There’s definitely an element of sadism in there. When Vic would ‘rescue’ a dog from the humane shelter, if it turned out not to be sufficiently aggressive he would torture it to death. Who knows if that kind of sadism will be confined to helpless animals? Eventually it could bleed over into other types of sadism and cruelty.
It has and does. I read a couple of articles about school mass shooters. It said they started out by torturing kittens, but it got old so they moved up to people. If you'd like the links, I'll try to find them.