ANIMAL-RITES HORROR
By JAMES FANELLI and RICH CALDERTwo of Queens' largest parks are hotbeds for animal sacrifices, according to park rangers and advocates.
Longtime Parks Department ranger Joe Puleo told The Post that killing animals for ritualistic reasons in the city is widespread, but that Forest Park and Highland Park are the most common locations.
Perpetrators of the outlawed act are rarely busted because they perform their bloody rituals in the dead of night, and the two parks no longer have 24-hour patrols due to budget cuts.
"They are never caught, because they are careful, and they never do it during the day. They do it at night when no one is around," Puleo said.
Park-goers have told him that the reasons for the sacrifices run the gamut from devil worship to voodoo to offerings for good luck.
One dog found out the hard way about the odd rituals taking place in the city in 2006 when it bit into a cow tongue stuffed with pins in Central Park. The pin-pricked meat was reportedly a "hoodoo" spell to discourage a witness from testifying in court.
The most recent reports of animal corpses in Forest Park were called in to the city's 311 hot line on April 18 by assistant principal Peter Caccioppoli, who spotted a dead rooster and a black goat's head and torso while walking his dog.
"They were placed in bags that were kind of stacked," Caccioppoli told The Post. "[The goat's] rib cage was stripped clean. There were legs -- entire legs were there."
"My first reaction was it was Santeria," he said, referring to a Caribbean religion that mixes Christianity with African and Native American traditions.
The Parks Department said it immediately removed the remains after the call, but did not discover the source.
Geoffrey Croft, who runs the watchdog group New York City Park Advocates, said he has stumbled upon gruesome examples of animal sacrifice in at least five city parks, including University Woods and Pelham Bay Park in The Bronx. At University Woods, people have reportedly found headless chickens on an altar surrounded by candles.
"It's a public-health issue, it's disgusting, and it freaks people out with the whole voodoo thing," said Croft, who has mostly spotted chickens and goats. "I remember seeing a goat leg sticking out of a bag and trying to take a picture while the smell was so atrocious."
In another grisly discovery, Croft said he once found the dead carcass of a dog that was shot and eaten by a man.
Animal sacrifices are also prevalent in the surrounding suburbs. In 2001, Suffolk County police busted six people at an East Islip marina for trespassing and beheading a pig. The slaughterers apparently practiced Ifism, a religion similar to Santeria.
jfanelli@nypost.com
ANIMAL-RITES HORROR - New York Post
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