Doug Hamlin pleaded no contest to animal cruelty over 1979 incident in which fraternity cat was tortured and killed

Doug Hamlin pleaded no contest to animal cruelty over 1979 incident in which fraternity cat was tortured and killed

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.

  • Stalinwolf@lemmy.ca
    52·
    1 month ago

    That’s so fucked up. When I was young I was friends with this dysfunctional redneck family who had taken in this tiny black kitten for a couple of weeks and then ejected it from the home when they failed to properly litter train the thing. I remember it wandered outside in their swampy, semi-rural woods for a few days. Some time later I asked about the cat again, and was told the older brother had “shot it right in the heart with a 22 when he saw it come up the road”.

    Looking back on my many weekends spent with that family, I can’t believe I agreed to keep going over there. But I was young, friends were scarce, and we could pretty much do whatever we wanted.

    Eventually the family turned on me as well when I had apparently become the scapegoat any time my friend had gotten in trouble for doing something. The mom developed an inherent distaste for me and even the uncles and grandparents started treating me like shit for things I hadn’t done or had little involvement in.

    Glad nobody shot me in the heart.