Psychopaths and the critter torturing connection, is it really that solid?

There is the belief some believe, maybe more than a few, that psychopaths cut their teeth torturing critters before carving up humans. As childhood experiences go, I know quite a few people, who one would say tortured critters, but turned out normal, in the sense they were not homicidal maniacs. I knew a guy who had a knack for snatching flies in flight and hurling them into the spider’s web to watch the spider spin the hapless fly in a web ball, and I as other friends of mine fried caterpillars and ants with a magnifying glass. There have been kids who popped sparrows and black birds with pellet guns. I even know some boys who would play nasty pranks on cats like tying fire crackers to their tails and lighting it. For the most part we grew out of such appetites. With so many kids doing one or the other over the span of childhood, and there is not a psychopath behind nearly every bush, how solid is the notion that any boy who inflicted what some would call sadistic torture on any critter was on the road to being a homicidal maniac?