A vicious bunny slayer, or slayers, is on the loose in Germany’s Ruhr Valley. Since last summer, around 40 pet rabb­its have been killed in a spate of bizarre killings in the towns of Witten and Dortmund. Most were found decapitated and with the blood drained from their bodies.

74-year-old Elfriede Dumont told reporters about the morning her own pets fell victim: “I looked inside [the hutch] and saw Rocco just lying there. His head was missing. A little later, I found Felina in the bushes. She’d been killed, too. I just cannot understand why.” Her granddaughter, Sabrina, described another case, at a local school’s sandpit: “The rabbits were there without any heads and the child­ren found them in the morning while playing in the playground. That’s even more horrible than finding them in your own garden.”

Police have set up a task force of five officers to work full-time on the case. So far, they’ve interviewed over 300 people but are no closer to solving the mystery. “This task force is a lot like what we do when investigating murders,” said Vloker Schütte, Witten police spokesman. “Unfortunately, we still haven’t found a hot lead.” The task force believes that the beheadings are the work of either a lone killer or a small, well-organised group, as they share similar characteristics. And the fact that most took place in people’s back gardens suggests local knowledge, says Schütte: “It’s not like after the war when everyone had a rabbit in the backyard – they aren’t that easy to find and many of the cages can’t be seen from the road.” Investigators are also considering the possibility that Google Earth could have been used to spot hutches. Local media have been speculating that the culprits might be Satanists, removing heads and draining blood to use in rituals.

Rabbit owners and animal rights groups are offering a reward of 2,500 euro (£2,000) for information leading to an arrest, and scared locals have taken to hiding their rabbits in garages, cellars, or even pens in the woods.

Spiegel Online, 10 June; BBC News, 9 July 2008.