreds and Terrorizes Residents in Olympia but Wildlife Officials Refuse to Intervene.")

For that not happening this time around the citizens of Olympia have local veterinarian Vitoria Smith of the Steamboat Animal Hospital at 6531 Sexton Drive Northwest to thank. "We look for puncture wounds like bite marks, jagged edges, ripped hair. Anything that indicates an animal might have been traumatized by another animal. We really haven't seen that," she explained to KCPQ-TV in the September 5th article cited supra. "The mutilations are fairly similar, the same body parts keep showing repetitive injuries. That's fairly consistent and then there's blunt trauma as well as sharp trauma, like a laceration."

As for whom is responsible for the commission of these despicable acts of animal cruelty, both residents and law enforcement personnel alike have fallen into a trap similar to the one that ensnared both Harrigan and Rebmann into placing too much faith in the fundamental decency and law- abidingness of their neighbors. Just as that has been proven by events to have been a grave error in judgment so, too, is the belief that these dastardly deeds have been committed by an individual who is mentally deranged. Even though it may be comforting for some individuals to chalk up matters as such, that analysis is hardly supported by the facts.

"The suspect appears to be motivated by anger, control," Johnson nonetheless persisted in surmising to KCPQ-TV. "There's maybe a little bit of interest here to see how everything works but they are also putting these animals out on display for everybody to find. So I think it is also wanting to see a reaction."

"This guy is sick," Braget declared to KOMO-TV in the August 31st article cited supra. "I hope they (the authorities) find him. I hope they figure it out. There are some cameras that caught some things."

"I think it is horrid. Somebody is really sick," his sister Sandra, who resides in the same neighborhood as him, chimed in to KOMO-TV. "I don't understand why anybody would ever think of doing something like that."

Purrfect "Was a Good Cat"

Like a rat after cheese, Elkins also has taken the bait. "This is disturbing," he bellowed to KOMO-TV on August 30th. (See "Thirteenth Mutilated Cat Found -- This One Near Lacey.") "This is someone that in our mind is sick, has some issues and is out killing cats for no reason."

With such a mindset, it was hardly surprising what he arrived at next. "But that is a definite, valid concern that this person could escalate to a human being," he theorized to KOMO-TV.

Brinlee was quick to endorse that viewpoint. "It's despicable, scary," she told KOMO-TV. "You hear stories of really bad people where they got their start on mass murders from desecrating animals."

Not about to be left out, Patrick Swan could not help but add his full support to that familiar drumbeat. "My fear is , if you're going to do cats, what's next?" he asked rhetorically to Fox-61.

Knee-jerk speculation of that genre has by not means been left to the cops and residents. "It's disturbing and scary stuff, because the question is not only what happens to animals who are victimized, which is very disturbing, but (also) making sure this behavior does not escalate," Seattle psychologist Kenneth Muscatel added his two cents' worth to the New York Post on August 31st. (See "'Disturbing' Serial Killer's Victim Count Rises to at Least Thirteen.") "Likely, the individual is not a successful or highly-engaged individual with society and this is a way of feeling...attention."

It was Stephen Wells of the Animal Legal Defense Fund, however, who made that point most emphatically following the killing of Tarot. "Violence against companion animals is one of the strongest predictors for other crimes and violent acts," he told KCPQ-TV on July 27th. (See "Five-Thousand-Dollar Reward Offered in Case of Cat Found Cut in Half in Port Angeles.") "The perpetrator of this heinous crime poses a threat to all members of the Port Angeles community, both human and nonhuman."

Although proponents of such reasoning like to point out that serial killers such as Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, David Berkowitz, and others also abused animals they are the exception rather than the rule. If anyone were ever to go to the trouble of examining these types of killings, as opposed to merely repeating what they have been told, they soon would discover that all sorts of individuals kill and abuse cats and that actually very few of them are certifiably crazy.

Such thinking also suffers from a glaring failure to apply it across the board. For instance, cops, the Yankee Imperialist War Machine, shelters, Animal Control Officers, veterinarians, and vivisectors all abuse and kill cats in droves and yet no one to date has accused any of those wretched professionals and institutions of being serial cat killers.

