Police are hunting a suspected gang of satanic worshippers they fear marked the Summer Solstice with horrific mutilations – on HORSES.
Officers say two animals were found with “gaping” knife wounds in neighbouring fields in the village of Stokeinteignhead, Devon.
One line of inquiry is that the wounds were inflicted to mark the solstice – a key date in the Satanic calender when devil worshippers are said to dismember and mutilate animals.
The first victim, a 15-hand rescue thoroughbred called Dream, needed stitches to an 18-inch gash after a knife was plunged into its chest on June 18.
Owner Kate Daly: “It’s pretty horrendous. The vet has said it was definitely made by a bladed instrument like a craft knife.”
Another steed, Mr Moon, suffered three sinister slash wounds in an attack on June 23.
Owner Bryony Stevens said: “I found it creepy because it was on the night of the full moon and the summer solstice.
“There are rumours these attacks could have been carried out by satanists.”
The picturesque village was the scene of barbaric attack in January last year, when several horses were tortured and mutilated with knives.
Another was killed on January 7 last year – known as St Winebald Day in the satanic calendar – in an apparent animal sacrifice.
PCSO Colin Rider said the horses wounded in the latest attack had all been stabbed and slashed with a blade.
He said: “Any attack on an animal is taken seriously. It is normally a very quiet area. We don’t get incidents of this nature.”
