Two dozen dead cats found hung from tree in grisly Yonkers vacant lot

A serial kitty killer apparently bashed 25 cats to death before hanging their remains like ornaments from a Yonkers tree, a Westchester County ASPCA official said Friday.

Necropsies on three of the slain felines showed they were killed by blunt force trauma to the head and then stuffed into plastic bags, Executive Director Shannon Laukhuf said.

The results 'seemed pretty consistent with the condition the other bodies were in' and officials believe all the cats died in the same violent fashion, Laukhuf said.

The Yonkers sanitation worker who made the grisly find Thursday morning said he made a similar grotesque discovery in the same vacant Overlook Terrace lot last summer.

Michael Schwartz /for New York Daily News

'Not as many, maybe two or three, but hanging in bags like this,' said Brett Pisano of the city Department of Public Works.

'They were skeletons last year,' he continued. 'I said to myself, 'Why did they do it again?''

Pisano and his supervisor Glenn Stefanik were doing a routine cleanup at the lot when they spotted one gutted cat's body sticking out of a bag.

Michael Schwartz /for New York Daily News

'It's sick, really twisted to do something like this,' Stefanik said. 'It's horrible. It's something you never want to see.'

The ASPCA and Yonkers police responded to the scene after the two workers spied the rest of the dangling bags.

Neighbors on the short dead-end street said they have noticed stray cats disappearing since January - and recalled last year's grisly discovery.

'It's not the first time it's happened,' said one resident who declined to give his name. 'About a year ago they found some cats back there like they did yesterday, but they didn't do anything about it back then.'

The man said he also noticed the local stray cat population diminishing in recent months. A second neighbor echoed his grim observation.

'I used to see them all over, like more than a dozen ... and all of a sudden now I only see one or two,' said the woman, who lives in a building alongside the lot.

The horrified woman said she thought the killer had severe emotional issues.

'That's just awful, you have to have a sick mind to do something like that,' she said. 'That's really twisted.'

ebadia@nydailynews.com