79pounds's Journal

Police evidently eyed Weinman as a suspect early on; they obtained a warrant to put a GPS device on his car near the beginning of the investigation. Investigators noted that murdered cats turned up near both of his parents' homes. And on May 15—shortly after the first cats turned up dead—an officer stopped him for a traffic violation and questioned him about the killings, according to the state attorney's office. During that stop, the officer also spotted a clear container of marijuana on the passenger seat and arrested him on drug-possession charges. That case is still pending, according to authorities. Many investigative details remain sketchy since the arrest warrant for the cat killings was sealed and won't be released until July 6. But police apparently felt confident enough about their evidence to nab Weinman on June 13 and charge him with 19 counts of animal cruelty, 19 counts of improper disposal of an animal body, and four counts of burglary. While they continue to probe whether he had accomplices, Weinman was released on bond and placed under house arrest. He hasn't entered a plea yet, but his father told reporters that Weinman was innocent (his lawyer didn't respond to calls for comment, and his parents couldn't be reached by NEWSWEEK). The father, Douglas Weinman, told the Herald: ''We are cat owners ourselves. We certainly sympathize with the grief of the other pet owners. We are sympathetic with them, but it is not our son.'' Under orders of the judge hearing his case, Weinman is receiving psychiatric counseling twice a week.

What most struck authorities was the brutality of the slayings. One woman who lost four of her cats in rapid succession described the grisly condition she found them in. The first "looked like he'd been stabbed up and down with an ice pick," she said, declining to be named out of fear that she'd be targeted again. The second suffered a broken neck and looked like it had been wringed like a dishcloth, leaving its front and hind legs pointing in opposite directions. The third was missing a quarter of its face, including an eyeball and its tongue. And the fourth had been skinned from the waist down.

These details disturb specialists who study violent behavior. "It is very rare to see something that severe," says Joel Andrade, a licensed independent clinical social worker and editor of the Handbook of Violence Risk Assessment. Andrade has not examined Weinman and can't comment directly on his case. But in general, he says, "in adolescents, you do see some cruelty to animals"—since the brain hasn't fully developed its ability to control impulses—"but nothing so severe." Dr. Roland Maiuro, a clinical psychologist and editor of the journal Violence and Victims, notes that the killer targeted cats, which are notoriously reticent animals. That suggests that the perpetrator must have been tremendously calculating and cunning in hunting his prey, says Maiuro, who also hasn't interviewed Weinman and isn't in a position to comment on the charges against him.

Andrade and Maiuro point out that cruelty toward animals as a child is sometimes—though certainly not always—a precursor of worse things to come. Such kids "are much more likely to graduate to adult crimes, and those crimes are more likely to involve physical and sexual violence," says Maiuro. The serial killer

Jeffrey Dahmer, for instance, dismembered animals and sometimes placed their heads on sticks when he was young. The mass murderer Kip Kinkel used to blow up squirrels and cats with firecrackers. And the Columbine killers, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, told classmates that they smashed mice's heads and set them on fire.