Thurston County Cat Killer

"Serial killers in the past have often been found to have started with animal torture."

In October 2017, the mutilated body of a cat was found in a rural area outside of Olympia, Washington. At the time, people tried to explain it away. Maybe it was a car. Maybe coyotes. Nobody wanted to consider the alternative.

But as winter turned into 2018, more fragments turned up. Severed limbs in a field outside of Lacey, a suburb outside of Olympia. Another partial body a week later. No witnesses, no clear pattern, just grisly remains. Maybe it was scavengers, some insisted. But the unease had started...



Research, writing, hosting, and production by Micheal Whelan

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
This episode contains graphic content that may not be suitable
for all ages. Listener discretion is advised. If you or
someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available,
call or text nine to eight eight, or chat with
someone at nine eight eight lifeline dot Org. Those outside
of the US, reach out to someone at your local

(00:24):
crisis center or hotline. Please do not suffer in silence.
Hey everyone, it's Michael. Today's episode is a bit unusual
given our usual lineup of true crime stories. This is
actually one I had originally penned for Patreon as a
bonus episode, but my family has been hit hard by

(00:45):
every back to school virus and pathogen you can think of.
I'm actually still on the mend and we'll have to
edit out quite a few coughs from this episode, but
we should be back to our normal schedule starting next week. Anyhow,
I just thought you should know. With that being said,
let's roll. It was a quiet Sunday morning in West Olympia, Washington,

(01:08):
the kind of morning that feels like it should be
uneventful routine. Kathy Harrigan stepped onto her porch and called
out for Harley, her twenty year old great tabby every
morning for years, Harley had been waiting for her deaf
but faithful, a fixture of her household. This time, though
he did not come. Then came the police cruiser. The

(01:29):
deputy walked up to her with that look, the one
that tells you the news isn't just bad, it's likely
going to change the rest of your life. Harley, it
turns out, had been found on a neighbor's lawn, mutilated,
cut open, and laid out deliberately, like someone wanted to
make sure the body would be seen. Kathy could hardly
recognize him. She later recalled, it's completely sick, unfathomable. I

(01:53):
can't get my mind around it. Her beloved cat had
not just died, he had been taken in a way
so violent and so cruel that it was impossible to comprehend.
And the worst part was that Harley wasn't the first.
This is the story of the Thurston County cat killer.

(02:18):
The nightmare in Thurston County started months earlier. The first
body appeared on October twenty seventh, twenty seventeen, a mutilated
cat in a rural area outside of Olympia. People tried
to explain it away at the time. Maybe it was
a car, maybe coyotes. Nobody wanted to consider the alternative.
But as winter turned into twenty eighteen, more fragments turned up.

(02:42):
Severed limbs in a field near Lacey, a suburb of Olympia.
Another partial body a week later, no witnesses, no clear pattern,
just grizzly remains. Maybe it was scavengers, some insisted, but
the unease had started by summer. Denial was no longer
or an option. On July fourth, a family's cat named

(03:03):
Calli vanished. Hours later, she was found in a nearby park,
cut cleanly in half. Her owner asked police, was it
hit by a car? No? An animal? Again, No, this
was done by a human. The officer said. That answer
hit like a gut punch, and it would not be
the last time that happened. The killings accelerated. Cats began

(03:27):
disappearing from their yards and reappearing in the worst possible ways.
Bodies left on sidewalks, in front yards, near churches, even
at a golf course. They'd been slid open from sternham
to tail with precise cuts. Organs removed and sometimes placed
beside the body like a grotesque display. There was very
little blood found at the scenes. Whoever was doing this

(03:49):
was killing elsewhere then dumping the remains where they would
be found. On August first, a fluffy white cat named
Ollie became one of these victims. She had been strangled,
then sliced open her spine, removed clumps of her fur
DNA under her claws, proof she had fought like hell,
but she never stood a chance. Days later, Harley became

(04:10):
another name on the list. His death hit hard, not
just because he was beloved, but because he had become
kind of a mascot for his West Olympia neighborhood. His
murder finally forced law enforcement to act. Sheriff John Snazza
formed a task force with detectives from the Sheriff's Office,
Olympia PD, as well as officers from Lacey and Tumwater.
Six investigators dedicated solely to finding whoever was doing this.

