A woman has revealed the moment she came face-to-face with a brutal cat killer - after launching her own investigation when police failed to track him down.
Steve Bouquet has been dubbed ‘the Brighton cat killer’ after stabbing nine cats to death and violently injuring seven others, torturing the local community with his savage acts of violence.
While dead cats were often found in the same area and at around the same time, local authorities thought a fox was behind the savage killings and refused to believe something more sinister was going on.
Then a group of concerned locals banded together and launched their own investigation, and soon Bouquet was caught, prosecuted, and jailed.
Now group member Wendy Harris, 47, has spoken out about the time she came face-to-face with the killer - and how she recognised him, as the pair had previously worked together.
She is appearing in the new ITV documentary How To Catch A Cat Killer which examines the gruesome case.
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Wendy, who has seven children, seven cats, two dogs, and describes herself as a 'mad cat woman', lives just outside Brighton in nearby Hove, East Sussex.
She's mum to Gareth, 28, Reece, 26, Kane, 20, India, 19, Tristan, 15, Ethan, nine, and Sydney, four, and cat mum to Badger, Bentley, Connie, Carmen, Carla, Terri, and Toni.
She works as a railway maintenance engineer, but previously worked in security and would work 'the doors' around the city, as well as patrolling dangerous areas and helping students get home safe.
During that time, she worked with some 'real characters' that are attracted to the profession - from people who just 'like a fight' to the 'right b******s' who attack security workers.
Being a trained professional, she knew how to look after herself so when she met a local community group who were investigating a spate of cat killings she gladly offered to help.
She said: "I love cats. I love dogs as well, but cats are easier. They're just amazing, I love their 'don't give a s**t' attitude - you can sit and watch them play for hours.
"My cats are really loving and I think they're really therapeutic. Cats do their own thing, if they want to come in for a cuddle they'll come over, they're just loving and playful."
To begin with, Wendy would help the group with leafletting and patrolling the streets - seeking information and evidence from people who lived in the areas where dead cats were being found.
She continued: "In the early stages a lot of them laughed it off. They said it's obviously just foxes, they treat me like the mad cat woman I probably am - they didn't believe it for a second.
"They said it was like the Croydon cat killer, even the Met had said it was foxes. It was a bit disheartening at the time, it was really upsetting that they wouldn't just, for now, keep their cats in - I know it's difficult but they were in the area where the cat killer was reoffending."
Unable to help people protect their pets, Wendy and the group began collecting evidence that they later presented to the police.
They would leaflet areas where dead cats had been found and patrol the area, looking for properties with CCTV that may have captured footage of the killer.
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Wendy added: "We assumed the killer was local because he stuck to one area, we said there must be someone who was going to work or coming home in that area.
"We thought it must be someone who worked nights because of the time. The MO for this one, what he did was within a certain range.
"At first, the reports were coming in the early hours of the morning, so I started putting info in these chat groups saying there were certain times when it was happening.
"When people were knocking on the doors and putting leaflets up, if you see they have CCTV in the areas where the attacks were they asked them if they had any footage, which is how one of the clips was found in the end."
After collecting a dossier of information the police were spurred into action and soon a suspect was arrested and eventually the name was released, Steve Bouquet.
But when she heard the name Wendy was shocked, as just a short while earlier she had been working security at a shopping centre with a Steve Bouquet.
She continued: "I felt relief that someone was caught, they didn't name him at first.
"We were just discussing in the group, Brighton is not that big of a place really, one of us might even know that person - but then we were thinking we wouldn't know anyone that would do something like that.
"When they named him I thought it can't be the same Steve Bouquet that I know, but that's not a name that's particularly common.
"I messaged one of my security friends that I had worked with before, one especially, a guy called Paul, because a few years ago they were working on a door together on a bar called the Pitch and Piano in Brighton.
"I was working on the doors in a pub opposite from them, just up the road a little bit, and Paul asked me if I wanted to leave the pub I was working on and go work with him on his door, but Steve was there and he's creepy.
