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Sorry, couldn't fit the address to provide a link. You can find it at the Toronto Star site.
Here's the full text of the piece.
"Two men who skinned a cat alive, then kept torturing the feline on a 10-minute videotape that left animal-care workers in tears, pleaded guilty to their crime in a downtown Toronto courtroom yesterday.
Jessie Champlain Powers, 23, and Anthony Ryan Wennekers, 26, face up to 2 1/2 years in jail after pleading guilty to one count each of cruelty to animals and mischief.
Police are still hunting for a third man who took part in the mutilation at a home in the Bathurst and Queen Sts. area in May, 2001.
The video, yet to be played in court, is expected to be shown in an Ontario Court of Justice courtroom at old city hall when the pair are sentenced on Jan. 29.
The motive for the crime remains a mystery. Detective Constable John Margetson said Powers first suggested it was done for art, and later said in court it was done to make a statement against meat eaters.
"I suspect the truth is that these gentlemen have issues in their mind that only they know," Margetson said outside court.
Acting on a tip, Margetson and his 14 Division partner, Detective Gord Scott, went to the home with Toronto Humane Society worker John Dobranski.
Dobranski found the body of the decapitated cat draped over a coat hanger in a fridge. Strewn about the room were other animal bones along with some mice in a cage.
Investigators found the incriminating video in a batch of about 40 VHS tapes that were seized as evidence.
Dobranski said in a later interview that he was stunned when he first watched the tape, saying: "It took me a while to adjust to what I was seeing."
Other workers at the humane society broke down in tears when they saw the video's contents, said Daniela Roque, a humane society worker.
The video began innocently enough, said Dobranski, with Powers, Wennekers, and the third man trying to entice the cat into catching and eating a mouse. The camera was on a tripod.
But when the cat won't kill the mouse, an unknown voice can be heard saying: "Let's get down to it."
Investigators knew the cat was still alive through about 10 minutes of torture because it kept meowing.
The helpless creature appeared to be struggling for its life, moving its front paws "like it was kind of trying to defend itself," said the officer.
Margetson, who said he could only watch the tape once, said he found himself hoping the cat would die quickly so it wouldn't have to go through any more pain.
"But the cat was still alive, making that noise, like a gurgling sound deep in its throat," he said.
Roque said she hopes this incident will help persuade federal legislators that the punishment for killing or harming animals should be increased to five years in jail from the present six months.
That proposed amendment to the Criminal Code is in its third reading, she said.
"The current penalty was set 100 years ago. We think differently now about animals than we did then," she said."
[ 17-01-2002: Message edited by: moriarty ] |
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