CROYDON, GREATER LONDON, UK - Dermot O’Leary and Caroline Flack of Britain’s X-Factor have tweeted their support for the animal rights group, which is offering a reward to help catch the maniac.
The fighting fund is in addition to a £5,000 ($7,100,) reward being offered by leading animal rights group PETA.
Shocked stars are also now backing the hunt for the Croydon Cat Ripper who has killed more than 35 animals leaving mutilated bodies for the public to find.
X Factor hosts Dermot O’Leary and Caroline Flack, plus You Me At Six’s Josh Franceschi, have alerted more than four million Twitter followers about PETA’s reward.
The Vamps’ lead guitarist, James McVey, is offering free tour tickets to anyone who may help find the maniac.
The so-called Croydon Cat Ripper has claimed more than 35 animal victims cross south London including Croydon, Mitcham, Streatham and even 13 miles away in Charlton.
The disturbing campaign has lasted for more than two years but incidents have escalated greatly in the past week.
A street cleaner found two cats and a fox all of whom had been beheaded last week.
And a mum has told how she found her moggy with its leg cut off.
Members of South Norwood Animal Rescue and Liberty - SNARL have now asked people who find dismembered animal body parts to turn them in.
They hope that a vet working on the case will be able to forensically link the cases. and track down the perpetrator of the crimes which have left pet owners devastated.
The group has crowdfunded £5,000 to pay for the autopsies and DNA collection on the serial killer’s victims and already they are beginning to see a pattern emerge.
Boudicca Rising of SNARL told the Daily Mirror this: “It’s quite a distinct pattern.
“You can categorise them into four types, beaheading and tail removed, just beheading, just tail removed so the cat’s dead and the eviscerations with the intestines placed outside of the body.”
“You’ve also got a historical case and a recent one with the cat with the hind legs and tail hacked out.”
She added: “There’s no blood at the scene, so we assume they’re killing them elsewhere and putting them back and posing them and putting them almost back where they live.”
The hope is that one of these cats may have scratched the killer and that DNA analysis under their claws may lead police to the culprit.
Although bodies have been discovered over the last two years the killings have been on the rise with nine killed since this past summer and foxes being reported dismembered for the first time.
Rising said: “Either we’re getting to hear more about them because the word is spreading or we’ve seen an upsurge. The foxes I suspect are not a new thing – this person has probably been killing foxes for sometime but people don’t tend to report wildlife.”
Last week the killer struck once again, chopping off the leg of five-year-old black and white moggy Louie.
Louie’s owner, mum-of-three Stacey Lambourne, 28, bought the kitten as a gift for her son Archie, who is nine now, five years ago, and couldn’t believe it when the beloved moggie arrived home on January 19 with one of his legs chopped off.
She said: “I think he came home to let us know he needed help and to be safe. He came to say goodbye.”
“It’s had a big impact on us all. Yesterday when I told the children what happened, the house was so quiet. Nobody wanted to talk.”
“My son keeps asking people, even if he doesn’t know them, if they know who has killed his cat.”
Louie had to be put down on January 21 after losing his battle and police have appealed for witnesses to come forward.
A Met spokesman said: “Police in Croydon are investigating a number of incidents relating to cat deaths in the area. We are currently working to establish the facts.”
Rising said that many of those who have made the gruesome discoveries have been deeply disturbed by their findings.
She said: “People who find these body parts are shocked, it’s awful. For a lot of people cats are part of the family, they’re not just pets so when something like this happens it’s like they’ve lost a family member so to see something like this happen to a family member is enormously distressing.”
But it is hoped with their investigation and the help of animal rights group PETA, who are currently offering a £5,000 reward, police might be able to make an arrest.
Aside from stopping the killer PETA are concerned about the state of mind of someone who would have it in him carrying out these apalling crimes.
PETA Associate Director Elisa Allen said: “A person capable of deliberately causing this kind of suffering to helpless animals demonstrates a very worrying psychological state and must be found.”
“Because animals cannot report being abused and can do little to fight back, violent people sometimes use them as “practice” victims.”
PETA has previously highlighted the correlating link between animal killers who go on to murder humans.
Luke Woodham, a student at Pearl High School in a suburb of Jackson, Mississippi, went on to stab his mother to death before opening fire on classmates with a hunting rifle, killing two girls and wounding seven other students.
He had earlier tortured and killed his pet dog who was named Sparkle, which the boy described as his “first kill”.
And Albert DeSalvo, the “Boston Strangler”, who killed a total of 13 women, trapped dogs and cats and shot arrows at them through boxes in his youth.