Evidence of a furry crime ring emerges: Legal docs and news tie Cupid, Tane, more to zoosadism.

by Patch O'Furr

Content warning for animal abuse and sexual violence. Part 1 of a 5 part update about the Zoosadist chat leaks.

A rape plan [October 2017]

It’s near Halloween. In Coos Bay, Oregon, spooky movies are playing at the Egyptian Theater. And Snakething (Levi Simmons) is at home having an evening chat with a new friend, Tane, a furry fan in California. The men were introduced by a friend with a mutual interest. 

Tane goes to college, and Snakething lives with his mom — he can’t drive or work, so he spends time gathering online friends from around the world. Most come from the furry fandom. Furries often gather for special interests, like art or music, but Snakething obsessively collects porn from secret sources. His friends make a crime ring for zoosadism (a fetish for raping, torturing and murdering animals). They call it “hardzoo” (or hardzoosuiting with a fursuit, a very rare interest that they try to “corrupt” others into).

Tonight Tane and Snakething are making plans for Nacho (Nachodoggo), a woman who recently reported crimes by two other men tied to the ring. (A video of those men abusing her dog was leaked by a friend of Snakething, leading to their arrests.) The plan is to drug Nachodoggo, and when she’s unconscious, rape her with others she isn’t aware of, like their friend Tekkita.

Since they met, Tane has enjoyed a video where Snakething drugged and raped a 10-12 week old puppy. The puppy came from Craigslist, and may have been killed and dumped by the camera man to hide it. (Snakething claims it’s OK but doesn’t know.) The video was made to share with the ring. Members gain trust and favors by hooking each other up with people, animals, or content for trade, where the worst is rarest, as if the victims are Pokemon cards for kids to collect. They have a term for child targets: RLC (real life cub).

The furry fandom has maybe a million members in the world. Few or none know the full extent of one of the worst stories that has ever happened inside it. The zoosadists are a tiny group hiding in a fringe of a subculture, but one germ can take down a giant. Let’s put it under a microscope.

A threat to events [Now]

The plan to rape Nachodoggo was still secret when I saw the crimes she reported in Seattle news. In 2017, I contacted her to learn about the arrests of “Noodles” and “Cupid” (Kevin Richards and Matthew Grabowski) in Renton, WA. But when the ringleader Snakething was arrested in October 2018 for the puppy rape, he escaped charges due to statutory limits. (Time wouldn’t run out so fast for a human victim.) There are clues that much more was hidden from the police.

Tane, Cupid, and other ring members are still active at furry events. Event organizers know it.

Their plan is leading this story to highlight an active threat. Nachodoggo told me: “these men are dangerous“. She says the screenshots I showed her are real plans by people who would do anything to get what they want, with associates already using drugging and deception for sex crime.

I spoke to people involved and learned undisclosed details. Nachodoggo faced extortion and backlash, and her ID was redacted in the crime charges due to threats. There may be more interference like that, but as a source, the police found her reports worthy for cases that cleared with convictions in April 2019.

Those linked legal docs are the tip of the iceberg. Others won’t tell, and animals can’t, but a lot can be said about people known to be involved. Some claim innocence or say it’s fantasy talk. Snakething’s arrest — and this report — shows that people are getting away with crime even when caught red handed.

Data points of a larger ring: Cupid and Noodles in the news, months after abusing Nachodoggo’s dog and weeks after a plan to rape her with Cupid’s friend Tekkita.

An international problem 

While the crimes reported by Nachodoggo were in process, I had no idea about a much larger story brewing in secret. Members of the zoosadist ring were being introduced through a darkweb forum called Animals Dark Paradise that was for cruelty on the level of urban legends. I’d never heard of real animal snuff porn (where victims are used for sex during or after being killed), let alone enough demand for group meetings to make it.

Less extreme bestiality content has long thrived on unregulated sites like Beastforum. When it closed in February 2019, the Washington Examiner quoted an activist who called it a sign of legislation in progress for “a national policy against bestiality”. Meanwhile in the UK, the BBC News reported about trading of abuse images. It’s being displaced from the open web, to the dark web, to encrypted messaging:

Secure messaging apps, including Telegram and Discord, have become popular following successful police operations against criminal markets operating on what is known as the dark web… Messages are protected by peer-to-peer encryption, generally putting them beyond law enforcement’s reach.

UPDATE: shortly after this report was published, the NY Times reported an exponential rise of abuse image trading on the internet. Over 1/3 of reports to law enforcement ever received were made in the last year. It shows law enforcement resources being dwarfed by the scale, extremity, and enterprising complexity of the problem. This story would be a symptom of that explosion of tech-enabled abuse.

UPDATE: On 10/23/19, a bill passed to make animal torture and sexual exploitation a federal felony for the first time. “The PACT Act allows authorities to go after the wrongdoers because they will have federal jurisdiction and will not be bound by state laws.” 