Furthermore, very few cat killers are much of a threat to humans and that is not because they are necessarily in love with humanity, but rather it is attributable to the fact that they are far too cowardly to ever attack any creature that is capable of defending itself. Plus, they fully realize that the authorities thoroughly investigate homicides.

Instead, they abuse and kill cats because they have an agenda and know full well that society does not value their lives. They therefore are free to act with impunity.

Even Brinlee's young daughter, Cassie, is capable of understanding what her mother and the rest of Olympia are either incapable or unwilling to acknowledge. "It's all just very evil and cruel," she told KOMO-TV on August 31st.

Clifton Flynn of the University of South Carolina at Spartanburg and the author of a 2000 paper entitled "Why Family Professionals Can No Longer Ignore Violence Toward Animals," has even gone out on a limb in order to offer up a profile of the killer. "This is most likely a male. It wouldn't surprise me if this was a teenager, or up to the early thirties, from a working-class neighborhood, who very well could have been bullied as a child, who probably had witnessed animals being abused," he theorized to The Seattle Times.

While there certainly cannot be any denying that young males, often those from poorer neighborhoods, kill more than their share of cats, Flynn errs egregiously in failing to include underage girls who commit the same kinds of heinous offenses. (See Cat Defender posts of August 20,2018, November 25, 2015, March 24, 2010, December 18, 2009, November 10, 2008, November 30, 2006, and October 5, 2006 entitled, respectively, "The Brutal Slaying and Mutilation of Bebe Has Reaffirmed Edmonton's Longstanding Claim to the Title of Being Canada's Most Violent, Sadistic, and Murderous City When It Comes to Cats," "A Cruel Teenage Drunkard and Dope Addict Who Bound a Cat and a Dog with Tape Before Killing Them Is Let Off Easy by a Calgary Court," "Seven-Month-Old Bailey Is Fed to a Lurcher by a Group of Sadistic Teens in Search of Cheap Thrills in Northern Ireland," "A Teenage Wino Who Gunned Down Her Neighbor's Cat, Trouble, with a Crossbow from Her Bedroom Window Cheats Justice," "Adam Is Persevering Throughout All the Pain Two Years after Having Been Torched by Giggling Teenage Girls in Santa Rosa," "A London Teenager, Convicted of Killing the HMS Belfast's Kilo, Also Is Unmasked as a Remorseless Liar and a Drunkard," "Yobs Celebrating Guy Fawkes Day Kill a Twelve-Year-Old Cat Named Tigger with Fireworks; a Cat Named Sid Is Severely Burned," and "New Jersey Teens' Idea of Fun: Beat Up a Defenseless Kitten and Then Burn It to Death.")

He additionally is dead wrong to neglect the large number of elderly men, in particular miserable old honky-donkeys, who kill and abuse cats. (See Cat Defender posts of March 13, 2012, January 22, 2011, October 23, 2009, August 17, 2009, May 14, 2009, July 3, 2006, and January 17, 2006 entitled, respectively, "The Sick Wife Defense Works Like a Charm for Cunning Patrick Doyle after He Traps a Cat and Then Shoots It with an Air Rifle While Still in Its Cage," "Colin Sherlock, an Admitted Boozer and Dope Addict, Pulls Out All the Stops in His Unsuccessful Attempt to Torture Roxy to Death," "An Essex Welfare Bum Who Sicced His Dog on Cats and Beat Them with His Cane Is Now Pretending to Be the Victim of an Assault," "America's Insane Love Affair with Criminals Continues as a Drunkard Who Sliced Open Scatt with a Box Cutter Gets Off with Time on the Water Wagon," "Virginia Is for Cat Killers, Not Lovers, Now That Its Legal Establishment Has Sanctioned Donald Curtis Hunt's Drowning of Five Kittens," "Crooked Massachusetts Cops Allow an Elderly Politician to Get Away with Attempting to Drown a Kitten Named Lucky Girl," and "A Loony Virginia Judge Lets a Career Criminal Go Free After He Stomps to Death Fourteen-Year-Old Deaf and Arthritic Luke.")

