Posted on 02/17/2012 4:43:04 PM PST by GSWarrior
FRESNO, Calif. — It was the sound of a wailing cat that first caught the neighbor’s attention. When she looked toward the sound she told authorities that she saw her next-door neighbor cutting off the crying feline’s head with a knife.
The call she subsequently made to deputies started a bizarre animal cruelty investigation that has focused attention from around the country on a working-class neighborhood in a Bakersfield suburb where a man allegedly was fileting cats and cooking them on his backyard barbecue.
“I’ve been getting calls on this from around the country,” Kern County Sheriff’s spokesman Ray Pruitt said. “For some reason when somebody hurts animals people are more outraged than they are for a lot of other cases.”
Investigators decided to release new details on Thursday because of the nationwide interest in the case.
Jason Wilmert, 35, will be arraigned today on charges alleging animal cruelty and using a pet or domesticated animal for food. Both are misdemeanors.
A neighbor told KBAK-TV that she had seen Wilmert with a wailing tabby cat cutting it down the back with a knife, then decapitating it. She turned away in disgust and called sheriff’s deputies.
Pruitt said that when deputies arrived that morning at Wilmert’s home they talked to other neighbors, who said they had heard the sounds of screaming cats coming from the house in Oildale. When he didn’t answer his door, Pruitt said a deputy walked down the driveway and saw a cat’s head in the backyard.
Later Pruitt came outside and deputies arrested him. When they searched his house they found a cat carcass in the kitchen sink, as if were being prepped for cooking. Deputies also found an animal trap in the driveway.
“We don’t know if he was using the trap to catch cats, but he had one,” Pruitt said.
Nobody has called in reporting missing pets, and investigators suspect the victims were strays.
Wilmert has been unable to post $22,500 bail on the animal cruelty charges and unrelated littering offenses. It was unclear if he had an attorney.
If it doesn’t dawn on you that it’s animal cruelty when a deputy finds a cut off cat head in the guy’s backyard only to find another skinned alive cat in the sink that the neighbor heards screaming not too long before and claims she saw that cat’s head then being cut off before she couldn’t look anymore,
then I reiterate, you are a lost cause.
And you can get lost yourself. Smartass.
Were the cats branded? LOL
Really? The link between animal abuse and serial killers is very real. Studies have showcased that the vast majority of convicted serial murders have had a history of animal abuse.
No but you should be branded as an Idiot.
Does it say he was breaking into homes and stealing cats???? No, and since responsible pet owners keep their pets at home, you have nothing to complain about.
If you can't understand that, "I feel for you."
I do think it curious that your tagline, while no doubt meant in jest, refers to the casual killing of a fellow human, while mine, which I've had for years, is definitively pro-pet, but you somehow have me figured for an animal abuser apologist.
You disgusting $0B—I’d like to get six thousand cats to attack and eat you
Wrong and the FBI did a study proving it, it is just made up bull from the communist at the national humane association. And if you go back for enough it is a safe bet that you are only here and alive today because you ancestors ate whatever they caught or killed to stay alive.
Wrong and the FBI did a study proving it, it is just made up bull from the communist at the national humane association. And if you go back for enough it is a safe bet that you are only here and alive today because you ancestors ate whatever they caught or killed to stay alive.
Supposedly, there are extensive underground chambers remaining from an abandoned mine under the streets of, IIRC, Paris. In one of the side chambers a group of explorers found a pile of small animal skulls which were later determined to be cat skulls.
Immediately over this pile of cat skulls they noticed an opening to daylight. Examination of a good map led them to this opening at the surface. It was an old well in the backyard of a restaurant which for years had specialized in rabbit dishes.
This story was in Readers Digest years ago.
Arguing with some people about this type of thing is a lost cause, I’d just let it go if I were you.
All kinds of people see cats as fair game for any kind of torture or mistreatment. To many of them, it is just a laugh a minute to imagine a cat being butchered alive.
Hard to believe, but many of them embrace the cruelty aspect.
