Oregon police investigate extreme animal cruelty

Crime feared prelude to worse

Khloe, a 20-pound female terrier mix, escaped from this yard on Mambrino Street in Oregon on Dec. 27. The next day, the frozen back half of the carcass was discovered in the yard near the back fence.

Oregon police are investigating what they describe as an especially disturbing case of animal cruelty in which a small family dog was cut in two and the hind quarters of the body were left in the owner’s yard.

“Not too much shocks us,” said police Sgt. Chris Bliss. “This kinds of shocks us. We don’t see too much of this sort of thing.”

Said Detective Sgt. Kelly Thibert, “I think the person who did this is disgusting and twisted. To us, it’s a huge warning sign that bigger problems could be coming our way.”

The dog, a 20-pound female terrier mix named Khloe, lived at 1041 Mambrino St. and was owned by Melody Wilhelm, 45, according to an Oregon police report.

Ms. Wilhelm could not be reached, and a sister of hers who reported the cruelty case to police declined to comment and asked that her name not be used. The sister said she did not have Ms. Wilhelm’s latest phone number.

Nobody answered the door at the Mambrino address, and her phone number on the police report was incorrect. Sergeant Thibert said she too had been unable to reach Ms. Wilhelm by phone.

The dog was one of three the family owned, according to the report, and ot escaped from the fenced-in yard on Dec. 27.

Ms. Wilhelm told police Khloe escaped through a small opening near the gate. When the dog failed to bark at the door as it usually did when it wanted in, family and friends began searching for the 9-year-old black-and-brown canine.

Khloe had been in the yard with the family’s other two dogs, a “pit bull” type and a boxer mix, Sergeant Bliss said.

The search party walked the neighborhood and “looked more intently later on,” Sergeant Bliss said, but found no trace of the dog. Then, the next day, the frozen back half of the dog’s body was discovered in the yard, just inside the back fence.

Sergeant Bliss said there was no doubt, from the clean cut, that the dog was killed by a person, not an animal. “Somebody did this. We just don’t know who,” he said.

Ms. Wilhelm told police she believed Khloe was cut in two at another location.

If so, Sergeant Bliss said, “Somebody did this to send a message. What that message was, we don’t know.”

The Mambrino address had been a source of complaints from neighbors, Sergeant Bliss said. The dog went missing the day after a loud, crowded party at the house that officers responded to, but he could not say if there was a connection.

Anyone with information is asked to call police at 419-698-7064.

“From an investigatory standpoint, there is virtually nothing to go on,” Sergeant Bliss said.