"Profiler" Ally Walker Spotlights Animal Abuse
In July 1998, Russell Eugen Weston walked into the U.S.
Capitol, pulled
out a gun and started shooting. When he was done, two police officers
were dead and a bystander was wounded. Hours earlier, Weston had been
involved in another shooting. That time his targets were cats, more than
a
dozen strays cared for by his father.
Ally Walker, star of U.S. TV's The Profiler, knows these
two events were not
unrelated and that Russell Eugene Weston is not a lone statistic. In a
new public
service announcement for PETA, she hopes to spread the word that
violence
toward animals is linked to violence toward humans.
"Some offenders kill animals
as a rehearsal for targeting
human victims..."
-- FBI special agent Alan C. Brantley
"According to the FBI, 80 percent of violent criminals
start off abusing animals,"
says Ally in the PSA. Among that 80 percent are Albert De Salvo, the
"Boston
Strangler" who killed 13 woman in 1962-63 and reported that, in his
youth, he
trapped dogs and cats in crates and then shot arrows through the crates.
Carroll Edward Cole, executed in 1985 for five of the 35 murders of
which he
was accused, said his first act of violence was the strangulation of a
puppy.
Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer confessed to the childhood killings of
neighbor's
dogs and cats. Richard Allen Davis, the man charged with abducting a
California girl from her bedroom and murdering her, reportedly set cats
on fire
and used dogs as targets to practice knife-throwing. More recently, a
rash of
deadly school shootings had one thing in common: They were preceded by
acts
of violence towards animals.
"These are kids who never
learned it's wrong to poke out
a puppy's eyes."
-- Robert Ressler, founder of the
FBI's behavioral sciences unit,
on where serial killers come from
Alert animal control officers are aware of this trend.
In San Francisco, officers
are trained to recognize child abuse because of the parallel between
animal
abuse and child abuse. According to the San Francisco Child Abuse
Council,
people are often quicker to report animal abuse because it is more
visible and
because people "do not wonder what the animal has done to provoke [it]."
"Animal abuse is a serious crime with serious
consequences for all of us," says
Ally Walker.
Most Serial Killers Have a Known History of Killing
Animals
~ JEFFREY DAHMER killed and strangled neighborhood dogs
and cats
~ TED BUNDY tortured animals as a teenager
~ CARROLL EDWARD COLE strangled a puppy
~ DAVID BERKOWITZ "Son of Sam" shot a neighbor's dog
School Shootings Linked by Animal Cruelty
May 1998/ Springfield, Ore.: Kip Kinkel killed his
parents and two classmates
and injured 22 others. He had a history of animal abuse and torture,
having
boasted about blowing up a cow and killing cats, squirrels and others by
putting firecrackers in their mouths.
March 1998/ Jonesboro, Ark.: Mitchell Johnson and Andrew
Golden shot
and killed four students and a teacher. A friend says Andrew "shoots
dogs all
the time with a .22."
December 1997/West Paducah, Ky.: Michael Carneal shot
and killed three
classmates at a prayer meeting. Marneal had talked about throwing a cat
into
a bonfire.
October 1997/Pearl, Miss.: Luke Woodham stabbed his
mother to death,
then shot and killed two classmates and injured seven others. In his
diary,
Woodham wrote that he and a friend beat, burned and tortured his dog,
Sparkle, to death.
PEOPLE WHO ARE
VIOLENT
TO ANIMALS
RARELY STOP THERE
Go on to Quote from
Milan Kundera
Return to 27 January 1999 Issue
Return to Newsletters
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