Abused Kitten Saga
Suspected Kitten Abuser Dead in Apparent Suicide
A man suspected of flushing a kitten down a toilet is dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, police say.By Amy Linn, 2-04-10
Just days ago, the Missoulian prominently displayed a story about a kitten, nicknamed Mercy, that had allegedly been flushed down a toilet and stomped or thrown against a wall. A neighbor called 911 and the four-month-old kitten, still alive, was treated for its injuries. The article was picked up nationwide and drew widespread attention. On Wednesday, the kitten was euthanized because its injuries were too severe, veterinarians said.
Today, KPAX reports that police arrived at the apartment of the man suspected in the case, planning to serve him with a warrant for aggravated cruelty. As an officer walked inside the man’s apartment, he heard a gunshot, according to the Missoulian.
After calling for backup, securing the neighborhood, and evacuating some nearby residents in case more gunfire ensued, police entered the man’s apartment at 2419 38th St. and found him dead of what apparently was a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police told reporters.
The man’s death is sure to draw some attention—but probably not as much as the story of Mercy. A man who tortures and abuses animals is obviously a person with a mental illness, a criminal, a very disturbed human being. Some people who contacted the Missoulian called for vengeance and said the man deserved to die. Chances are good his death won’t create an uproar nationwide.
For more on the kitten and the alleged suicide in South Missoula, click here.
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I am not condoning how he treated his kitten. But celebrating suicide makes me ashamed to call myself a Missoulian.
"On February 2, 2010, officers went to the residence to serve a search warrant. They knocked on the door several times and announce it was the police. There was no answer for a long period of time. Detective Denton then heard a male's voice state he was afraid to come to the door. Bassett stated he was going to shoot himself and end it all. Although he denied remembering what happened, he stated he was sorry for what happened to the kitten and that he has nothing to live for. He informed Detective Denton that he had been diagnosed with clinical depression for nineteen years. Bassett offered to pay for the kitten's injuries. Mental health professionals were called after his repeated statements to end his life."
http://copsandcourts.com/wp-content/uploads/Bassett-complaint
Frankly, all the rhetoric about humanity and animal cruelty aside, a drowned cat isn't news - disowned, abandoned or feral cats living on the streets suffer worse fates on a day-to-day basis, and none of them get "justice" - and it's truly bizarre that the Missoulian felt that this story needed even the amount of local exposure it would have gotten WITHOUT being picked up by national rags. And I don't know anything about procedure, but what is the point of gaining a search warrant in this case? The cat was already in possession as of Tuesday the 2nd.
This situation demanded psychiatric care or the attention of social workers. How would you react if you were already on the brink, having lashed out with acts of shameful, unspeakable violence at innocent animals, and had heard people say things about you like what you all have been saying about Bassett (yes, he was a human being, with a name and eye color and pulse and everything), and then the police came knocking at your door saying that they had a warrant to rifle through your stuff? Can you even answer honestly?
Say what you want. But maybe your time would be better spent meditating over how good you have it, or at least trying to imagine how this event actually came to pass. There's no point in demonizing or making a poster-boy of this man.
He wasn't mental, he had 20 years after being diagnosed as depressive to clean up his act. He lied to a person asking him questions for a story, he lied to the police and he lied to his family. He was also convicted for prescribing narcotics years earlier and moved to another state, then moved to Montana. He had so many choices to come clean, but he didn't.
He killed a helpless kitten, he knew he was in trouble, and the commenters on the stories and other blogs have every right to voice their outrage.
He wasn't man enough to own up to any of his actions, and was a coward, plain and simple. Can't stand the heat? Kill yourself. Selfish, selfish, selfish.
Mental illness: a ploy/excuse only when you get caught.
Then blame the cops for doing their job. Then sue the city for employing cops not doing their second job designated by society, as psychiatrists. Then sue the local papers for publishing a story. His address was published just like every other criminal's address is published when they are under investigation and have charges coming. Then blame your family, your friends, your neighbors, your co-workers and the check-out girl at the store and society as a whole because we didn't PREVENT this. Then have your wacko sister following threads and posting "he was such a nice guy" and berating anyone with a brain who recognizes misplaced blame when they see it. She's telling everyone "he so loved his kitten". Uh-huh. Right. His sister is as dilusional as he was. Kind of makes you wonder, why his FAMILY wasn't there to help him all these years?
