John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy Were in This “Club.” But Not All Serial Killers Are.

In his book Defending the Devil, Ted Bundy’s criminal defense attorney said his client’s murderous ways began as a child in Tacoma, Washington. He started with animals. The future serial killer would buy mice at a local pet shop, build a little corral in the woods, and “play God” to decide which of them he’d kill and which he’d let go. He later used the same approach with women.

Boston Strangler Albert DeSalvo reportedly trapped dogs and cats in wooden crates and shot them with a bow and arrow. Chicago serial murderer John Wayne Gacy allegedly lit live turkeys on fire after dousing them with a gasoline-filled balloon. Other members of the animal-torturing-before-serial-killing “club” include Carrol Edward Cole (who strangled puppies and people), Robert Bordella (the “Butcher of Kansas”) and John Norman Collins, who strangled cats before he started throttling women.

This link has been used for decades to argue that budding serial killers often begin their criminal careers as children, first by targeting animals and later “graduating” to humans. Further support for the link between animal and human cruelty are the myriad examples of adult serial killers who tortured and killed humans in similar ways similar to how they had hurt animals as children.

But here’s where it gets complicated. Not all serial killers abuse animals first; depending on the study, estimates range from twenty-one to seventy-three percent. And, as you’re about to see, there are plenty of people who hurt animals who don’t morph into a real-life Freddy Kreuger.

Other People Do It, Too

We don’t know how many “normal” U.S. citizens have engaged in animal cruelty; in a survey of adults in 43,000 households, slightly less than 2 percent acknowledged engaging in deliberate cruelty toward an animal at least once. However, that rate depends on how we define animal cruelty; more than 30 percent of college males admit to hurting an animal at some point in time.

Fortunately, we’re about to get a more realistic picture of animal abuse. In January 2016, for the first time, the FBI added animal cruelty to their Uniform Crime Report (UCR). Prior to this, it was filed under an “all other offenses” category, which was essentially worthless in terms of data collection. Not only will overall prevalence rates be collected, it will also be subdivided into four categories — simple…