Due to her illness, Cruella De Vil is one of the most popular and feared villains in Disney fantasy. My passion for dalmatian puppiesHe was making coats for high society. Cruella is a character born from the pen of author Dorothy Gladys “Dodie” Smith in 1956 for Disney’s novel ‘101 Dalmatians’, which would later bring her to celluloid and Hollywood stardom.

However, to create the character of Cruella De Vil, the writer may well have Inspired by the story of Juliet Tuttle, a charming millionaire from New York who was hiding a terrible secret: He was a ruthless serial killer of dogs. Although Tuttle had no breed preference in his case, he was not against ending the lives of cats that came his way.

Mrs. Tuttle, loving protector of animals

Author Pagan Kennedy became interested in the story of this wealthy serial animal killer and published his story. In the eyes of the New York public in the 1930s, Juliet Tuttle was a beautiful, widowed heiress to her husband Charles Tuttle’s fortune. As published Atlanticher husband made a fortune by founding a newspaper in New Haven (Connecticut), but he soon contracted tuberculosis and died just two years after their wedding.

Freed from her bonds and her economy unraveled, she moved into an apartment on wealthy Park Avenue and bought a summer house in Larchmont in upstate New York, where she was always accompanied by a maid and a chauffeur who accompanied her everywhere.

The widow was a very active part of the Women’s Animal League, which advocated for pet birds in 1930 when an outbreak of psittacosis, known as “parrot fever”, caused panic. This epidemic had no more impact on humans than flu symptoms, but it did lead to the literal slaughter of parrots and all kinds of domestic birds in New York.

Tuttle appeared in the press as a “friend of the birds” and worked closely with another widow: Helen Bethune Adams. New Yorker He was described as “the person who compassionately euthanized a dog that children had unconsciously dipped in green paint at the Ellin Prince Speyer Animal Hospital in New York.”

Münchhausen syndrome in the animal kingdom

In 1931, as leader of the Women’s League for the Protection of Animals, she set off all the alarms by declaring that the big cat population that had been keeping the mouse population in check had now become a kind of feral mafia and a “plague of the half-homeless.” – hungry and abandoned cats are carriers of disease and a disgrace to humanity.”

The widow told reporters that she “spent six days a week and about nine hours each day picking up all the stray cats and homeless dogs she could find in the back of her limousine and taking them to a place where they would receive care or treatment.” “merciful sacrifice.” The driver witnessed all this.

Actually the truth is Most of these animals did not come alive They were taken to the Ellin Prince Speyer Animal Hospital, where they were treated or euthanized. The cruel widow impregnated a bag with chloroform and placed the animals that had suffocated to death inside. Others gave gas.

Juliet Tuttle’s impunity for killing animals was paradoxically motivated by her need to offer animals a compassionate death. In 1894, New York passed a new animal control law known as: Chapter 115. This law prohibited “perreros”, people whose job it was to hunt stray or sick dogs, lock them in cages, and throw them into the river.

The new rule established that stray dogs should be adopted and only the sickest or most aggressive should be euthanized “in the most humane manner possible.” Therefore, organizations that were supposed to take care of the animals in theory built slaughterhouses.

Juliet Tuttle, Unchained

Apparently Juliet Tuttle liked it and was no longer happy with the stray animals. He felt the need to kidnap pets by tearing them from their gardens. At one point she outgrew Manhattan and moved her hunting grounds to her suburban home in Westchester County.

There, her chauffeur drove his limousine for hours and took Juliet Tuttle to “feed” the hundreds of dogs playing in their yard. One day in April 1937, a millionaire widow got out of her limousine and approached the dogs playing on the sidewalk. He took out a bag from his pocket and fed something to the dogs. A woman and her dog waiting for the bus witnessed the incident.

Just a few hours later, the woman’s Irish setter at the bus stop was dead, as was one of those dogs, and the other was stuck between life and death. The woman who witnessed it called the police and reported that someone was poisoning dogs in the neighborhood.

Police had little difficulty tracking down a luxury limousine; 75 reports of dog poisoning It’s the route his driver claims he travels with the millionaire widow every afternoon.

The news was published on page 25 New York Times May 19, 1937: “Miss Juliet Tuttle, of Larchmont and New York, known for years as an animal lover and humane society worker, was released on bail of $500 (about $10,000 today after her arrest last night). Poisoning of four precious dogs in the California Ridge section of Eastchester last Saturday afternoon.

A month later, the same newspaper published the news that the cute millionaire had been killed. found guilty of poisoning portrait of a German shepherd.

Cruella De Vil caught Dalmatian puppies to make coats from their fur, and Montgomery Burns made fluffy moccasins from the fur of two mastiffs. What could be Juliet Tuttle’s dark intention to become the most prolific pet killer in history?

in Xataka | 10 million Euros for your cat: More and more people leave their entire inheritance to their pets

Image | via Xataka Midjourney