Botley, Hampshire, 1996: a 10-year-old mare named Shadow is found in
her stable, barely able to stand, with blood still streaming from serious
knife wounds in her hindquarters. A gelding in a nearby stable has suffered
cuts to the eye and neck. Local police and horse-owners immediately fear
the worst; after a three-year period of dormancy, the notorious 'Horse Ripper'or a grim imitator is on the prowl again.
Back in 1993, media coverage of a spate of horse attacks settled on an
evocative mise en scène: picture-perfect autumnal, mist-swept fields;
the languid clip-clop of horses hooves along leafy, winding lanes, or a
dull thunder over gallops; well bred, jodhpur-tight bottoms bouncing on
well saddled thoroughbreds laden with equine/class metaphor. But a
scene spoilt by heinous crime, the epitome of submerged evil, and its cast
gripped by increasing paranoia. If this view of Home Counties life represents
something of an English dream, the horse is its quintessential symbol of
Englishness. Thus, the attacks were portrayed in iconoclastic terms
Lynch's Blue Velvet meets National Velvet, blue blood tinged with red
tearing at the fabric of a privileged facade. As spring came, just as the
intensity of the attacks gained international attention, they suddenly receded.
Or so it seemed.
Subsequent sporadic reports were reduced to small item news. Out of sight,
out of mind, apparently, as vigilante-minded locals succumbed to the downside
of vigilance. "It's a bit like [guarding against] a serial killer,
said a spokesman for Horsewatch, the short-lived country cousin of Neighbourhood
Watch, organised in conjunction with RSPCA and police efforts.if
there's no more killing, people relax. The lull also affected the
police, albeit reluctantly. Despite making 27 arrests but without securing
a conviction, the Hampshire-based task force set up to investigate the attacks
was dismantled that summer.
Then, in May 1996, the Metropolitan Police closed its Equine Crime Prevention
Unit which, for 15 years, acted as a centralised clearing-house for national
reports another victim of force-wide downsizing. Just two weeks later,
the wounded Shadaow was found. The volume of attacks in Hampshire between
1989 and 1993 followed a pattern which might provide an insight into motive.
For instance, Botley's four previous victims were geldings, whereas the attacks commonly attributed to the Ripper mostly involved mares. Sexual assault featured heavily. There was an ostensive modus operandi vaginal or anal penetration with a knife and/or blunt instrument, such as a broomstick or a fence-post, used with sufficient force to cause serious internal damage. The genitals of either sex were sometimes mutilated with a sharp instrument, and many horses were stabbed or slashed elsewhere although a mixture of internal and external injuries was comparatively rare. Leading police investigators theorised a connection or disconnection, perhaps between the two types of injury; that the act of ripping may have resulted from a 'failure' of the sexual abuse the external damage coming out of enraged frustration, guilt, or even self-disgust. It's not inconceivable, therefore, that less vicious 'attacks' could have easily gone unnoticed. The old clichE,after coition, every animal is sad, becomes all the more pertinent when knives are involved.