Flynn likewise is off his rocker to pack off all the blame on the working class and the uneducated because it is actually the bourgeoisie and the educated, some with doctoral degrees no less, who kill and abuse the most cats. (See Cat Defender posts of May 17, 2010 and March 3, 2006 entitled, respectively, "Julie Levy and Her Henchmen Ride to the Rescue of Maury Swee's Severely Neglected Cats and Promptly Slaughter at Least One-Hundred-Eighty-Five of Them" and "A Cat-Hating Professor at UC-Davis and the BBC Call for the Extermination of Seventy-Eight-Million Feral Felines.")

Countless more of their vile and unprincipled colleagues shanghai cats into becoming guinea pigs, experiment on them, and constantly malign them in both print and speech. (See Cat Defender post of July 18, 2011 entitled "Evil Professors Have Transformed College Campuses into Hotbeds of Hatred Where Cats Routinely Are Vilified, Horribly Abused, and Systematically Killed.")

Looking at the matter more generally, it is always the bourgeoisie and the rich who are the most lawless of all groups. C'est-à-dire, it is seldom the crème de la crème that rises to the top of society's dunghill but rather the flotsam and jetsam of the human race. (See The Washington Post, August 18, 2018, "Rich People More Likely to Cheat, Studies Confirm.")

In addition to the Catholic Church's historic crimes against the species during the Middle Ages, holy men of all religious persuasions continue to this very day to abuse and kill cats. (See Cat Defender posts of January 10, 2014 and August 8, 2012 entitled, respectively, "A Texas Judge Idiotically Allows Pastor Rick Bartlett to Get Away with Stealing and Killing Moody but a Civil Court May Yet Hold Him Accountable" and "Polygamists Condemn Thomas to a Long and Excruciatingly Painful Death by Burying Him Up to His Tiny Neck Inside a Steel Post Filled with Wet Concrete.")

Mystic Was Sliced Open from His Groin to His Sternum

Cops also go out of their way in order to kill cats. (See Cat Defender post of September 1, 2016 entitled "The Legal and Political Establishment in a Small Pennsylvania Backwater Closes Ranks and Pulls Out All the Stops in Order to Save the Job and Liberty of the Bloodthirsty Cop Who Murdered Sugar.")

Flynn's profile of the Thurston County Cat Killer is accordingly of limited utility owing to his inability to transcend the ingrained prejudices of his class and profession. His tendency to look down his long, dirty schnoz at the poor and to suck up to the rich and powerful also prevents him from ever making any real intellectual progress.

While it is always remotely possible that both the authorities and citizens of Olympia could be on the right track, that does not seem likely. Instead of being crazy, the killer is highly intelligent and dedicated. Most importantly of all, he not only hates cats with a passion but wants to inflict as much pain and sorrow upon their owners as is humanly possible.

There are only three known groups of individuals who are that hate-filled, dedicated, and lawless and the first of which are gardeners. (See Cat Defender post of August 19, 2010 entitled "Music Lessons and Buggsey Are Murdered by a Cat-Hating Gardener and an Extermination Factory Posing as an Animal Shelter in Saginaw.")

The second aggregate is comprised of wildlife biologists but they usually coöpt both state and federal agencies into doing their dirty work for them. (See Cat Defender posts of June 23, 2011 and February 24, 2012 entitled, respectively, "Wallowing in Welfare Dollars, Lies, and Prejudice, the Bloodthirsty United States Fish and Wildlife Service Is Again Killing Cats in the Florida Keys" and "The United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the Humane Society Hoist a Glass in Celebration of Their Extermination of the Cats on San Nicolas Island.")

