Terry Eugene Michel (Franklin County Sheriff’s Office)
A 59-year-old man in Virginia will spend more than two years behind bars for killing two dogs, fatally shooting the animals, then calling 911 and claiming they were stolen while he had them out for a walk.
Franklin County Circuit Court Judge Timothy W. Allen on Thursday ordered Terry Eugene Michel to serve a sentence of 15 months in a state correctional facility for killing the dogs, authorities confirmed to Law&Crime.
Last month, a jury found Michel guilty of two counts of felony animal cruelty.
According to a news release from the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office, Michel filed a report on Feb. 7, 2023, with the FCSO deputies claiming his two dogs, Colby and Caleb, had been stolen while he was out for a walk with them in Waid Park, about 175 miles west of Richmond, Virginia. Michel told deputies his two black labradors had “broken away from him” during the walk, and he then watched as they were “picked up/stolen by men in an unknown vehicle.”
Photos of the missing pets were posted to social media sites by law enforcement agencies and community members to help find who had supposedly taken the animals in the hopes they would be returned to their owners.
The investigation into the missing dogs went on for about a week before Caleb and Colby’s bodies were discovered in the 500 block of Carolina Springs Road, about five miles north of where Michel said they were taken.
The dogs had been shot to the back of the head from close range, authorities said.
A few days after the dog’s bodies were discovered, deputies took Michel into custody and charged him with killing the animals. He was also charged with one count of filing a false police report and given two summons for improper disposal of a companion animal.
According to a report from The Roanoke Times, during the trial, jurors saw about 20 minutes of video footage from Michel’s interview with investigators following his arrest. In the video, he initially denied having anything to do with their deaths, the report states, but eventually broke down and confessed under more intense questioning from investigators, explaining how he used a 9 mm handgun to shoot the dogs in the head.
Asked if he killed the dogs because of his wife and the marital problems they had been having, Michel reportedly said he did it for the marriage, not to hurt his wife. He reportedly claimed that as much as he loved Colby and Caleb, they kept him and his wife from doing anything outside the home, particularly because his wife would not leave the dogs home alone.
“I didn’t do it to hurt her,” he said, per the report. “I did it to save my marriage, and that is the God’s honest truth.”
Michel’s defense argued that when he killed the dogs, he was experiencing a “dissociative event” caused by a combination of depression and PTSD from serving in the Army, but the jury was not swayed.
Virginia Circuit Court records show that Michel’s wife filed for divorce in April 2023.
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