A ring exposed [September 2018]

On Telegram, Snakething’s “hardzoo” group (“The Forest” or “BBB/Beasty Beast Beasts”) filtered in members from larger zoophile groups, letting them concentrate resources and contacts. Unsatisfied by trading common files, they gathered to create zoosadist content that resembled the acts of movie serial killers.

Dogs would be gotten from animal rescues or private ads from people hoping to give them forever homes. They would be restrained with duct tape, rope or drugs, then mutilated and torn apart to hear them “sing”, in the words of a ring member who was arrested for killings in Cuba.

We can now read that Snakething and Tane were planning to rent a beautiful cabin in the woods for a weekend getaway, like a group vacation for five normal friends. But instead of a place to enjoy a fire or go hiking, they wanted to budget for “toys” (disposable animals from Craigslist), and looked for seclusion so screaming dogs couldn’t be heard being raped.

The rental site where they looked at cabins in Mt. Hood National Forest, Oregon. The plan could use Tane’s experience in 4-wheeler driving, and video tech skills for setting up furry cons.

This upset admins of shady groups like Zoofurries Society/Zeta Corner or Zoofurries Alliance. They got a password that Snakething gave to a play partner, and dumped the logs from his Telegram account. On 9/16/2018, they put it on Twitter and tagged me as a news source, but I had no idea what it was about.

Reasons to leak

The leakers claimed “no vendettas”. I started with a theory of fallout from the Nachodoggo/Cupid/Noodles cases, with dueling evidence disclosures tied to plea deals (or “insurance” from a dead man’s switch). Or a move to taint evidence to block more charges. There were deals, revenge motives and friend ties, but I couldn’t say they directly caused the leaks or had anything to do with why many members were exposed.

The going story says a domination/blackmail fetish game was used to trick a password out of Snakething’s play partner, and then truly expose animal torture. The partner seems to be EliteKnight, who posted a story to match. He was a definite candidate for blackmail about illegal activity. (And being a “fall guy”. I think they have others being visible faces for their groups to dump if they’re at risk, too.) — Comment in hindsight: it’s more likely that Eliteknight was only one minor ring member pressed for info, but the password came directly from Snakething.

Leaking online instead of reporting to police made a mess for investigation. I think the leakers did it because they feared being arrested, exposing friends and losing their groups. It was extremely dubious to see them pose as having good intentions for cutting risks to themselves. (Snakething became a security threat to them when his video trading caused Cupid’s arrest). There’s many reasons to find this unacceptable and a form of obstruction. It’s also likely that the story wouldn’t be known otherwise.

I doubt any single person knows how deep this goes, but after hundreds of hours of research and talking to dozens of sources, I can say more than anyone has written in one place so far.

Reporting the story [One year later]

This multi-part article took weeks to write, including sorting evidence in linked archives. This is a third news update since 2018. Furry readers may have heard of Kero the Wolf, the highest-profile gateway to the story. (Kero’s boyfriend was Illone/Colwyn, a fellow zoosadist known as very active on Animals Dark Paradise). Kero’s 100K-strong Youtube following (and lying to the public, including hiding ties to “Colwyn”) earned a focus for previous articles:

This is the hardest story I’ve written, by research time, emotional cost and backlash. That includes knee-jerk attacks from bystanders about dealing with sources or trying to get help. The cost is more than could ever be gained, but it comes from caring about others. I hate having it in news about furries, but I hate having it buried even more.

In a year of trying to shine light on a murky story, I can see how tangled it is. Ring members got caught up with infighting, infiltrating, bargaining, and blackmailing each other. Zoophiles that partially outed them threaten to ruin the story if they can’t control it. They want apologism and credit for helping (imagine a necrophile, leaning on a shovel, saying “we don’t like people who kill for corpses”). Sources or reporters are targets of smokescreens, manipulation, and backlash to limit exposure. Community apathy includes denying it’s a fandom issue, acting like it’s private business, just fantasy, “drama”, or cyber-bullying to talk about it. Everyone acts like a ring isn’t a ring.

Worst of all are blind complicity, defenses for indefensible things, and lies about the story being fake.

The chats are real people talking about real activity.

See for yourself. Warning: graphic evidence of animal abuse. Check legality in your jurisdiction to view this. To my knowledge (not a lawyer), viewing to investigate in the USA is legal and it’s been checked by many people. It may be illegal in the UK and Crown dependencies under the “extreme porn” laws. 

Members of the ring confirm the logs are real by their actions. Their private activity cross-checks with years of matching activity with friends, social media posts, news reports, and crime cases. It synchs with original information like incriminating photos/videos found only in the logs. One purpose for the ring was to hook each other up to make “zoosuiter” porn, and unique costumes can identify their wearers. With Kero’s boyfriend Illone/Colwyn, his death (by heroin) ties many pieces together (that’s why Kero erases the memory of his dead boyfriend, who can never speak denial.) It all weaves a huge matrix of corroboration.