Last but certainly not least are ornithologists, both professionals and amateurs, who will stop at absolutely nothing in their quest to eliminate both cats and their owners from the face of the earth. It accordingly is a bird advocate that the authorities in Olympia should be looking for as opposed to a supposedly unhinged individual. (See Cat Defender posts of November 18, 2006, May 18, 2013, March 9, 2012, July 12, 2011, January 19, 2011, November 22, 2006, and April 27, 2006 entitled, respectively, "A Clever Devil at the University of Adelaide Boasts That He Has Discovered the Achilles' Heel of Cats with His Invention of Robotic Grooming Traps as the Thoroughly Evil Australians' All-Out War on the Species Enters Its Final Stages," "Ted Williams and the National Audubon Society Issue a Call for Cats to Be Poisoned with Tylenol® and Then Try to Lie Out of It," "An Amateur Ornithologist Guns Down Hartley with an Air Rifle, Feigns Remorse, and Then Cheats Justice by Begging and Lying," "The Arrest of Nico Dauphiné for Attempting to Poison a Colony of Homeless Cats Unmasks the National Zoo as a Hideout for Ailurophobes and Criminals," "A Bird Lover in München Illegally Traps Rocco and Then Methodically Tortures Him to Death with Water and Pepper Spray over an Eleven-Day Period," "An Evil Galveston Birder Is Finally Arrested After Having Gunned Down Hundreds of Cats," and "Cat-Hating Monster Les Underhill and the Moneygrubbing Robben Island Museum Resume Slaughtering Cats in South Africa.")

As far as it has been revealed, the only known concrete initiative undertaken so far by the Thurston County Sheriff's Office has been for it to show up whenever another dead cat has been found and to collect evidence. It reportedly also has done some door-to-door interviews and employed police dogs but the latter would appear to be of limited utility in that what are needed for this job are bloodhounds.

Quite obviously, such a half-hearted, lackadaisical effort is not about to produce results unless the officers should just happen to get extremely lucky. What they are dealing with is a monster every bit as clever and evil as Satan himself and they must for once in their worthless lives demonstrate some intelligence and dedication if they genuinely want to apprehend him.

To begin at the beginning, the killer knows Olympia and the surrounding areas like the back of his hand. The killing of Tarot in Port Angeles could have been orchestrated in order to throw off his pursuers or, possibly, even perpetrated by someone else.

Specifically, he knows exactly where to find the cats and, apparently, which houses are not equipped with surveillance cameras. "Lucky, I guess or he's intelligent enough to do his homework, his or her (sic)," Elkins theorized to KCPQ-TV in the September 5th article cited supra. "They (sic) are somewhat intelligent because they either know the victims or they are checking out the areas before they actually go out and steal the cats."

Since it would be rather difficult for anyone to go into a strange neighborhood at night and be able to locate a cat in which to steal, he obviously knows which residents own and leave their cats outside overnight. In order to possess that type of intimate knowledge, he likely is someone that residents interact with in some capacity on a regular basis. At the very least, he most definitely has walked by their houses and peered into their gardens.

More than likely, he has visited their yards and may even have come to their doors. It is even remotely conceivable that residents could have invited him inside for a cup of joe and a piece of cake.

Three possibilities readily come to mind. He could own a house in one of the neighborhoods as well as several rental properties that are scattered throughout the city.

Secondly, he could own and operate multiple businesses in the city. After all, seemingly every city in America has at least one glorified small business owner who operates a launderette, a bowling alley, an ice cream parlor, and possibly a sandwich shop of some sort. Being far too lazy to work and too cheap to hire any regular employees, these exploiters instead rely upon the labor of family members and students who work on a part-time basis and off the books.

Thirdly, the killer could be someone with everyday access to the victimized neighborhoods. The most logical suspect would be a letter carrier but anyone who delivers newspapers, pizzas and other goods, meter readers, garbagemen, taxi, bus and Uber drivers, and cops are also possibilities.

What the members of each of these three categories have in common is that they have unfettered access to the neighborhoods in which the cats have been stolen and killed and the circumstances of their situations allow them to come and go without attracting suspicion. In other words, they are able to do their reconnaissance work while they are going about their business.

In that light, Harley was easy pickings for him in that Harrigan and Lewis advertised that he lived outdoors by constructing him a cat house on their lawn. If on the other hand, a crazy man had been forced into hanging around these neighborhoods all day in order to ascertain which residents owned cats his activities sooner or later would have attracted suspicion.

