The children's sometimes bizarre stories of Satan worship, animal mutilation and trips to remote places have all but vanished.

"There have always been reports of people seeing monsters," he writes, adding later that "inexplicable animal mutilations have been around for a very long time."

Teen-agers staging a mock ceremony, for instance, might face charges of malicious damage of property, trespassing and animal mutilation.

We learn far more than we could possibly want to know about the threatening and bigoted letters received by George's family in the years before the animal mutilations.

He'd followed the trail of animal mutilations looking for his usual prey and come across the wacko kids instead.

Unknown to Carter, Reece, as a teenager, had been responsible for a string of animal mutilations and two sexual assaults on younger children.

We're asking the neighbors if they saw anybody fooling with the dog, and we're working the phones today checking local vets for other animal mutilations.

Nine children testified that they were molested and photographed, then frightened into silence with threats and bloody animal mutilations.

Well, we've had animal mutilations before, just not so close to Dallas or so many; the Chief was inclined to let the county mounties handle it.

"Or at least he came from Mexico; probably around April of last year, since that's when the first animal mutilations started."