BLEATS
Brisbane Lawyers Educating and Advocating for Tougher Sentences

Research

Anthropologist Margaret Mead was one of the first to suggest that childhood cruelty toward animals may be predictive of future violent criminal offending.  In 1964, she stated that “one of the most dangerous things that can happen to a child is to kill or torture an animal and get away with it…[as] such children, diagnosed early, could be helped instead of being allowed to embark on a long career of episodic violence and murder”. 

Since the 1960’s, significant criminological research has focused on the link between childhood cruelty toward animals and later violent criminal offending, and there now exists a convincing body of empirical evidence confirming the existence of the ‘Cruelty Connection’. 

• A study was conducted in 1977 which found that 36% of ‘assaultive’ women offenders, compared with 0% of ‘nonassaultive’ women offenders, committed acts of animal cruelty during childhood
• A study was conducted in 1985 which found that aggressive criminals reported higher rates of ‘substantial cruelty to animals’ in childhood than non-aggressive criminals and non-criminals
• In 1986 researchers examined the histories of 21 convicted rapists and 43 convicted paedophiles and found that 48% of the former, and 30% of the latter were cruel to animals when they were children
• In 1999, 177 men incarcerated in a South African prison were surveyed, and researchers discovered that 63% of the aggressive inmates (compared with just 10% of the non-aggressive inmates) committed acts of animal cruelty during childhood
• A study was conducted in 2001 which found that violent offenders were significantly more likely than non-violent offenders to have committed acts of animal cruelty when they were children
• A study was conducted in 2003 which found that 75 of the 354 murderers who partook were cruel to animals when they were children.  This led researchers to conclude that “abusing and torturing animals as a child was a precursory activity for future violence against humans”

In addition to the studies outlined above, there are also a number of ‘notorious examples’ which provide clear evidence of the link between animal cruelty and later violent criminal offending.

• Edmund Emil Kemper III: As a child, Kemper decapitated one of his mother’s cats and hacked the other to pieces with a machete.  At the age of 15 he murdered his grandparents and mutilated their bodies, and by 24 he had killed and dissected nine women, and crushed his mother’s skull with a mallet
• Jeffery Lionel Dahmer: Dahmer began collecting road kill and other dead animals to dissect at age 10.  He soon graduated to catching and killing his own animals, which he would skin before soaking their bones in acid and mounting their heads on stakes behind his house.  He was later charged with, and convicted on, 16 counts of first-degree murder.
• Henry Lee Lucas: Lucas began torturing and killing animals at age 13.  At age 15 he embarked on a murderous rampage which spanned 3 decades, and which resulted in the stabbing and mutilation of up to 70 women
• Arthur Shawcross: As a child, Shawcross sexually violated, tortured and killed animals.  He was later arrested and charged with the murders of 11 people, and sentenced to 250 years in prison
• Patrick Sherrill: As a child, Sherrill stole pets from people in his neighbourhood, and would allow his dog to attack and mutilate them.  He later shot 14 of his co-workers before turning the gun on himself
• Earl Kenneth Shriner: As a child, Shriner was known to put firecrackers in dogs’ rectums.  He later raped, stabbed and mutilated a 7-year old boy
• David Berkowitz (‘Son of Sam’): As a child, Berkowitz murdered a number of animals in his neighbourhood.  He later killed 6 people and wounded several others
• Brenda Spencer: Prior to gunning down 11 students at a San Diego school, Spencer had a history of setting cats’ and dogs’ tails on fire
• Three Missouri high school students, who were charged with the murder of a classmate, had long histories of mutilating animals, and one confessed to having killed so many cats he’d lost count