A Map of the Locations Where Some of the Victims Were Killed

The most perplexing aspect of this case concerns how that the killer is able to get his hands on the cats. "He wouldn't have allowed anyone to do that (touch him), so I don't know how they (sic) got ahold (sic) of him," Harrigan told The Olympian on August 6th in regard to the abduction of Harley. (See "West Olympia Couple Mourns Mutilated Cat: 'We Didn't Think about It Happening to Us'.")

The only known way to get hold of a strange cat is to trap it and yet it is odd that throughout this crime spree which has lasted more than a year no one has reported seeing an individual walking through the killing fields carrying a bulky trap. The only other possibility that readily presents itself is that the killer could be shooting his victims with a tranquilizer gun but necropsies would be able to detect the presence of such drugs in their systems. Besides, both Harley and Olly were alert enough to have fought for their lives.

Since no blood, fur, or body parts have been found at the victims' homes, the killer quite obviously has been removing them to another undisclosed location where he kills and dissects them. That tends to suggest that he not only has some sort of a vehicle but additionally either a house or a garage fairly close by where he does his dirty work.

The cats and their severed body parts are then deposited in areas as close by their homes as the killer dares to come so that they can be found by their owners. That too implies that he has a vehicle and uses either a cage or a bag in which to transport the corpses and the organs that he has removed from them.

As far as it is known, all of the abductions have occurred very late at night with the victims being dumped several hours before dawn. There are not all that many individuals out at that time of the night, but it is a s sure bet that someone in Olympia has seen the killer making his rounds but just did not take any notice of him.

That is especially the case considering that he committed the bulk of his atrocities during July and August when the nights were short, the weather was warm, students were home from school, and individuals tend to stay out later. It is awfully late in the game but the authorities nonetheless ought to take a long, hard look at all individuals and businesses that come and go during the overnight hours.

It additionally is extremely odd that no one has reported overhearing any of the cats fighting for their lives. Equally puzzling, with the exception of Brinlee no one has reported hearing a dog barking and they are capable of detecting the presence of prowlers not only outside their residences buy next-door and even across the street.

In addition to the totally unforgivable mistake of the Thurston County Sheriff's Office not to have entered the investigation until the game was all but over, the Olympia Police Department badly bungled the investigations into the murders of Olly and Harley. Specifically, they should have canvassed door-to-door in search of anyone who had sustained scratches to either his face or arms.

Given that it was early August, anyone wearing so much as either a longsleeved shirt or a jacket would have fallen under immediate suspicion. DNA then could have been taken from any suspects that materialized and matched up to that which was taken from underneath Olly's and Harley's claws.

Secondly, all of the law enforcement agencies involved should have been working closely with garbage collectors throughout the city in an effort to track down bloody clothing, latex gloves, cages, and body parts that the killer most assuredly had to dispose of somewhere, most likely in the trash. Once such a discovery had been made, bloodhounds possibly could have tracked the scent to the killer's door.

The police forces in Olympia, Lacey, and Tumwater never really got into the game and less than a months after it had entered the fray the Sheriff's Office announced that it had not been able to come up with so much as a solitary suspect. "One lead looks really good and then it doesn't pan out," Sergeant Carla Carter told The Bellingham Herald on September 20th. (See "Thurston County Cat Mutilations Have Stopped, but Cat Owners Are Still on Edge: 'It's Pretty Eerie'.") "We just keep pushing forward."

On the contrary, it certainly looks like she and her department have long since thrown in the towel. That in turn proves vividly demonstrates that all the promises that were made by Snaza and Elkins to KCPQ-TV on September 5th were nothing more than but outrageous lies.

As far as Johnson of TCJAS is concerned, all that the public has received from her are ridiculous excuses for doing absolutely nothing. "It's just very frustrating because it's not happening in one place, and so to be able to catch this person is very hard," she bellyached to KOMO-TV on August 22nd. (See "Thurston County Cat Killer Mutilates Ninth Cat, Believed to Be Connected to Other Killings.")

