By Hannah Straw

Around 40 pet rabbits have been viciously murdered in a spate of rabid rabbit killings in the towns of Witten and Dortmund in the Ruhr Valley area of Germany since summer 2007.

The Rabbit Ripper is characteristic in his massacres: "It's always the same," Officer Schuette for the German Police reports. "Detectives find the rabbit lying dead in a hutch. An unknown person has cut off the head and drained off the blood in a box or a bottle. So we find no blood and no head." Motivation for such crimes boggles the mind; no one knows what drives the killings.

Over three hundred people have been questioned. German police have launched a specific task force to locate the killer, fearing that he may switch from killing rabbits to people.

It is also unclear how the killer has been locating his victims. In the state of extreme fear that the rabbit-owning populace of the Ruhr Valley currently finds itself, many rabbits have been placed into hiding.

This appears to be an ineffective defence, however: most of the beheaded pets were hidden from public view, locked away in back yards or gardens. It is possible the killer has been using satellite images on the internet to find houses with rabbit hutches.

The sleepy towns have been rocked by such horror. "The rabbits were there without any heads and the children found them in the morning while playing in the playground. That's even more horrible than finding them in your own garden," said Sabrina Dumot, a resident of the Ruhr Valley. Local locksmiths' businesses are flourishing as people invest in elaborate locks to keep their bunnies safe, but these merciless killings may not stop until the culprit is caught and under lock and key himself.

Average user rating

   (0 vote)