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Tuesday, September 29, 1998

Seminar details possible signs of ritualistic activity

GRAPEVINE, Texas (AP) - Cats with missing paws, cows with their eyes removed and other such mutilations could indicate satanic worship, not just sadistic behavior, animal cruelty investigators from Texas and three other states were told a Sunday seminar.

And just a month before Oct. 31 - a time when animal sacrifice and mutilation appear to reach a high nationwide - the lesson couldn't come soon enough.

"We're always on alert for this kind of thing around Halloween," Grapevine animal control supervisor Lawrence Hopkins said in Monday's Fort Worth Star-Telegram editions.

"There are many of our animal shelters that won't adopt out any black, white or orange cats during October. They'll take applications but won't give the people the animals until after Halloween, for fear that someone is adopting them just for some kind of satanic sacrifice."

None of the 20 officers from Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas attending the program - including several animal-cruelty investigators from Dallas-Fort Worth - could cite instances of ritual animal sacrifices or mutilations in the region.

That doesn't mean they doesn't exist, said Arlington police Cpl. Tom Deats, an expert on satanic worship and cults who led the seminar, sponsored by the Association of Certified Cruelty Investigators.

"The whole idea of this program is to teach animal control officers how to recognize signs and symptoms of ritualistic behavior," Deats said. "They may have seen it in the past and just not have known what it was."

Satanists have a range of signs they leave behind at their worship sites, Deats said, ranging from the number "666," the "mark of the beast"; pentagrams inside circles; the so-called "cross of Nero," which also is known as the peace symbol of the 1960s; the swastika; and the inverted cross, which "symbolizes the defeat of Christ," he said.

It's important for animal cruelty officers to recognize such behavior, because "even though satanic worship is legal, any cruelty to animals is against the law," Deats said.