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Yahoo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
They solved a horrific crime in their community. Don't mind the colorful fur suit.
The director of "The Furry Detectives" sheds light on the heroic whistleblowers in a fandom full of outsiders. Americans love true crime shows. More than half of U.S. adults say they are hooked on the genre, according to a June 2024 YouGov poll. (I should know, I'm one of those fans.) But The Furry Detectives: Unmasking a Monster was the first true crime docuseries I've seen to feature its subjects dressed in colorful anthropomorphic fur suits peeling back the layers on a horrific crime. It follows furries, or members of a community of fans who dress as animals with human characteristics, as they investigate a cache of information called the 'Furry Zoosadist Leaks.' The investigation began in 2018 and revealed a sinister criminal conspiracy of animal abuse within the animal-loving furry community. The docuseries explores how furries themselves led a citizen investigation that led to real-life arrests. To see Patch O'Furr, a longtime furry journalist for Dogpatch Press, speaking on camera with measured calm on his face in plain clothes as he recounts the horrors of the case, is a fascinating juxtaposition with other shots of him throughout the series in which he wears the blue-and-white fuzzy paws of his fur suit. It's not something we see every day, but it was a bold choice that put on display his love for the community despite what a few rotten apples had done. In the opening scene of the docuseries, O'Furr says, 'I never tried to be a hero, it's just … who else is gonna do the job?' He is who he is, both behind the keyboard and in front of a global stage. Letting O'Furr — and the other furries who appear onscreen, like Connor Goodwolf and Naia Okami — dress in both their street clothes and in their fur suits was an important element to Theo Love, who directed the four-part docuseries. It premiered in June at the Tribeca Film Festival and is now airing new episodes on Thursdays on Sundance Now and AMC+. Love tells Yahoo he wanted his subjects to be comfortable, especially given how furries sometimes end up at the 'wrong end of the joke.' 'And you are giving me a huge gift in telling me your story,' he says of the furries. 'So my job is to tell your story the way it exists in your mind.' The choice to include some furries in their fur suits on camera came from the playfulness that's so core to their existence. 'In some ways, we needed some sugar to help the medicine go down,' Love explains. The goal isn't to make fun of anyone, it's to allow them to show their true selves. A different kind of crime solver Love now holds furries in high regard, but he didn't know much about the fandom when he was tapped to direct the docuseries. He just found it refreshing to tell a true crime story from a new angle. The genre gets 'tired' when the 'good guys are always cops solving crimes,' he says. 'The heroes of our story are furries, a group of people [who] are just not very well understood. A lot of times, they're judged. And so to celebrate furries doing something really incredible, it was a privilege. … In this situation, they're saving man's best friend — our ultimate furry buddies, dogs,' Love says. It took a lot of convincing to get people to go on camera for the documentary. Zoosadism is a heinous crime — not something people like thinking about or being associated with, even if they're just recounting the objective facts of a case. Even the people who helped solve the case felt backlash within the community and were accused of making the already ridiculed fandom face even more bad press. 'It's very much like hidden abuse in a church community where people want to pray it away and act like it's old or offensive to talk about,' O'Furr tells Yahoo. His reporting on Dogpatch Press is the basis for much of what's covered in the docuseries. 'Either this gets told, or it gets brushed under [the rug] and guilty people continue using your spaces,' O'Furr writes in a post on Dogpatch Press, explaining his involvement in the docuseries. 'Then it gets worse, and next time, outsiders will tell the story for you with even less agency in how you are seen.' Since furries are so often ridiculed for their interest in costumes and developing anthropomorphic 'fursonas' that they role-play with, which is sometimes but not always sexual, it can be hard for them to be taken seriously. They don't dress in fur suits, often expensive, cumbersome and sweat-inducing, for attention. They do it because it makes them feel authentically like themselves and helps them find community. Ridicule leads some to feel like they've been pushed into the margins of society, where bad behavior can fester and disgruntled individuals can become radicalized. Concerns that multiple members of the fandom had ties to Nazism made headlines in 2017 and have led to the cancellation of at least one convention. For furries who genuinely love animals and role-playing as them, this association is horrific on a moral level, but has also tainted their perception and made them wary of what outsiders might think. 'Furvengers,' assemble A strong contingent of furries wasn't fond of the existence of this docuseries — or even the original blowing of the whistle about the Zoosadism Leaks in 2018 — for fear of how the community at large would be portrayed. But it's a uniquely furry story about the triumph of a fandom over the people using the joyful fandom to conceal their illegal acts. Back then, law enforcement tried and failed to uncover the culprits behind the crime for years, so furry vigilantes known as the Furvengers took matters into their own hands. They used their remarkable tech savvy to pore over chat logs on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app, which was the main channel used in the Zoosadism Leaks, leading to the arrest of a furry involved in animal abuse, who then led them to the suspected ringleader, who was arrested as well. The investigation involved combing through disturbing chat logs and screening traumatizing video footage of animal abuse, but the Furvengers maintained in the docuseries that protecting animals made it all worth it. Love says that the story is, at its heart, about ordinary people who went to extraordinary lengths for justice, regardless of what ridicule they might receive inside or outside of the fandom. 'If you've ever looked at a furry and thought, 'These people are weirdos and something to laugh at,' you're going to watch the series and be pretty surprised at how heroic they really are,' he says.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
They solved a horrific crime in their community. Don't mind the colorful fur suit.
