Teen strangled, slit 9-year-old's throat 1
Dad sets dog on fire for jumping on couch 2
Dad executes son accused of molesting 3
By Pete Kotz in Animal Cruelty, Creeps
Friday, Nov. 20 2009 @ 7:00AM
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Worried that the puppy would jump on his newborn, Lashawn Whitehead severely beat the dog, then set it on fire
Twenty-year-old Lashawn Demaro Whitehead had a baby boy in July. This is not a good thing, since Whitehead should not be a father.

That much is clear by what happened in August. Whitehead was at home when his 3-month-old puppy jumped on the couch where the baby was resting. As his mom Sally Laws tells it, her son promptly lost it. He severely the beat the dog, then set it on fire before leaving it to die in a Greensboro, North Carolina park.

The dog was found by a passerby about two weeks later. It had burns over 60 percent of its body, and its ears were nearly burned off. It also had a broken jaw and teeth...

Thursday, Nov. 19 2009 @ 7:09AM


Undercover Investigation Reveals Kitten Deaths and Other Animal Suffering. Learn More.

Regardless of what you think about using animals for scientific animals for scientific research, this undercover PETA video shot at a University of Utah lab shows the kind of stuff Josef Mengele enjoyed. Chemicals and electrodes are injected into animals' heads, holes are drilled in their skulls, and sick ones are left to die.

Tags: Utah
By Pete Kotz in Animal Cruelty, Creeps, unsolved
Wednesday, Nov. 18 2009 @ 9:03AM
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The brutal video shows pigs being spiked, slammed and left to die
Reader "Meat Eater" responds to Undercover Video Makes Country View Family Farms Look Like Auschwitz. She says Mercy for Animals should have done something to stop this:

"Omg why does everything need to get taken out of praportion!? We are a society that generally treats all animals the best they can yes I see that there are some people that did wrong; but just because there are some bad people out there that seems to always outway the good ones...

By Pete Kotz in Animal Cruelty, celebrity crime
Wednesday, Nov. 18 2009 @ 7:08AM
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Dale Bozzio was a sex symbol in her day...
Dale Bozzio, frontwoman for the '80s new wave band Missing Persons, has been convicted of animal cruelty for leaving more than a dozen cats without food or water at her rural New Hampshire cabin.

Cops say two cats died and others starved while they were left to fend for themselves with their litter boxes overflowing. Another 12 cats had to be euthanized. Bozzio blamed it on a caretaker who hadn't tended to the animals while she was gone for a week, but a judge ruled that the conditions were in place for quite some time.

Bozzio's lawyer, Dennis O'Connor, tried to blame the incident on the difficult life of a has-been rocker. "An artist like Dale lives in a different world," he told the Boston Phoenix. "The little details of life that some of us, myself included, try to take care of, those end up on the back burner for artists like Dale..."

By Pete Kotz in Animal Cruelty, fraud
Tuesday, Nov. 17 2009 @ 7:01AM
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Game wardens say elk and deer were left to die and rot on the Turner farm
To real hunters, it's all about matching wits with nature, stocking the freezer with meat for the winter, and preserving the continuity of the natural world. But to game farm hunters, it's all about trapping an animal in a caged  area, mounting impressive antlers in their den, then pretending to be a real man.

So you might expect hunting farm owners to be a bit shady as well. That seems to be the case with Jannet J. Turner and her son Scott Turner, who operate Michigan Trophy Hunts. Last year, people passing by noticed wild boars feeding on dead animals at the Chapin Township preserve...

Tags: Michigan
Monday, Nov. 16 2009 @ 4:17PM

This undercover video was shot by Mercy for Animals at Country View Family Farms in Fannettsburg, Pennsylvania. It's not for the squeamish. It shows pigs being chucked like footballs, smashed against walls, hit with sharp metal spikes, and killed in portable gassing carts. It's as if the owners, who supply Hatfield Quality Meats, decided to recreate Auschwitz at a pig farm in Pennsylvania. But it's entirely legal.

By Pete Kotz in Animal Cruelty, bizarre
Wednesday, Nov. 11 2009 @ 4:22PM
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Sharon McDonough is believed to have tortured and killed her neighbors' pets
UPDATE: Son says mom would buy dogs, then turn on them and kill them. See update after the jump...

For years Sharon McDonough's neighbors in Selden, Long Island found their pets mysteriously vanishing. Now they know why. McDonough's been arrested for running what her own son describes as an "animal concentration camp."

Police received an animal cruelty tip from her son, Douglas McDonough. When they arrived Saturday, they found five dogs crammed into small cages. They knew something weird was going on at the home...

Tags: New York
By Pete Kotz in Animal Cruelty
Wednesday, Nov. 11 2009 @ 7:10AM
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The serial egg thief of West Palm Beach
In the north, the preferred method of scraping by in a wretched economy is to bust into abandoned homes and steal the copper piping to sell as scrap. But in the tropical paradise that is South Florida, there's a less strenuous way to earn: stealing endangered sea turtle eggs.

In May, 52-year-old Bruce Bivins was caught in West Palm Beach with a bag of 119 eggs. As police approached, he chucked the sack and started running. But his wheels proved insufficient, and he was nabbed by the cops.

The eggs can fetch as much as $35 a dozen on the Florida black market because some people believe they're an aphrodisiac. But swiping them is a felony, punishable by five years. And since Bivins was caught for the same crime in 1997, we're guessing momma sea turtles will get a break from Bivins for the next few years.


Tags: Florida
Monday, Nov. 9 2009 @ 12:04PM

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Police say Able left the cat's remains on the hood of a fellow student's car

Apparently Bryan Able, a law enforcement student at Hocking College, couldn't find any worms in the entire state of Ohio. So he decided instead to pick the next best thing -- or at least nearest thing.

According to police, he walked up on someone's porch and grabbed their cat. But the cat wouldn't stop meowing, probably because it knew it was in the company of a weirdo. So Able stomped on its head, disemboweled it, took its liver and went fishing. When he was done, detectives say he went back to school and left the cat's remains on the hood of someone's car...

Tags: Ohio
By Pete Kotz in Animal Cruelty, unsolved
Monday, Nov. 9 2009 @ 7:05AM
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Professor John Wrazen seems to have left 50 animals to die over the summer without food or water
A staffer at Johnson State College was walking past the lab and noticed a wickedly bad small. That's because there were 50 animals inside, dying and rotting from a lack of food and water.

The animals were used for lectures, not research. But it appears the reptiles and amphibians hadn't been fed since the spring semester before the August discovery. Most of those still clinging to life had to be euthanized...

Tags: Vermont