Courtesy Dieter Simon

Many cats were found dead on the golf course.

DeCORDOVA - After 16 family pets were mutilated in a North Texas community, police feared a budding serial killer was at large.

A team of detectives investigated and they believe they now have answers.

When Shaun Trotter looks at his seven-month-old kitten, he remembers another cat with the same markings, and the same precocious personality.

That cat darted through the door one evening this spring.

"About ten minutes later, we went out and tried looking for her and couldn't find her," said Trotter.

Her picture eventually joined a growing file of cats killed in the small town of DeCordova.

Many, like Trotter's cat, were found dead on the golf course.

"Around March of 2007, we started discovering, getting reports, of half cats that were being discovered at scenes in DeCordova," said Detective Johnny Rose of Hood County Sheriff's office.

The sheriff formed a team of investigators to figure out what was happening.

One of their biggest steps: secretly putting up cameras in the neighborhood around the golf course to figure out who, or what, was coming out at night.

"It's been shown in other studies of serial killers that they start out mutilating animals and gradually start with humans. So we were afraid they were going to graduate to killing humans," said Rose.

But the cameras found, sprinting past the light, predators, not humans.

This month, after hundreds of man hours, a forensics expert and a zoologist confirmed deputies' detectives' suspicions.

"[They] ruled the cats were being killed by predators, such as coyotes," Rose said.

In all, Rose blames 16 cat mutilations on the coyotes in DeCordova.

But while Rose is now confident of the culprits, he's less certain of how to keep them away.

As long as kittens here play outside, there will be coyotes waiting for them.

E-mail chawes@wfaa.com.