A former security guard known as the Brighton Cat Killer has been found guilty of an eight-month campaign of attacks, after a trial during which the judge remarked that the mere thought of having a knife “plunged into their beloved pet” must have traumatised the owners.
Steve Bouquet, 54, stabbed at least 16 pet cats and possibly many more. He killed nine; seven that he left for dead survived. He was tried in his absence after failing to appear at court.
Police detained him in Brighton on Monday night after a tip-off from a member of the public who saw him drinking and behaving oddly in a park. This development was kept secret from the jury, which took three hours to find him guilty. He will be sentenced at a later date when doctors have assessed his physical and mental state. He faces a jail term.
After the verdicts were read out Judge Jeremy Gold QC described the attacks as very unpleasant and said that they had had a significant impact on the owners.
The judge said: “I suggest it is only really during lockdown it has been particularly clear how much many of us who have pets rely on them for companionship and comfort and one can only imagine the distress that was caused to the owners of those various cats in this case at the very thought of having a knife plunged into their beloved pet . . . I take a very serious view of this case.”
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Bouquet was convicted of killings dating to October 2018. The court was told that the identity of the Brighton Cat Killer had been a mystery to Sussex police until he was revealed by a single error. A camera fixed to the outside of the house where another victim lived recorded a man stroking a cat called Hendrix, before attacking him with a knife, on May 31, 2019.
Rowan Jenkins, for the prosecution, described the key CCTV evidence to Chichester crown court. “He appears to show affection to the cat by stroking it. Facing sideways, he seems to take something from his rucksack. As the cat lies down in front of him, you will see there is then a sudden jerk from the defendant’s arm,” he said. “This is the moment we say when the defendant stabs Hendrix with some force. Immediately, he [Hendrix] reacts by getting to his feet and fleeing to his home.”
Hendrix was taken to a vet but could not be saved. Two days later the neighbour who owned the camera spotted Bouquet again on film. The police were called and detained him several streets away. He was searched, found to have a Leatherman multitool, arrested and taken into custody. Police searched his flat and found a knife stained with feline blood in his kitchen. He told officers he had “no issues with cats, dogs or anything like that” but the court was told he had photographs on his phone of the cats he stabbed. As news spread of his crimes he had searched online for coverage and copied reports from The Guardian and the Brighton daily paper The Argus to his phone. Mobile phone data also placed him at the scene of the attacks.
The court was previously told that a bald man wearing a black leather jacket, blue jeans and a silver earring was spotted by neighbours taking photographs outside an owner’s home. Bouquet was identified as that man in a police line-up.
He denied 16 charges of criminal damage and possession of a knife. The law regards cats as property.
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As well as Hendrix, he was found to have killed cats called Hannah, Tommy, Alan, Nancy, Gizmo, Kyo, Ollie and Cosmo in Brighton between October 2018 and June 2019. Vet bills for the cats that survived ran into thousands of pounds.
