The True Story Behind The Furry Detectives: Unmasking A Monster
In 2018, a journalist was tagged in a tweet by someone claiming they had evidence of a horrific crime. The tweet linked to a cache of information that became known as the “Furry Zoosadist Leaks,” which exposed a criminal conspiracy of animal abuse lurking beneath the playful, animal-loving furry community. In the aftermath of the leaks, the community took matters into their own hands, seeking out the culprits, exacting justice, and doing whatever they could to clear the furry name.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]That case and the resulting investigation are the basis of a riveting if hard-to-watch true crime docu-series, The Furry Detectives: Unmasking A Monster, on Sundance starting July 17. Directed and executive produced by Theo Love and produced by Alex Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions, the series follows a pack of amateur investigators who team up online to expose a ring of animal abusers who were using the furry community as a cover for their crimes.
“There are bad people within furry, that doesn’t make furry bad,” Naia Okami, one of the investigators and a furry community member, says in the first episode of the four-part series. “Unfortunately, niche communities, especially misunderstood niche communities, are targets for predators.”
Jarring crimes shock a strong community
For those unfamiliar, there may be one overarching question: What exactly is a furry?
“I think everyone kind of has their own definition,” explains R, whose real name, but not face, is withheld in the series. “My definition is, a furry is a person who enjoys anthropomorphic creatures or animals.” Typically, furries don animal suits, some cartoonish, others more realistic, that reflect their personalities. Others find a deeper connection to the animals. Okami, for example, is perhaps best known for a viral interview where she said, “On all levels, except physical, I am a wolf.”
Furries across the animal-identifying spectrum meet up online or in real life at clubs, conferences, and bowling nights to have fun together. They generally pride themselves on being accepting, kind, and friendly. “The community is so great because we come from all different walks of life,” says R in the series. “I think of it as friendship, fun, and loving and accepting and inclusive and diverse.” The happy, fun-loving nature of the furry community is part of the reason that the crimes found lurking in the fandom were so jarring.
The leaks began when Patch O’Furr, who is both a furry and its self-appointed chronicler as owner of furry news site, Dogpatch Press, was tagged in a post on Twitter (now known as X). The tweet accused certain members of the community of zoosadism, a term he had never heard before. He did some research and was led to a private channel on the Telegram app filled with evidence of the crimes. It was even worse than he thought. “Somebody who commits acts of zoosadism is someone who gets sexual pleasure from the pain and terror they are inflicting on animals,” Okami explains in the series. While animal abuse is always abhorrent and appalling, it’s even more so when it comes from within a community of self-professed animal people. Okami, an intelligence consultant by day, was so horrified by what she saw that she jumped into the burgeoning amateur investigation with one goal: Find every last person involved in the crime, get them arrested, and get them out of the furry world. Okami and O’Furr weren’t alone in their hunt. Members of the furry community around the globe teamed up to comb through the Telegram channel and find the perpetrators behind the sickening animal torture and abuse.
The never-ending quest to track down animal abusers
Another thing to know about the furry community is that they tend to be famously very tech savvy. When deciding to investigate these crimes, they used their skills to parse the data from the Telegram channel, poring over the logs from the chats, documenting the usernames associated with the crimes. They slowly started to amass a list of possible suspects, including Kero the Wolf, a furry vlogger with a “popufur” YouTube channel. Furries around the world began speaking out and calling for justice. While Kero claimed he was innocent, arguments for and against those claims quickly divided the community. Connor Goodwolf, a cybersecurity expert and furry community member, found what he believed to be incriminating evidence against Kero. Evidence that was so compelling that Goodwolf decided to exact revenge on someone he saw as a criminal. He doxxed Kero, posting his address for the world. At the same time, R contacted the police in Kero’s area and shared the information they had collected on him. The police got a search warrant and went to Kero’s home and collected all his electronic devices. They found nothing they could use against him. Kero was either the first culprit caught by the so-called Furvengers, or an innocent victim of a witch hunt.
The team of amateur investigators and cybersleuths were frustrated, but continued in their mission to unmask the criminals using the furry community as cover. They managed to collect information on one user that the police were able to arrest. He then led them to another, the suspected ringleader of the animal abusers. He was eventually arrested, but that was not the end of the Furvengers’ work, though, because a new monster revealed himself—and then another and another.
As the amateur investigators sent information to police around the world in the hope of saving animals and stopping the criminals, some members of the furry community turned against them. They did not appreciate the Furvengers’ decision to work with the police, preferring they keep it within their own community and out of the press. R was doxxed by someone and ended up fearing for the life of her and her family.
Despite the risks, the Furvengers felt protecting the animals— and their community—was worth it. They kept going, digging into online forums, watching traumatizing videos, and deep in the underbelly of a world that should not exist but sadly does. They also found themselves having to explain furries and a very online culture to police investigators around the world. The result of their relentless hard work were investigations that led to the arrest of one high-profile zoologist in Australia, a truck driver in the States, and others who deserve to be punished for their heartbreaking and horrifying crimes. Crimes that may have gone unnoticed and unreported were it not for the Furvengers.