A man convicted of killing 21 cats received 16 years in prison, the San Jose Mercury News reported on Friday.
Robert Roy Farmer, 26, pleaded guilty in 2016 to 21 felony counts of animal cruelty in San Jose, Calif.
Some cats began mysteriously vanishing from San Jose’s Cambrian Park neighborhood in September 2015, and later wound up dead, the paper reported. He confessed to luring some cats from people’s homes.
Farmer was arrested in October 2015 as he was sleeping in his car, CBS San Francisco reported at the time.
They found an orange tabby cat dead in his vehicle along with other evidence.
Santa Clara Superior Court Judge Sharon A. Chatman credited Farmer for double the 646 days he’s already served.
“It’s so hard to grasp I did this,” Farmer wrote in a letter read aloud in court. “I stole a member of their family. The fact that I was out of my mind was no excuse.”
Security camera footage captured the moment he grabbed a 17-year-old cat from an owner’s front porch.
The cat’s owner, Miriam Petrova, was at the court on Friday.
Petrova told NBC News: “We finally can say goodbye to every cat that was involved in this tragedy.”
Chatman ordered him to stay away from cats for 10 years after he’s out of prison.
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