Tabitha Twitchsticks

Remember Jessie Butler, the Oklahoma teen who raped and strangled two girls (and almost killed one of them), but got away with it because his dad knew the judge and the DA through college football? Well it turns out his entire case has just been dismissed. It’s not over though: there’s a new district attorney and he has referred Mr. Butler for federal charges, so he’s not out of the woods yet. Fingers crossed, everybody.

This is 25 year old Thomas Martel. He kills kittens for fun. After his girlfriend found a Snapchat video of a living kitten captioned “Right before I murdered her,” police got involved. They found out that Martel had been buying identical-looking 8 week old kittens online, naming each one “Shelly” to conceal the fact that he was killing them, and that he had been drowning, mutilating, decapitating, and microwaving them to death in his Chicago apartment. He’s been doing it since he was eight. Here’s where it gets really scary. He was sentenced to four and a half years for animal torture and aggravated cruelty, but Illinois law counted the 1000-plus days he’d been on electronic monitoring as time served behind bars. He reported to prison and was released the same day, back to his family’s Northbrook home with just six months of supervised release between him and no supervision whatsoever. And that’s a huge problem. See, torturing animals is one of the biggest behavioral predictors for violence against humans, especially sexual violence. He got off on what he did to those cats. He liked it — and he’s almost certain to act out again. Studies have shown that the rate of animal abuse among serial killers and men who commit sexual homicides is shockingly high, and Martel’s behavior already reveals a cyclical pattern of violence, with build up and cooldown periods. This pattern is an enormous red flag, and increases the already high chances that Martel will reoffend in some way. Guys like that dream of bigger prey than kittens, and to add another layer of awfulness to Martel, he enjoyed taunting animal rights activists during his trial. If you live in Northbrook, Illinois, be aware that this man is in your town. If he tries to approach you, get away from him. Don’t go anywhere with him, or believe anything he tells you, no matter what it is. You don’t want to be around him when he decides to move on from kittens.