Croydon Cat Killer: Police Conclude It Was Just Foxes All Along

20 September 2018, 12:02 | Updated: 20 September 2018, 12:52

A three-year police investigation into the mutilations of cats in south London has concluded the prime suspects are foxes.

Reports of hundreds of attacks on cats had led to reports of "The Croydon Cat Killer" being on the loose.

The Met Police started their investigation into the attacker in November 2015 and today announced they had closed the case... because there is no evidence of human involvement at all.

25 post-mortem examinations were carried out on mutilated cats, conducted by a veterinary pathologist. The cause of death was found to be blunt force trauma, such as collisions with vehicles. The mutilations were found to have occurred after death, and some of these were thought to have been caused by a sharp implement.

Six of these were deemed suspicious and the Met Police started investigating.

After three years, they found no evidence of human involvement in any of the reported cases. There were no witnesses, no identifiable patterns and no forensic leads that pointed to human involvement.

They found three CCTV video clips showing foxes carrying bodies or body-parts of cats.

Frontline Policing Commander Amanda Pearson said: "The decision was made to allocate a large number of similar reports of mutilated cats to the officers who were investigating the initial spate of such allegations. In particular, they were following up the six suspicious cases identified by the post-mortem examinations.

"While this increased the workload of those officers, it significantly reduced the resources that would have been required for different officers in different units to record and assess each allegation separately.

"It is this collating of reports that enabled officers to work with experts and reach the conclusion that no further police investigations are required into any of the allegations relating to mutilated cats."