She sounds like she expects the killer to stand outside the shelter that she operates, announce over a loudspeaker that he is going to kill a cat, to commit the foul deed, and then to dance a merry little jig in the street. Even then with her attitude she probably would look the other way and turn a deaf ear to the cat's anguished cries for help.

Even aggrieved owners and their supporters seem to have morphed into a quandary. "It's almost worse, because this person doesn't strike again, will he or she ever be caught?" Abby Blackwell, the driving force behind the Facebook page "Stop the Thurston County Cat Killer," mused to The Bellingham Herald. "But then, you don't want them (sic) to strike again."

Another Facebook page entitled "Thurston County Cat Killer Justice" has elicited only six posts over the course of the last month even though it has almost twelve-hundred followers. It thus seems fair to conclude that the killer is not losing too much sleep these days; rather, he likely is sipping his champagne and savoring each and every drop.

Grief-Stricken Stan Lewis and Kathy Harrigan with Angi and Patrick Swan

Even though no one in Olympia seems to give so much as a rat's ass about catching him, there are nonetheless a few things that could still be done even at this late date. First of all, the authorities should endeavor to identify every ornithologist, both amateurs and professionals, residing in and around Olympia.

In some cases, that task could be accomplished by simply peeping into gardens for the presence of bird feeders. In other cases, the authorities would need to gain access to the membership rolls of all Audubon societies in the area as well as that of all local members of the American Bird Conservancy (ABC) in The Plains, Virginia.

Every ornithologist identified then should be thoroughly investigated and then placed under surveillance. This is common law enforcement protocol with suspected terrorists and the same measures should be employed against this group of known and proven cat killers.

Undercover agents should be dispersed throughout Olympia both day and night and they should be closely shadowed by officers and bloodhounds in unmarked cars. Imitation and mechanical cats also could be deployed on front lawns as bait.

The killer must be tricked into making a mistake, otherwise he is going to continue killing cats. It may be too cold right now for him to stay out at all hours of the night and, with owners wisely locking up their cats indoors, the pickings may not be sufficient in order to entice him to strike again anytime soon.

He will be back sooner or later regardless of whether the law enforcement community and the citizens of Olympia ever get around to being serious about capturing him. Furthermore, it is a sure bet that he is still studiously doing his reconnaissance work.

Even if doing so is tantamount to handing the ABC and its "Cats Indoors" agenda its long sought after victory on a silver platter, owners do not have any choice but to either lock up their cats or not to allow them out of their sight even in their gardens. Even under those dire and scary circumstances, motion detectors that when tripped activate floodlights, alarms, and cleverly disguised surveillance cameras are mandatory.

Above all, well-oiled and fully-loaded revolvers and a willingness to use them are essential. Any owners who discover a prowler on the grounds of their properties during the middle of the night should not hesitate to shoot the son of a bitch! Violence, after all, is the only language that ornithologists and other cat-killers comprehend.

Surveillance cameras in particular have been shown to be somewhat effective in that they have led to the arrest of the woman who caused Regi's death as well as to have unmasked Elfie's abuser. (See Cat Defender posts of July 18, 2015 and February 22, 2017 entitled, respectively, "A Blackpudlian Thrill Seeker Who Sicced Her Pit Bull on Regi and Then Laughed Off Her Fat Ass as He Tore Him Apart Receives a Customary Clean Bill of Health from the Courts" and "The Months of Unrelenting Abuse Meted Out to Elfie by a Roommate Graphically Demonstrate the Advantages as Well as the Limitations of Using Surveillance Cameras in Order to Protect Cats.")

They also led to the arrest of sixty-eight-year-old Larry Negard of 6008 Tracy Lane in Bossier City, Louisiana, for killing one of his neighbor's cats. If they had been installed sooner, they could have prevented him from killing nine additional cats that belonged to his aggrieved neighbor.(See the Bossier Press-Tribune, March 4, 2016, "Bossier Man Jailed for Killing Neighbor's Cat.")

