EAIAC cruelty to pets edition

Warning: This post quotes reports that describe acts of extreme animal cruelty.

In January of 1980, when I was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, I was walking past the student union when I noticed a banner hanging either from the roof of the Union itself or from a building next to it (I can’t recall the exact location, and I believe the building next to it may have been the fraternity in question).

The banner read Burn Frats Not Cats, and it was inspired by this incident:

Douglas Hamlin, who was appointed to lead the NRA this summer in the wake of a long-running corruption scandal at the gun rights group, was involved decades ago in the sadistic killing of a fraternity house cat named BK, according to several local media reports at the time.

Hamlin pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of animal cruelty brought against him and four of his fraternity brothers in 1980, when he was an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. The charge was brought against Hamlin under a local Ann Arbor ordinance. All five members of Alpha Delta Phi were later expelled from the fraternity.

The details of the case, described in local media reports at the time, are gruesome. The house cat was captured, its paws were cut off, and was then strung up and set on fire. The killing, which occurred in December 1979, was allegedly prompted by anger that the cat was not using its litterbox.

The case caused such a furore locally that some students and animal rights activists wore buttons and armbands in memory of BK.

The details of the case, described in local media reports at the time, are gruesome. Photograph: Courtesy Shelagh Abbs Winter

Hamlin served as the fraternity president at the time, according to the media reports. While Hamlin’s exact role in the killing is unclear, a report in the Ann Arbor News published in March 1980 – at the time of the court case – said that district court judge SJ Elden singled Hamlin out for criticism, saying he could have prevented it from happening as the leader of the fraternity.

The judge called the cat killing an “unconscionable and heinous” act and suggested the fraternity had tried to engage in a coverup to protect its members after the crime was exposed.

“Heartlessness must be in the job description to run the NRA,” said Nick Suplina, senior vice president for law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety.“This revelation shows that the NRA has failed to turn the page on its scandal-plagued leaders and its doom spiral continues with Hamlin at the helm.” . . .

Shelagh Abbs Winter, who was named in a media report as the student who reported the incident to authorities at the time, told the Guardian she recalled many of the details, including that she had felt compelled to report the incident to authorities after she learned what had happened from another student who was a pledge at the fraternity.

Winter was and remains an animal rights activist, and expressed surprise when she was contacted by the Guardian for this story, because she had not followed Hamlin’s career nor realized that the 1979 incident would still be personally relevant decades later.

“You don’t know how amazing this is to me, because I am a member of Moms Demand Action,” she said, referring to one of the most influential grassroots gun control advocacy groups in the country, which has proved to be a thorn in the side of the NRA. Winter said she remembered feeling threatened at the time for coming forward.

“Once a creep, always a creep,” she said.

A cook who worked at the fraternity at the time and asked not to be named said he recalled speaking to police and never returning back to work because he feared reprisal. “After it was disclosed that the police were investigating, a meeting was called, and the members were told to say nothing; not to cooperate; and not to, essentially, give up their brothers,” the person told the Guardian.

According to press reports, the charges were ultimately expunged from the men’s records after they completed 200 hours each of animal-related community service.

The real story, as it has been related to me on several occasions both around the time it happened and more recently, is actually a good deal worse.

The unnamed cook quoted in the story above was, I’ve been told independently by several people, the fraternity’s house father or house dad, that is, an adult paid by the chapter to live in the house and manage the running of it, as well as in this case cook for its members.

This man — again several people have told me the same story independently over the years — was gay, although the frat’s members didn’t know this when he was hired. BK was actually his own cat. One day the frat’s members discovered that their house dad was gay, and they decided to torture-murder his cat in revenge for this crime. (Hamlin himself told other students that he and the other killers were “tripping on acid,” by way of explanation).

Besides the fact that several people who didn’t know each other told me this story at the time and subsequently, it is on its face far more plausible than the one these fine young men told in court — that the fraternity’s own cat was torture murdered because it wouldn’t use its litter box.

I remember well the outrage this incident inspired on campus (hence the banner). The frat had its charter revoked and was shut down, although none of the students involved were expelled from the university, or as far as I can recall even suspended.

For a couple of years the building was rented out to students, a group of which eventually decided to apply to reinstate the fraternity, which the university agreed to do.

That last month the entire Republican party, of which the NRA is now a wholly owned subsidiary, was consumed with false reports of dusky-hued foreigners kidnapping, killing, and eating the cats and dogs of real meaning white Americans, is, in 2024, very much par for the course.