What could be sicker than watching videos of puppies, kittens, and other amimals being tortured and killed? How about making and selling them?
Wired reports that a Houston pair, a man and a woman, have been indicted for allegedly distributing snuff films online in which puppies and other animals were tortured and killed:
Federal authorities say the pair made eight videos—bearing titles like puppy 1, whitechick and crushblackluvsample—that depicted puppies, chickens, kittens, and other animals being tortured and killed.
View slideshow: Houston pair indicted for pet snuff videos
The man, whose named ironically is Brent Justice, is 51. He and his partner, 22-year-old Ashely Richards, were indicted in a Houston court on Wednesday on seven counts of criminal enterprise, including creation of animal crush videos, distribution of animal crush videos, and selling or transferring obscene material. The federal indictment alleges they produced the films “with the objective of earning a profit.”
Under federal law, a crush video is one in which any living non-human mammal, bird, reptile, or amphibian is “intentionally crushed, burned, drowned, suffocated, impaled, or otherwise subjected to serious bodily injury.”
The indictment, which can be viewed here, comes three months after the pair was charged for similar allegations in the state of Texas. They are currently being held in a Houston jail and are set to appear in a Texas federal court next month to answer to the new charges. If found guilty, the two could face up five years in prison for each count—a total of 35 years.
In August, a Harris County magistrate suspended reading of the allegations “because they were too gruesome.” The state court case accused them of using high-heeled shoes, knives, meat cleavers, pliers, and screwdrivers to torture and kill animals, which included mice and lobsters among others.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) told authorities it had forwarded to the footage that allegedly showed Richards “cutting the leg and slashing the neck and throat of a puppy before beheading the struggling animal with a meat cleaver.”
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