Just The Tip-sters

57 years ago psychiatrist J.M. Macdonald  wrote a paper published in The American Journal of Psychiatry entitled "The Threat to Kill," in which he proposed that there is a link between three childhood behaviors - persistent bed-wetting past the age of 5, an obsession with fire and fire-starting, and cruelty to animals - and violent behavior, most notably homicidal and sexually predatory behavior.  This formula for criminal behavior has come to be known as The Macdonald Triad, and while the theory is still debated by criminologists and criminal psychologists to this day, statistics over time have tended to bear out its worth.   This is particularly true of the characteristic of animal cruelty.  Time and again studies have shown a distinct tie between those who torture and/or kill animals and behaviors of sexual deviancy, serial murder and - as discussed in this episode - terrorism.  One of the leaders in the charge to convince law enforcement to take seriously the extensive data on animal cruelty as it pertain