You wouldn't hurt these kitties, would you? This a-hole would...

A story by reporter Nate Carlisle in the February 2, 2010 Salt Lake Tribune introduces us to the boss from hell.

Cory Bowman was the director of Murray City, Utah, Animal Control. Cory had a unique way of dealing with unwanted animals. In front of an employee he took a kitten, twisted its neck, decapitating it. Employee Dianna Johnson is suing the city, not only for keeping Bowman (who was demoted from his supervisory postion), but for moving her to the 4:00 p.m. to midnight shift for complaining.

If it had been only the one animal you might say the guy had a bad day and made a really serious mistake, but it was a pattern. Not only did Bowman break the necks of kittens, he took a cat being claimed by its owner into another room, "hurt" the cat (no details given), and hissed at it before putting it into a box. When the cat owner innocently asked what she should use to wash the cat, Bowman allegedly told her, "a pitchfork and a firehose."

Bowman didn't expend all his energy hurting cats, he also pepper-sprayed dogs in his care.

In a hearing, Bowman admitted he had problems as a supervisor, but like all the bad bosses he blamed his employees. In this case three female employees who he said, "created a hostile little hen peck environment."

Murray City attorney Mike O'Brien, who is also the attorney for the Salt Lake Tribune, recused himself from commenting for the story, but earlier had stated the complainant, Johnson, allegedly told him Bowman "had a good heart" and didn't want the city to "be mean to him."

Not as mean as he was to the animals, no doubt.

Murray City police chief Peter Fondaca lambasted Bowman in a hearing: "My god, I would hate to work for you." In the understatement of the decade, Bowman answered, "Sometimes I hate to work for me, with me."

Despite his record Bowman still has a job as a dispatcher for Animal Control, and still works around the animals.

The past couple of decades we've learned how to spot a potential serial killer: they start by torturing small animals. It isn't hard to imagine a person like Cory Bowman, after hurting animals, twisting the neck of a child or a woman. Bowman was lucky for the Good Ol' Boy politics of local Utah governments; instead of having a job he should be spending time in a prison cell for abusing animals, he should be receiving therapy, and he should be relieved of any jobs with the city, much less one that involves animals.