I cry B.S. and judging by the outrage by hundreds of others, I'm not alone.
The QUESTION WAS: You place yourself in his situation: what do you do? This is a question you can't answer; the closest you get is "I wouldn't be in his situation because I'm just not a bad person, like I contend that he was."
Even assuming that you have your facts straight, how exactly do you prove a relationship between the length of time from initial diagnosis and how "sane" a person is? You're saying he was diagnosed with a mental illness a long time ago, and because he should have used that period of time to "get sane," the fact that he's still crazy is his fault, right?
That may be good enough for you, but don't lie to yourself: it's an ad homonym attack on a person you didn't even know personally, and you're using it to make sense of a chaotic world in which an isolated and depressed man did something horrible to an innocent creature and then killed himself.
If you and all these other concerned citizens are so circumspect, and your rage and your despondency are so authentic, why are you struggling to justify it to me on an internet forum?
You're calling B.S. to a red herring argument that you yourself just iterated on my behalf - they're not my words, just what you read into them. I never said he was "right" or that the police caused him to do what he did - only that we all failed. Bassett, the Missoulian, the police, social services, psychological medicine, society: fail. No one needed or deserved to die here; someone did die here. Failure.
Her brother just died. Why don't you go over to her house and call her a phony?
"Then have your wacko sister following threads and posting "he was such a nice guy" and berating anyone with a brain who recognizes misplaced blame when they see it."
You think what I'm saying is somehow directly connected to the man's sister?
Exactly who are you calling "delusional"..?
How would I react? Simple, I'd hold out my hands and let the cops cuff me, and then I'd expect to pay restitution, whether that be fines, in jail, court, prison or a mental facility. Another option, I could become a zombie so they could send me to the mental ward and I'd be taken care of by others for life. You're right, I would not be so weak and disgusting and hateful of myself enough to maliciously kill an innocent kitten. The majority in society are also not like him, they have decency, morals and values in which they live by. This was not an "isolated case", you must live under a rock to believe that.
But, being that he just MUST have already been mental, of course, in your view, he did just exactly as YOU would expect him to do. He put a bullet to his head. But you're assuming he did so because he read or heard the outrage of others? There are millions of people walking the earth who are clinically depressed, bi-polar, schizophrenic or manic depressive, few of them do what this man did. I suspect those people cared enough about themselves to do something, not rely on others to do it for them.
Somehow I seriously doubt, after violently inflicting irreparable harm on an innocent creature, he cared or was of a mind to go on the internet and see what others were saying. He told the cops he was afraid because he was guilty and he knew it. If he was afraid, then he was afraid of facing others, and looking into the mirror and discovering what a monster he truly was. If he was afraid of the big bad lynch mob, then he should have turned himself in that night, not hide from officers for 2-3 days.
Please name the national rags this story got to. The majority of the rags are local, right here in Montana and mainly because each larger city's newspaper is a mirror of that done by Lee Enterprises. Also, animal abuse IS news, I guess you've forgotten the countless cases of animal hoarding and animal abuse cases in Montana of late that have made national attention. It bothers me you have no understanding why they make the news. Could it just be, perhaps, that people are sick of the sickos out there and being blamed for not having DONE SOMETHING to hug, coddle, take care of the sickos and pay dearly for THE SICKO'S mistakes?
The monster was in control from the beginning to the end. Only when it dawned on him he would have to face the consequences of his actions, did he become even weaker and a coward, and choose to off himself. No one forced him, no one put the voices into his sick head to do so. He and he alone. A better man would have went outside for a few minutes, cooled off, or, contemplated finding someone more mentally capable of caring for a kitten the moment that evil thought of killing came into his head.
His sister: Her brother just died, you'd think she'd be on a plane to Montana to take care of business or to gather family together and console one another. Who, in their grieving mind goes on the internet following multiple stories and posts hours after a death unless they have an agenda? If she wants to defend her brother, fine, but her words are hollow in the face of the truth. She is also in denial, unable to accept the truth. And I'm not talking about shock.
Sorry, but no one failed Bassett but Bassett himself. There are options, resources, help is always available. When one does not want help, no one else should have to bear that burden.