The Killer Among Us

The

12-character message, spray-painted in red and composed in Chinese, is chilling: The time has not yet come/ Not that there will be no vengeance/ Evil deeds bring evil ends.

The threatening graffito discovered late January on a concrete wall along Hong Kong's Bowen Road is the latest twist in a bizarre string of poisonings that has terrorized the city for 13 years. The leafy pedestrian walk running through the affluent Mid-Levels neighborhood is the epicenter of a spree that has claimed over 20 dead and made at least 100 seriously ill. Despite community uproar, heightened police patrols and the aid of an international expert, the killer's trail remains cold. A key reason, say critics, is that the victims are dogs.

Details have emerged slowly. Although the poisonings began in 1989, it wasn't until 1995 that police took notice. Soon it became clear they were dealing with a calculating serial killer, a Jack the Ripper of the canine world. That's why Chief Inspector Richard Skinner thinks the recent scrawling is a hoax, the work of a copycat. Skinner believes the real killer is not a publicity seeker, but someone wreaking methodical revenge on specific targets. "I don't think it's a lunatic just walking around wanting to kill dogs for the sake of it," Skinner says. "The person doing it believes it is for a purpose."

The death the killer delivers is gruesome. The poison—a few spoonfuls of purple crystal granules of carbofuran, an insecticide, mixed with chicken or duck meat—acts fast, attacking the nervous system much like sarin gas. In minutes, the dogs are drooling and their muscles begin to twitch. Within an hour, they are violently convulsing. If the poison cannot be expunged, they die of shock and respiratory failure. "They are absolutely frantic," says veterinarian Lloyd Kenda. "I'd rather never see another case again."

As the killer's toll rises, so do demands for justice. The pets of rich, poor, Chinese and Westerners have all been victims, and in a city not known for community activism, public outrage toward the faceless killer has been vented in letters to newspaper editors, community meetings and Internet chat rooms. Dog owners, represented by the SPCA, are the most disgruntled about the lack of police progress. Executive director Chris Hanselman wants to form a group to patrol the area. "I hate to use the term vigilante," he says. "We want to catch him and put him away."

Not that the police want anything less, but they say they need a witness who could make a positive ID. In 1995 they almost had one. Around 6 a.m. on a clear spring day, lawyer Jonathan Midgely was walking his two dogs in the Bowen Road vicinity when he saw a Chinese man in his mid-30s scattering food. The man had thinning hair brushed forward and an unusually round face, wore blue cotton work clothes and spoke passable English. The two men exchanged greetings. The man was "a bit strange," Midgely says, "not ominously strange, just as if he were a bit wacky." He carried a red plastic bag containing a trowel and bits of chicken that he claimed were for feeding the birds and dogs.

Minutes after they parted, one of Midgely's dogs, Ruth, started to shake and vomit. Luckily, he got her to a vet in time. Although Ruth's poisoning wasn't the first reported, police judged the case a low priority. That changed two years later when Whisky, one of then Governor Chris Patten's Norfolk terriers, was poisoned (but survived). Police belatedly called Midgely in to help with a composite sketch of the suspect and later had him try to spot the man among passersby on Bowen Road.

The serial dog poisonings have become a topic of obsessive speculation. Last year, Hong Kong University sociology postgraduates used the case in a criminal behavior course. Even a Swedish animal law expert, Helena Striwing, has become involved. She suggests the killer's target is not dogs. "He wants to hurt people," she says. "He is motivated to target and hurt the dog owners for some reason, to create misery." To that end, police offer a more prosaic premise. According to Skinner, the killer is likely annoyed by dog droppings along the footpath. "It's more probably a revenge thing," he says. "Basically, the rationale would be: 'If you're going to foul the path, then I'm going to kill the dogs.'"