William Skyler Leak's tenure as the caretaker of a small Fort Worth stable was brief. Last August, after a short time on the job, he was fired and ordered to clear out of the on-site mobile home he'd been allowed to live in.
"The owner didn't like his work performance," Fort Worth police spokeswoman Sharron Neal would later tell the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Leak, 25, refused to go, squatting in the trailer for the next month until the owner secured a court order on September 25, 2012, forcing him to depart.
He did not stay gone for long. The next night, he broke into the stables he had once cared for and slit the throats of two border collies, one a puppy. He left a note for the owner on a bulletin board outside the stable, describing the killings as "absolutely beautiful."
"The sweet surrender as they looked into my eyes," he wrote. "It was breathtaking."
He warned the owner to stay away, or else "you will be in the same situation as your dogs."
Leak admitted to the crime on Monday in a Tarrant County courtroom, pleading guilty to two counts of animal cruelty. In exchange, prosecutors agreed to a five-year prison sentence, half of what he could have faced. He will have to serve two-and-a-half years before he's eligible for parole.
The Tarrant County DA's office did not name the border collies' owner in a news release, nor did the Star-Telegram when it first reported the story. But there's only one piece of pasture land on Anglin Circle where the crime occurred.