(04:34):
Each crime scene was treated like a homicide. Tape, gloves, canvassing,
forensic kits were committed to finding this individual. Detective Ben
Elkins vowed, but sadly, whoever this was, they were just
getting started. In the first three weeks alone, at least
seven cats were killed. Some days brought two bodies in

(04:58):
different jurisdictions within hours of year each other, as though
the killer could not even wait for nightfall. Residents began
to describe what they were seeing in blunt terms, a sick, callous,
disgusting psychopath. Afraid that their children would stumble upon the
next body, parents kept their kids indoors. People started sleeping lightly,

(05:18):
jolting awake at shadows in their yard. Disappearances that might
once have been blamed on cars or coyotes were now
treated like abductions. Each family devastated by a loss had
a story. Midnight, A black cat who slept on his
owner's lap every night was found dismembered near a corner
in Olympia. Perfect a calico who was good with children

(05:39):
was discovered tossed by a roadside. On August thirtieth, the
final known victim. Families handed over photos to the media,
their cat's faces now memorials in a story that they
never imagined becoming part of, and the fear began to
stretch beyond pets. One resident said serial killers in the
past have often been found to have started with animal torture.

(06:01):
They said what everyone else was thinking. If this person
wasn't stopped what would come next. The community fought back
in the only ways that it could. Flyers were plastered
across neighborhoods. Social media spread the warning to keep cats
indoors and stay vigilant. Rewards were posted. Pasado's Safe Haven

(06:22):
started with fifteen hundred dollars, then matching funds doubled it.
Then national animal rights groups piled on. By late August,
the reward hit thirty six thousand dollars. Within weeks, it
was over fifty thousand, one of the largest in state
history for an animal cruelty case. The tips poured in,
hundreds of them. Detectives chased them all down, but the

(06:44):
killer remained unknown. The forensics were thin. DNA scraped from
all these claws did not lead anywhere. A surgical glove
found near one body confirmed what everyone already knew. This
was a human predator. Coyotes don't wear gloves, if you
knew that, but the glove was clean of prints. Detectives
speculated whoever was responsible for these crimes knew the anatomy

(07:08):
of cats. The cuts were too clean, the organs removed
too deliberately. Maybe this was a hunter, maybe a vettech,
maybe someone who had learned just enough from YouTube videos
to be dangerous. Whatever the case, this wasn't scavenging wildlife.
This was human and the way the bodies were left
in yards, on sidewalks, in public spaces, they were taunting.

(07:31):
They were trying to send a message, look at what
I've done. But then, just as suddenly as the spree escalated,
it stopped. After Perfect's body was found on August thirtieth,
twenty eighteen, the killings ended. No more mutilated cats appeared,
There were no more calls, no more taped off yards.
The task force kept watch, but the trail went cold.

(08:18):
The silence should have been comforting, but it wasn't. It
was eerie. Why had the killing stopped? Had the killer
moved on? Had they themselves gotten into trouble? Had they
gotten spooked by the media frenzy? Nobody knew. A year later,
the fear came roaring back. In July twenty nineteen, a

(08:38):
girl in Olympia found the severed head of a cat
stuck to the top of a chain link fence a
missing pet flyer taped just below it. Law enforcement said
it did not quite fit the earlier pattern. The head
was mummified, suggesting it had been preserved, but as you
can imagine, that did not calm anyone down. Whoever did
it wanted to hurt, They wanted to shock, and in

(09:01):
their attempt they succeeded. Rumors filled the gap left by
the lack of answers. Some tried to pin the killings
on a young man rumored to be violent, who later
died by suicide. The story spread online, neat and convenient,
but it did not match the timeline. That young man
had not even been living in Washington during the original spree.

(09:22):
Others clung to the comfortable notion that maybe this had
not been human at all, maybe it had actually been
coyotes or some other scavengers, but local vets and investigators
flatly rejected that theory. The cuts to the cat's bodies
were too clean. Organs had been deliberately removed, Spines were
taken out, bodies laid out tauntingly. This wasn't a fox,

(09:45):
it wasn't a coyote. It was human. And that's where
the story sits. The Thurston County cat killer has never
been caught. The reward money still exists. The files gathering
dust in the Sheriff's office, nay samples get revisited from
time to time, but nothing has ever broken open. For
the families who lost their pets, the pain hasn't faded.

(10:08):
Kathy Harrigan said of Harley's killer, he laid the cat
out for display so that we could be shocked and shocked.
They were horrified, traumatized, left with no closure. This spree
ended as suddenly as it began, but the pain of
these families' losses remains in Olympia. In Lacy and Pumwater,

(10:28):
the neighborhoods that lived through that summer still carry the unease.
Pet Owners let their cats outside again, but often with
a glance out the window, often with a memory of
what had happened. More than seven years later, the identity
of the Thurston County cat killer is still a question
without an answer. The killings have been mostly forgotten about,

(10:49):
whispered about like a ghost story from those who remember.
But for the families, it's not a ghost story. It's
a loss that never healed. And that's because whoever did this,
whoever was cruel enough, careful enough, arrogant enough to pose
their work like trophies, was never found. And for that reason,
the story of the Thurston County cat killer remains unresolved.