The director of "The Furry Detectives" sheds light on the heroic whistleblowers in a fandom full of outsiders. Americans love true crime shows. More than half of U.S. adults say they are hooked on the genre, according to a June 2024 YouGov poll. (I should know, I'm one of those fans.) But The Furry Detectives: Unmasking a Monster was the first true crime docuseries I've seen to feature its subjects dressed in colorful anthropomorphic fur suits peeling back the layers on a horrific crime. It follows furries, or members of a community of fans who dress as animals with human characteristics, as they investigate a cache of information called the 'Furry Zoosadist Leaks.' The investigation began in 2018 and revealed a sinister criminal conspiracy of animal abuse within the animal-loving furry community. The docuseries explores how furries themselves led a citizen investigation that led to real-life arrests. To see Patch O'Furr, a longtime furry journalist for Dogpatch Press, speaking on camera with measured calm on his face in plain clothes as he recounts the horrors of the case, is a fascinating juxtaposition with other shots of him throughout the series in which he wears the blue-and-white fuzzy paws of his fur suit. It's not something we see every day, but it was a bold choice that put on display his love for the community despite what a few rotten apples had done. In the opening scene of the docuseries, O'Furr says, 'I never tried to be a hero, it's just … who else is gonna do the job?' He is who he is, both behind the keyboard and in front of a global stage. Letting O'Furr — and the other furries who appear onscreen, like Connor Goodwolf and Naia Okami — dress in both their street clothes and in their fur suits was an important element to Theo Love, who directed the four-part docuseries. It premiered in June at the Tribeca Film Festival and is now airing new episodes on Thursdays on Sundance Now and AMC+. Love tells Yahoo he wanted his subjects to be comfortable, especially given how furries sometimes end up at the 'wrong end of the joke.' 'And you are giving me a huge gift in telling me your story,' he says of the furries. 'So my job is to tell your story the way it exists in your mind.' The choice to include some furries in their fur suits on camera came from the playfulness that's so core to their existence. 'In some ways, we needed some sugar to help the medicine go down,' Love explains. The goal isn't to make fun of anyone, it's to allow them to show their true selves. A different kind of crime solver Love now holds furries in high regard, but he didn't know much about the fandom when he was tapped to direct the docuseries. He just found it refreshing to tell a true crime story from a new angle. The genre gets 'tired' when the 'good guys are always cops solving crimes,' he says. 'The heroes of our story are furries, a group of people [who] are just not very well understood. A lot of times, they're judged. And so to celebrate furries doing something really incredible, it was a privilege. … In this situation, they're saving man's best friend — our ultimate furry buddies, dogs,' Love says. It took a lot of convincing to get people to go on camera for the documentary. Zoosadism is a heinous crime — not something people like thinking about or being associated with, even if they're just recounting the objective facts of a case. Even the people who helped solve the case felt backlash within the community and were accused of making the already ridiculed fandom face even more bad press. 'It's very much like hidden abuse in a church community where people want to pray it away and act like it's old or offensive to talk about,' O'Furr tells Yahoo. His reporting on Dogpatch Press is the basis for much of what's covered in the docuseries. 'Either this gets told, or it gets brushed under [the rug] and guilty people continue using your spaces,' O'Furr writes in a post on Dogpatch Press, explaining his involvement in the docuseries. 'Then it gets worse, and next time, outsiders will tell the story for you with even less agency in how you are seen.' Since furries are so often ridiculed for their interest in costumes and developing anthropomorphic 'fursonas' that they role-play with, which is sometimes but not always sexual, it can be hard for them to be taken seriously. They don't dress in fur suits, often expensive, cumbersome and sweat-inducing, for attention. They do it because it makes them feel authentically like themselves and helps them find community. Ridicule leads some to feel like they've been pushed into the margins of society, where bad behavior can fester and disgruntled individuals can become radicalized. Concerns that multiple members of the fandom had ties to Nazism made headlines in 2017 and have led to the cancellation of at least one convention. For furries who genuinely love animals and role-playing as them, this association is horrific on a moral level, but has also tainted their perception and made them wary of what outsiders might think. 'Furvengers,' assemble A strong contingent of furries wasn't fond of the existence of this docuseries — or even the original blowing of the whistle about the Zoosadism Leaks in 2018 — for fear of how the community at large would be portrayed. But it's a uniquely furry story about the triumph of a fandom over the people using the joyful fandom to conceal their illegal acts. Back then, law enforcement tried and failed to uncover the culprits behind the crime for years, so furry vigilantes known as the Furvengers took matters into their own hands. They used their remarkable tech savvy to pore over chat logs on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app, which was the main channel used in the Zoosadism Leaks, leading to the arrest of a furry involved in animal abuse, who then led them to the suspected ringleader, who was arrested as well. The investigation involved combing through disturbing chat logs and screening traumatizing video footage of animal abuse, but the Furvengers maintained in the docuseries that protecting animals made it all worth it. Love says that the story is, at its heart, about ordinary people who went to extraordinary lengths for justice, regardless of what ridicule they might receive inside or outside of the fandom. 'If you've ever looked at a furry and thought, 'These people are weirdos and something to laugh at,' you're going to watch the series and be pretty surprised at how heroic they really are,' he says.
Time Magazine
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
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. 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.
