Solve This Murder

A Puppy Named Snoopy

1977

I was 6 years old. My granddad had a dog named Sooty who was his pride and joy.
Sooty ran off one day and returned home pregnant, and she later had three pups, Teddy, Sue and Snoopy. Teddy and Sue were homed as soon as they were old enough but Snoopy remained with Sooty. They were inseparable. 
Snoopy was to be my first dog. He was a mixed breed Labrador/collie cross, and he was pure exuberance and joy, his mum loved him, as did I.  

My Dad and my grandfather were both car mechanics and during the week I would spend my days at their workshop. They repaired customers cars and I played beside the workshop on the undeveloped abandoned land. The workshop was in an old world war 2 air raid shelter. There was a huge sand pit beside it and I would dig in it and find all sorts of lost 1940’s items. I found a silver cigarette case, elegant gloves, a tattered purse and spectacles. 
I would spend hours exploring the area with the dogs. I would also read stories to the dogs and they would sit there watching attentively. Snoopy and I were beginning to bond, he would wag his tail enthusiastically when I spoke to him and would be genuinely excited when we went on adventures. Both him and his mum were my daily companions on my childhood explorations. 

To the side of the undeveloped area was a screen of trees that skirted along side a housing estate, part of it ran beside an area of fields inhabited by gypsies. The dogs would often run in and out of the trees, playing.
One day when I wasn’t there both dogs disappeared into the trees and didn’t come back. A day later Sooty came back in distress, with some minor injuries, but no Snoopy. I went out looking for him with my dad and granddad who was very visibly upset but trying his best to hold it together for me.
After the first day they assumed that Snoopy was dead.
On the third day my dad found Snoopy.
He had been killed by gypsies. When they kill dogs they put a lead on them and pull them up onto their hind feet so that they slowly hang as they become exhausted. They did this to my beautiful little puppy, full of joy and life. I struggled to comprehend the level of depravity and wilful evil involved in that vile and cruel act. I wanted to understand why anyone would do that to a puppy dog. There were no good answers. 
Gypsies it turned out were not just a network of organised criminal gangs they were also completely devoid of humanity. 

A Dog Named ‘It‘

2017 – A Cul de Sac in Torquay

I was returning home from an appointment and a large pale brown Labrador dog walked up to me. She looked up with pleading eyes, she was in distress but had no visible injuries. She stared intensely like she was willing me to understand.
I had recognised that she was being hurt, she understood that and pleaded silently for me to help. She perked up briefly, hope shone in her eyes. I thought that maybe she had puppies that were somewhere and I said out loud “what’s wrong girl?” and I gestured around hoping that she’d lead me to whatever was the cause of her upset. She then visibly slumped. her head drooped down, like she had given up on everything. Of ever being rescued from whatever it was that tormented her. She turned away with one last despairing pleading look and walked away.
 
I saw two people further up the path. I knew their names as I had heard people refer to them. Shirley and Mary. I asked them if they knew whose dog that was. The one named Shirley exclaimed in a cackling voice “ignore that thing, that’s what we call it!” She then cackled like a Halloween witch with lung cancer. I looked at them suspiciously, narrowing my eyes in my best ‘if you’ve done anything to that dog ladies I will do worse to you’ expression. They looked away and shuffled off like ghouls. 
I didn’t know at the time, but what they had done is the modern day equivalent to the slow torturous hanging. The female dog died horrifically, and was tortured in a way that is worse than anything that could be described adequately enough to get across how horrific a torture was inflicted upon that innocent animal.

They coincidently were gypsies who had cuckooed houses in that cul de sac. The occupants were dead, and after eradicating all evidence of the previous occupants lives they had slowly tortured their pets.
I wish I had of known what I know now. I would have beaten the truth out of those two vile, cretinous, and cowardly women. I could have saved myself and the dog.