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. . . for art project. Details below. The sentencing hearing was today, and the entire 20-minute hanging, torturing, disembowelling, and skinning alive of the cat was shown in the courtroom. The sentence will likely come on Tuesday, after the Easter weekend. It seems that Jesse, the main perpetrator, is an extreme vegan, and wished to show the cruelty of eating meat.
Too bad some "meat" got in the way.
Pair guilty of skinning cat alive
By ROB GRANATSTEIN, Toronto Sun
Two men who skinned a live cat face up to 2 1/2 years in prison for their gruesome crime.
Anthony Ryan Wennekers, 24, smirked from the prisoners' box while Jessie Champlain Powers, 21, looked at the floor and clutched a book as they pleaded guilty yesterday to cruelty to animals and mischief.
Police raided the duo's Kensington Market-area apartment in June 2001 after someone overheard they had killed a cat. Police found the dead cat and more than 40 videos.
A 10-minute videotaped beating shows the two men coaxing the cat to chase a mouse in the Bathurst St. house. When the cat refuses, its head is put in a noose and it's hanged.
The men slash the cat's throat, then take dental tools and stab the cat repeatedly. The short-haired cat was then disembowelled with a straight knife.
STILL ALIVE
"The cat was still alive when it was skinned and cut open," John Dobranski, the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals agent called to the house, said outside court. "It was faintly meowing."
Police and OSPCA agents found the cat skinned and hanging in the fridge. Bones from other animals and live mice were also found.
Wennekers and Powers were arrested by police as they walked back to the apartment.
The video is so gruesome, a veteran Toronto Humane Society veterinarian cried when he saw the tape.
Cruelty to animals carries a maximum six-month sentence, while mischief carries a sentence of up to two years in jail.
There is a bill in final reading before Parliament to hike the penalty for cruelty to animals to five years, but that will not apply in this case.
The men are back in court Jan. 29, when a sentencing date will be set. The video is expected to be shown at sentencing.
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Men plead guilty to torture death of cat
By WALLACE IMMEN
Thursday, January 17, 2002 Print Edition, Page A23
Two Toronto men pleaded guilty yesterday to the torture death of a cat that they recorded on videotape and said was an artistic expression.
Anthony Ryan Wenneker, 24, and his roommate Jesse Powers, 21, pleaded guilty and waived their right to trial on separate counts of animal cruelty, mischief, theft and killing of animals.
Ontario Court Judge Edward Ormston scheduled sentencing for Jan. 29.
Under the Criminal Code, acts of animal cruelty are subject to sentences of up to six months in jail and fines of up to $2,000.
Toronto Police laid the charges in May after complaints from animal-rights groups.
The video, which shows a black-and-white cat being tortured and killed, was found in a police search of the rooming house the men live in. It was apparently never shown publicly.
A third suspect in the case, who appears in the videotape and is referred to as Matt, has not been found.
Mr. Powers, a student at the Ontario College of Art and Design, has gone on record in a newspaper as saying the 17- minute video was an artistic statement about the suffering of animals used for meat.
The killing aroused storms of protest from people appalled by the methodical torture of a cat.
After the charges were laid in May, protesters attacked the Art System gallery, where Mr. Powers had displayed previous works, in one case throwing a brick through the window of the building, on Spadina Avenue.
Directors of the gallery appeared at Mr. Powers's bail hearing and defended his previous work.
Hairhead here: the original sentencing hearing was postponed from January to today because the outcry was so large. The waiting period didn't work. There were large protests outside the courtroom as the defendants, smirking, walked in.
These two guys obviously have a few issues.
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