"I said, 'sorry mate, he creeps me out. I don really want to be working with someone I don't like, he really creeps me out'.
"I think if you met him, you would have felt the same. Even the guys called him Creepy Steve, he was just very strange.
"I can't explain it, he's got a really strange feeling - everyone that's ever met him that I know said he's just a bit weird.
"It shocked me that I'd know the person and that he did it, but at the same time, I wasn't too surprised. Out of anyone that I could have known, I guess that he was so strange it was like, you know, not a huge shock.
"I was just quite upset that I knew someone that had done it.
"We weren't friends or anything like that but when you work alongside someone you know them but only to a certain level. I never socialised with him - I don't know if anyone did."
When the shock of knowing the prime suspect died down, Wendy decided to use her inside knowledge to the group's advantage.
She organised a way for those who were affected by Bouquet's crimes to take a look at him.
She continued: "Because I knew who he was and the owners of the cats didn't, we devised a plan. Because his picture wasn't released at that time, I said if you're going to court I'll meet you there early as soon as it opens and I'll sit down with you and when he walks in I'll point him out to you.
"Once they were all in, as I was going in through the barriers where you have to take your keys out and everything, the security part, he was next to me - he just came in.
"I was angry at what he had done - but I had to pretend I didn't know. I'd not long been assaulted and there was a court case pending at the time so I was using that as an excuse to go in there.
"He was there and I thought I had to keep him talking, so I was like, 'oh hi Steve'.
"He had his head down, he had a cap on, and I was like, 'oh no, not you as well'? and he looked at me, and I said, 'Have you been assaulted as well? Look at the state of my finger.
"Honestly, these b******s - I'm going to give up the doors, I've had enough. Good luck with yours'
"And he said, 'yeah thanks'. As he was going in he was waiting around for his solicitors and I went and sat down.
"All of them saw him that day they said he looks evil, he was dead behind the eyes and they had a horrible feeling about him. He looked ratty as well which didn't help.
"He went to prison, luckily he died in prison. It's just the beginning isn't it, he would have been in prison for a decent amount of time but we were worried when he came out he would continue.
"He would re-offend with cats but what about when he's had enough and he goes to people?
"Even though he was quite old to be doing the types of things serial killers do, without a shadow of a doubt, he would have offended again and probably gone on to people."
Bouquet, 54, was jailed for five years and three months in July 2021 after carrying out a gruesome mass slaughter of pets.
The shopping centre security guard knifed 16 cats, killing nine, in the city in a case that stumped detectives for months.
Bouquet was able to move through the city unseen and unheard as he attacked people’s beloved pets, his trial heard.
The campaign of attacks went on for several months between October 2018 and June 2019.
Nine cats – Hendrix, Tommy, Hannah, Alan, Nancy, Gizmo, Kyo, Ollie and Cosmo – were killed while another seven were injured.
As reported by The Mirror at the time, owners of some of the cats Bouquet killed were at Hove Crown Court to see him imprisoned.
Bouquet was convicted of 16 offences of criminal damage, in relation to the cats, and possession of a knife.
Sentencing Bouquet, Judge Jeremy Gold QC said his behaviour was “cruel, it was sustained and it struck at the very heart of family life”.
The Prison Service later confirmed that he had died at the hospital on January 6.
At his sentencing hearing, the court was told Bouquet had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer, which had spread to his liver and lungs.
A spokesperson for Sussex Police said: "An ITV documentary highlighting the successful Sussex Police investigation into the death of nine cats in Brighton will be aired this week.
"‘The ITV documentary will follow the complex and thorough investigation from the first reports being received in late 2018 through to sentencing in September 2021.
"It will show the breakthrough moment in May 2019 when CCTV captured Bouquet stabbing nine-month-old Hendrix in a passageway in Brighton, and his subsequent police interviews following arrest."
You can watch How to Catch a Cat Killer on Wednesday 8th June, 9pm, ITV and catch-up on the ITV Hub
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