In other cases, such as the kidnapping of Mr. Cheeky and the beating doled out to Mr. Solly, no arrests ever were made although the criminals acts were captured on tape. (See Cat Defender post of February 8, 2017 entitled "The Long and Hopelessly Frustrating Search for the Kidnapped Mr. Cheeky Ends Tragically Underneath the Wheels of a Hit-and-Run Motorist" and The Sun of London, August 25, 2017, "Moggy Muggers: Cops Hunt Two Thugs Caught on CCTV Kicking a Sixteen-Year-Old Cat in the Head, Leaving It for Dead.")

Finally, in the United States there is an awful lot of palaver these days about hate speech that is directed at various groups but yet absolutely no one is willing to call out ornithologists, wildlife biologists, the eggheads who rule the roosts in the degree mills, PETA, and the capitalist media for demonizing cats and declaring that they do not any right whatsoever to exist. As most everyone understands, causality is a difficult thing to establish under most circumstances but as Bob Dylan wrote in the lyrics to his 1965 composition, "Subterranean Homesick Blues, "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows" and in that light there surely is some kind of a relationship between the hate speech directed at cats and the despicable crimes being perpetrated against them in Olympia and elsewhere.

In addition to the Orlando Sentinel's wholehearted endorsement back in 2013 of the National Audubon Society's clarion call that cats be poisoned out of existence with acetaminophen, some of the worst offenders in that regard have been the Houston Chronicle, the Ventura County Star, and The Pressof Atlantic City. (See Cat Defender posts of May 1, 2007, July 10, 2008, July 5, 2007, and August 24, 2017 entitled, respectively, "The Houston Chronicle Launches a Propaganda Offensive on Behalf of Serial Cat Killer Jim Stevenson," "The Ventura County Star Races to the Defense of the Cat-Killers on San Nicolas Island," "Bird and Wildlife Proponents, Ably Assisted by The Press of Atlantic City, Launch a Vicious Libel Campaign Against Feral Cats," and "The Brutal Murders of a Trio of Atlantic City's Boardwalk Cats Provide an Occasion for the Local Rag and PETA to Whoop It Up and to Break Open the Champagne.")

The defamation offensives of those sleazy rags pale in comparison with the libelous, hate-filled, hatchet jobs directed at the species by the phony-baloney, cat-hating hypocrites at The New York Times. With the Sulzberger Gang, spreading malicious lies and hatred against cats has taken on a fervor that is akin to a holy war. (See Cat Defender posts of December 8, 2007, June 15, 2009, and July 9, 2018 entitled, respectively, "All the Lies that Fit: the Scheming New York Times Hires a Bird Lover to Render His 'Unbiased' Support for James M. Stevenson," "The American Bird Conservancy, The New York Times, and the Humane Society Unite to Form an Achse des Bösen Against Cats," and "The Slimy, Underhanded, and Utterly Despicable New York Times Fabricates Another One-Sided, Scurrilous Screed Against Cats and This Time Around the Target of Its Libels Is a TNR Colony at the Googleplex in Mountain View.")

The Times' German counterpart is Deutsche Welle of Köln which is intent upon starving them out of existence. (See Deutsche Welle articles dated August 8, 2017 and October 5, 2018 and entitled, respectively, "Your Cat Is Killing the Earth -- but You Can Prevent It" and "Insect Pet Food to Offset Carbon Pawprint.")

Whether enemies of the species like it or not, cats have just as much of a right to live, to feel secure in their owners' gardens, and to walk the streets in safety as any other creature, man included. If owners and other fans of the species are unwilling to stand up, be counted, and to fight for those rights they are eventually going to disappear and with them cats as well.

Safeguarding their lives entails nothing less than not allowing anyone in Olympia or anywhere else for that matter to get away scot-free with stealing, killing, and mutilating them. An essential component of that herculean task is to hold the feet of the members of the law enforcement community to the fire until either their toes burn off or they finally get off the schneid and belatedly bring the Thurston County Cat Killer to justice.

Photos: Patrick Swan (Callie), Debbie Drake (Tarot), Rhiannon Stockert (Olly), Kathy Harrigan (Harley), Paul Richard Braget (Purrfect), Crystal Worden (Mystic), KOMO-TV (map of the killings), and Ellen M. Banner of The Seattle Times (some of the bereaved owners).