As subtle hints that he just might be potentially certifiably insane, do you think that maybe, just maybe when Edward Covington was found sobbing face down on the floor surrounded by mutilated cats, a reasonable person might have concluded this chap was operating on a totally foreign plane of reality?

And yet, even though he was indeed charged with animal cruelty in 2005 for the brutalized cats, Edward Covington was still permitted to serve as a corrections officer for the Florida Department of Corrections, until he finally resigned in 2006.

Covington was never prosecuted for the horrific abuse of animals, which does get the mind to pondering what might have happened if the man now accused in the murder and mutilation of his girlfriend Lisa Freiberg and her two children, Zachary, 7, and Samantha, 2, on Mother"s Day had been held legally accountable for the violent mistreatment of animals.

Might Freiberg and her children still be alive?

It is also noteworthy that, in addition to giving a statement to Hillsborough County Sheriff’s investigators in which, he admitted his role in the deaths of Freiberg and her children, Covington has also admitted to killing the family’s German Shepherd.

Who knows? Who knows if Covington had received the obvious psychological help he needed in 2005, perhaps last Sunday’s blood bath in Frieberg’s Lutz mobile home could have been avoided. Alas, we’ll never know.

What we do know though is the mutilation of animals is often the early sign of future, even more deadly mayhem. See, Dahmer, Jeffrey.

Because it appears Covington never received the help he so desperately needed in 2006, you could make a case that from the day she was born that same year, two-year-old victim Samantha Freiberg’s days were numbered.