For a conspiracy theory of faking the chats, it would take a squad of Hollywood scriptwriters, with intimate knowledge of hundreds of ID’s and movements that would need a time machine to predict, somehow having power over uneditable server-side sources. A claim about evidence of hacking was shown to be a lie by Kero (who still hasn’t fully disclosed his involvement). Hacking Telegram to target one member and smear their image would be akin to a government taking down another country’s electrical grid to turn off one light bulb; faking a giant ring is absurdly unreal for such a motive. This mess of a conspiracy theory would be hopeless to carry out undetected, with no coherent reason, and if one could hack Telegram they could claim huge rewards. I haven’t seen a single real clue that anything was faked — although not everything was exposed that could be.

The cult of cruelty

Known members exposed in the ring (by account names):

  • Snakething — Ringleader in Oregon and obsessive collector of extreme porn, who gathered members on Telegram to feed his urges.
  • Woof — Cuban, basically an animal serial killer to make torture porn, and focus of a hunt that extracted a confession.
  • Eliteknight — Florida resident and play partner of Snakething, who abused his dog for zoosadist porn. He posted confirmation for the leaks.
  • Glowfox — Peruvian who forced sadism on dogs, whose boyfriend appears in the logs too. He claimed to be taken “out of context” for being in the ring.
  • Tane — Had a special porn trading deal with Snakething. Partner to an SF Bay Area furry, who confirmed Tane was in the ring with excuses about why.
  • Kero — From PA, he made necro/bestiality content behind the scenes while doing innocent-looking fursuiting on Youtube for over 100,000 subscribers.
  • Sephius — Austrian who claimed to rape puppies to death, thought to be the person in a video of sex with a dead deer originally attributed to Kero.
  • Equinas — Zoophile ranch owner in WA, hoster of furry/zoophile parties and Calzoo ring activity going back to the 1990’s.
  • Tim Win/Matepups — Camera man for Snakething’s abuse video, associate of Equinas, reputed to be the most unhinged member with many victims.
  • Tekkita/Mr. Bitchtits — Zoosadist contact of Snakething, associated to Cupid and source for porn of him (possible partner or roommate).
  • Techno Husky — SF Bay Area zoosadist who Snakething tries to convince to abuse the family chihuahua, text indicates sharing child porn.
  • Sangie — play partner of Snakething, owner of Inkedfur (a furry art printing company), helps groom the nephew of Snakething for molesting.
  • Blonde Dog/Golden Retriever — Into decapitation and necrophilia with puppies, works at a dog boarding kennel, meets Tane in person.
  • Ember — Ring member who discussed sedating dogs for rape, who caught public attention for his drug overdose at BLFC 2017.
  • Kintari — Previously known vet tech/zoophile (NSFW) named in the logs for zoosadism/snuff porn, and source for drugs to subdue animals for rape.
  • Illone Sheppypaws — Kero’s boyfriend, Animals Dark Paradise user who introduced Woof to Snakething.
  • Coywolf, Humacyrnus, Mo Mo, Shepnuts, Zeta Omega, Xyro, Miskas, and more who aren’t named.

Associated by guilt

Dozens of members make countless ties to already known crime:

  • Sangie is a convicted sex offender (and subject of many tips to this site about a repeat pattern).
  • Spark Dalmation is a repeat sex offender. In the chat he’s on a list of names, including Tane, said to be into/experienced with “RLC” (Real Life Cub.)
  • Icepaws was a former Anthrocon staffer whose porn is shared by Snakething, arrested for animal abuse in the bust of a furry pedophile ring in PA.
  • Cupid and Noodles were convicted for their charges, with court records corroborating what’s in the logs.

Association — in the court record of Cupid’s conviction. It has Nachodoggo’s 2017 police report with details that appeared independently in the 2018 chat leaks, like Cupid getting animals from private adoption ads to rape and dump. Tane’s logs mention that while Cupid was on bail and unable to own pets, there was a plan to pay for delivery of “one time use” animals from Craigslist, which would be snuffed and left in the woods. Some members discussed large payments to make videos. These are some of many corroborating details between people, legal docs, and media.

Known leakers and hosts

Difficult sourcing may be the only way this could be seen:

  • Shadowwoof (leaker) — Admin of groups like Zoofurries Society (with around 1000 members and at one time had admins like zoosadist Tekkita). He’s been admin/opposition for Simba in the UK (known for running a furry Discord group with a cult-like/multi-level social credit system. Simba collects user info and runs FinDom groups, and is under police investigation.) Shadow uses threats/blackmail to gather info, so wasn’t consulted for this article.
  • Akela (leaker) — member of zoophile groups. He uses threats/blackmail to gather info, so wasn’t consulted for this article.
  • Logs are hosted on TOR by Doug Spink (not a source). He plays “zoophile media spokesperson,” with a cocaine-smuggling felony record, news articles and a book by a journalist about him. He posted that ring members force the logs down from hosts with legal claims that their own info is too extreme.
  • Logs are also on Kiwifarms, a notorious harassment site that rejects takedowns to be one of the only open hosts.

