Yesterday afternoon a tip came through the Project No More tip line describing a serial cat killer working the East Hill neighborhoods of Kent, Washington. One of our investigators reached out to the tipster on Instagram the same day, and by evening we had published a joint alert with @stopanimalcruelty777. We have spent the hours since reading every public post, comment, and neighborhood thread we could find on this case. The tip undersold it.
Here is the pattern, assembled from owner accounts and the reporting of a local rescue, Hugs Cat Sanctuary. Cats are disappearing from yards in the corridor between SE 240th and SE 256th Street. Hours or days later they are returned to the properties they were taken from: decapitated, paws removed, gutted, some emptied down to skin and fur, and arranged on the lawn for their families to find. Whoever is doing this brings each cat back to its own home and stages the body where the family will see it.
Andy is the third documented killing. His family found him in their yard near SE 240th and 112th with his head and paws removed, in the sanctuary's words "with a precise tool," and his body set carefully back on the grass as though he were whole. Moonie, a longhaired tortoiseshell, disappeared and came back the same way: one clean cut, her organs gone, no blood anywhere at the scene. Her owner wrote that she "was positioned in a way to be on display." Moonie was due to deliver kittens the day her body was found. A family in the Park Orchard neighborhood posted a warning after finding their own cat dead in the yard, and another account describes a missing cat whose severed head and paws turned up in a backyard. Community tallies put the number of dead as high as six in a single week.
The police response so far amounts to a case opened and closed within a day. Case 26-06348 was shut and referred to King County animal control, according to the sanctuary, which published the number so residents could demand it be reopened. The family who found the severed head and paws says officers never came at all; they were told the department was short staffed. After days of public pressure, Kent PD combined the files under case KP26-40270. The department's own Facebook page tells residents it is not monitored around the clock and directs them to an online reporting form. Someone is walking residential streets at night collecting other people's pets, and the official channel is a web form.
Washington has seen this before, which is what makes the shrug so hard to accept. In 2018, thirteen cats were mutilated, killed, and displayed in busy public places across Thurston County. Neighbors ran nightly citizen patrols, the reward reached $53,000, and no one was ever arrested. In 2019, Everett police spent weeks attributing severed cat limbs to wildlife until a veterinarian pointed out the cuts were made with an instrument. In 2020, Kennewick closed a seven-cat case as coyote predation over the objections of the community. The playbook is consistent: blame wildlife, close the case, move on. Kent is running it again.
When one of these men is caught, here is what accountability looks like. Last September, police in Burien, fifteen minutes up the road from Kent, arrested Devon Detweiler after his own father reported him. Detweiler had admitted to torturing and killing kittens, was hunting for free animals on Craigslist, and told a friend he wanted to kill a human next. He was caught because a family member turned him in, and this June he pleaded guilty to three counts of animal cruelty in the first degree. That charge is a class C felony in Washington. In April, a King County judge sentenced a kennel worker who beat a dog to death to what he called the maximum state law allowed: three months.
Hugs Cat Sanctuary has been carrying this case. They are logging reports, publishing case numbers, coordinating with owners, and tagging every Seattle journalist and newsroom they can think of, asking someone to cover it. As of publication we could not find a single story about Kent in any regional outlet. The investigative work here is being done by a small rescue and a group of terrified neighbors comparing notes on Facebook and Nextdoor, keeping their cats inside and pulling Ring footage, hoping somebody with authority starts treating this like it matters.
If you live in Kent: bring your cats indoors and keep them there. Check camera footage from the area around SE 240th and 112th Street, the skate park, and the Park Orchard neighborhood, and report anything unusual to Kent police at 253-852-2121, referencing case KP26-40270. Reports can also be filed at kpdonlinereport.com. If you are not local, the City of Kent can be reached at 253-856-5200. Keep calls civil and specific: ask that the mutilation cases be fully investigated. Our tip line remains open, and updates will follow as this case develops.