Kids, I might understand, they sometimes don’t know any better, especially if they haven’t had parents who have told them on one level that killing with cruelty for the sheer entertainment value is sinful, and on a different level, what belongs to others is not yours to dispose of as you see fit.
I find some of the comments on this thread disturbing.
Just another brain fried Californicate doing his thing ...
FSSSSSSSSSSSSSST
Any ancestor of mine that ate cat would have been crazy.
Taste like........cat.
Yeah, you’re right. I’m done. :)
Explain how, given the article descriptions and the ways the animals were killed, alive and conscious enough for others to hear them screaming, that it wasn’t intentionally cruel? He obviously didn’t chop the heads off first, presumably to avoid them suffering through skinning them, given the eyewitness account (that you for some reason believe there may be reason to cast doubt on). They clearly were put through this to feel pain before being killed.
Animal fixation: Neighbour Steven Smith saw Wilmert starring at his dog and urged Wilmert to stop but he shrugged the incident off
Ya’ll just leave my cat alone.
And your point is?
Should have gotten far more punishment.
You are an idiot.
Yes, and these are suppose to be ‘conservatives’ with some moral compass.
He doesn’t appear to be suffering from starvation. Hard to tell.
I always wondered where the ranch, feed-lot, etc. for cat was located. And how do you become a catboy?
Not to mention the old chestnut about herding cats...
Cho is a favorite of all true chow hounds. It does sound more appetizing than the roasted frog.
What he did was clearly outside societal norms...so much so that I think it's worth looking at the motive. Granted, the most likely explanation is that he's twisted, but that's not the only possible explanation (given the article info). Although some later postings seem to indicate such is not the case, one possibility that immediately presented itself is that he was butchering it to eat. Not everybody hunts or farms, and in a society where meat is something people get in a supermarket package the ethos and skills needed to cleanly and humanely harvest one's meals is largely absent. Hunger also drives people to desparation.
Again, while later info strongly suggests such is not the case here, I suspect that if you placed the average American in a position where they had to kill their own food with only a knife, there would be very few clean and efficient kills.
"...given the eyewitness account (that you for some reason believe there may be reason to cast doubt on)..."
Much of my living is made by collecting and evaluating, "eyewitness accounts." There's a reason to cast doubt on everyone, and it's not that people are trying to intentionally dissemble or mislead, it's because no matter how hard one tries to be clinically objective, all our observations are filtered and interpreted through our biases and experience. Some people are better than others, but the simple matter of individual perspective makes it extremely difficult.
Again...I've never said I'm defending this guy or what he did, and to suggest I am is blatantly dishonest. His actions were not acceptable within the parameters of our society, but there may be more than one explanation for his deviation from them, particularly with the limited information in the article at the time I made my initial assertion.
I believe you!!!
How did they ever get USDA inspected and approved cats? Or were they something that looks superficially similar as a carcass, like rabbits?
How would you like it if I “amet” your dogs... on a platter in my kitchen?
Good luck with that.
Mmmmm....tamales....meow?
That’s crazy of course. Even if a pooch got loose from you, I wouldn’t view that as a license to make dog fricassee. No civilized person would.
Again, I've said nothing on this thread that approaches excusing or condoning his behavior...merely speculating about the motives.
And yes...if you were starving to death and one of my dogs is all that stood between you and certain death, I could understand you eating him. I may not like it, but I value human life that much. Now, from all the additional info that's played out, that does not appear to be the case here, but that wasn't readily obvious from the initial article.
They eats cats in Asia.
I think the biggest issue is the inhumane way he did it. Even a starving man shouldn’t cause needless suffering, whether it be to pig or cow, cat or dog.
my Calico Soufflé may be burning!
Hang ‘em High!!
I though this is what food stamps were supposed to head off, especially if he lives alone! ...
Jason Wilmert... doesn’t sound very Oriental to me. Sounds like a red neck who has lost his mind.
Garfield is a murderer and not fit to live
The only thing Garfield was known to kill was Jon’s lasagna.
Garfield the disgraceful feline routinely murders spiders
Obviously Garfield did not want to hurt a fly, then. Because spiders catch flies.
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