On Oct. 1, 1997, Luke Woodham, a sophomore at Pearl High School, in a suburb of Jackson, MI, stabbed his mother to death and then opened fire on classmates with a hunting rifle, killing two girls and wounding seven other students. Investigators later found Woodham’s account of his torture and killing of his pet dog Sparkle, which the boy described as his “first kill.” On May 21, 1998, fifteen year old Kip Kinkel shot his parents to death before emptying three guns at his classmates in Thurston High School, Springfield, OR, leaving one dead and 26 injured. Kip had often bragged to others at school about how he tortured animals. Jeffrey Dahmer, Albert DeSalvo (the “Boston strangler”), David Berkowitz (the “Son of Sam”) and Carroll Edward Cole, a serial killer accused of 35 deaths, all recounted animal torture as their first violent act. When counselors at several federal penitentiaries evaluated inmates for levels of aggression, 70% of the most violent prisoners had serious and repeated animal abuse in their childhood histories, as compared to 6% of nonaggressive prisoners in the same facilities.