Demanding other sourcing is an easy deflection. (Where else would it come from? How does Wikileaks get documents?) Deniers can find lots of ways to attack this messenger, because that’s easier than defending a ring. It’s a common tactic to cover up institutional abuse, although a fandom doesn’t exactly have institutions. There’s more like a little power and lots of “not my job” involved. Nobody has a real watchdog job in it (I’m a volunteer who just reports things).

Independently of getting involved with the leakers, I looked myself and found a real story. It made much harder work for a lone reporter, vastly uncompensated by tiny PBS-style support. It lets me say my article has no profit, and no stake in blackmail, harassment sites, deals, or protecting anyone. Again, not one real clue of faking has reached my attention, and the logs have a mountain of corroboration. It’s getting stronger over time with elements like Cupid’s conviction.

A major news report of orphanage abuse by nuns lacked institutional records that exposed priest abuse — instead it cross-checked many sources to build evidence.

One ring to rule them all

The zoosadist ring has abuse beyond any seen in the past, but it ties to an overlapping list of older rings:

There were enough ties that I had already been comparing news stories and developing sources before learning of the zoosadist ring in 2018. It took root in furry zoophile groups, and wormed into a niche of a niche of a subculture using its resources and networks. These sub-groups are sometimes held out as social connection for people who love their pets that much, but are founded on porn trading with mental gymnastics about it. (They’re also places where members may be surveilled or blackmailed.) Keep in mind that nobody approves who joins the community, and furry fans are also working to uncover the story.

Focus on Tane

One ring member has gotten low notice so far for high activity. His chat logs with the ringleader Snakething are some of the longest, and they had a deal for sharing all content that came in. (Only one other person had such access.) Later parts will show triple-checked corroboration that Tane’s logs are real, and a detailed breakdown of the contents (including practices to evade police.) It makes a thread to help follow a tangled story where tech has a big role.

Tane works in information security with government clearance, and was known as a member of the public DEFCON Furs group and a regular attendee of the DEF CON hacker convention in Las Vegas. (See their official statement below.) DEFCON Furs is a tech focused group “for members of the infosec community that share an interest in the furry fandom,” and they organize events and parties at the con. Tane appeared in a Vice article about fursuiting at DEF CON. He seems to travel a lot, which ties to animal sex tourism clues in the logs, including going to a zoophile meet at a farm in Nebraska.

At the Nebraska farm, Tane met a friend who runs a furry porn imageboard, and a performer in animal porn videos from the commercial maker Petlust. (An employee did a Q&A about his job there, mentioning “tech savvy” and a tie to the “Mr. Hands” incident.)

These screens came from Tane’s Howlr profile. Notice how many furry events are on his list — places where ring members planned to meet for their activity.

Howlr is a popular furry sex hookup service like Grindr, generally for consenting adults, but founded by Stormy, who left due to controversy about bestiality acts shortly before the chat leaks. Independently, the leaks tied him to the ring’s plans for “zoosuiter” parties with pimp-like animal owner hookups at furry cons.

Monsters with friendly faces

Old horror stories have monsters who lurk in the wilderness beyond civilization. Modern monsters hide behind masks of technology, but walk among you like friends. They aren’t just strangers on the internet. Some of them help to run your community while complicit with this story. That’s everyone’s problem.

Come back for more about that in the next parts. As always, send requests for help to report anonymously, guest submissions, hugs, coupons, death threats, or (worst of all) plans to call me a narc and throw gum on my fursuit to: patch.ofurr@gmail.com.

UPDATES and corrections: Cupid did not work for Boeing, he worked at SEA-TAC as a service engineer for Alaska Airlines. EliteKnight was not in Ohio (source of a police report about him,) he was in Florida. Miskas is added to names in the ring from the chat logs and a tip from a source whose own experience corroborates the logs. “Nacho” has been updated to account name “Nachodoggo” to help separate it from others with similar handles. Tane info updated after verification.

On 9/17/19, organizers reached out with an official statement: “DEFCON Furs does not tolerate abusive behavior. Actions have been taken to address the accusations raised by this article.” From more personal messages with DEFCON Furs members, at this time I would think Tane’s activity was never condoned and doesn’t represent them. It only shows another member of the public being interested in tech. Positive activities they organize deserve an article of their own.

More — Part 1): Exposing the ring. Part 2): Running scared. Part 3): Investigation blocked. Part 4): A new development. Part 5): Interview with an expert.

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