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.
This fills me with such a rage that I cannot express myself. Cats failing to use a litter box is generally because the box is either not kept clean enough or that cat has a medical issue such as a urinary tract infection. The cat was asking for help in the only way it knew how and they did that to it.