Woman Still Scoffs at Idea That Dead Cats Were Coyote Victims

Janet Hampson doesn’t believe that problems just go away.

Last summer, when more than 85 cats were killed under mysterious circumstances throughout Orange County, the north Tustin resident waged a one-woman war to get Orange County Animal Control and the Sheriff’s Department to find out why.

Eventually, the U.S. Department of Agriculture investigated and blamed the killings on coyotes that roam many of the county’s isolated areas.

But since then, another mystery has occurred: The feline deaths have virtually stopped. Police say the halt is due to increased public awareness of how to protect animals from coyotes. But Hampson, who has believed all along that the deaths were at the hands of juvenile satanic worshipers, isn’t satisfied.

“It’s all just too perfect,” Hampson said recently. “The coyotes supposedly go on this big binge killing and mutilating cats, decisively separating the head and the body, and then after a wave of publicity and attention--they stop? I don’t think coyotes read the newspaper or hibernate.”

Hampson, a part-time political consultant, has been working full time to find the answer to the killings since the death of a neighbor’s cat two years ago. The animal was found positioned prominently on the front lawn, cut in half with its liver and heart missing.

“The way that cat was perfectly cut with little or no blood around was enough to send chills up my spine,” Hampson said. “You often read and hear about devil worshipers and satanic rituals but you don’t think that really it’s happening until you face it.”

Hampson said that in her study of satanic literature she’s found that animal blood, organs and body parts are a major part of satanic rituals.

“The only people that think we’re dealing with coyotes are the police and that’s because of some bureaucratic nonsense that’s obviously going on within the system. They know the problem and are well aware of who is causing it,” Hampson said. “They know that when coyotes attack there is a lot of noise, and they usually take the cat’s body with them.”

Last year, with support from the Tustin community, where more than half of the cat killings occurred, Hampson formed TRAK, a citizens action group that patrols areas where mutilated cats have been found.

The group also takes calls from people whose cats have been killed.

“We get so many calls from people just fed up with the way Animal Control is handling the situation,” Hampson said. “When you go outside and see your cat cut in half, you don’t want to hear anything about a coyote. You know someone did this.”

TRAK is also offering $1,600 to anyone with information concerning the killings.

Hampson has suggested that the killings may have been performed by youth gangs or so-called skinheads. Though city officials admit that gangs are present in the area, they still blame the coyotes.

Officials insist that the highly publicized bulletins circulated by Animal Control officials stopped the deaths by alerting residents to the dangers of coyotes.

“In the flyers we tell residents exactly how to avoid contact with coyotes,” said Lt. Kevin Whelan with Orange County Animal Control. “We tell them to cover up their trash cans and not to leave food outside overnight. This discourages the coyotes from even coming into the yard. That’s why the killings have stopped.”

But Edward Cole, an Irvine-based veterinarian, says it is more than just a coincidence that the cat killings ended abruptly.

“There certainly seems to be much more here than meets the eye, because this time (of year) is the prime time for coyotes to attack,” Cole said. “It’s pretty easy to see when an animal has been killed or mutilated by a coyote, and a lot of these killings have occurred in areas where there really isn’t a large population of coyotes. From what I’ve seen, human involvement is still a possibility.”

Hampson said she is as determined as ever to prove that the cats were killed by people. At the end of the month, she said, she plans to document her claims in a report to the Board of Supervisors.