text: San Jose serial cat killer gets 16-year sentence 
   
   Thumper was one of up to 16 San Jose cats slain by Robert Farmer, 26. Thumper was one of up to 16 San Jose cats slain by Robert Farmer, 26. Photo: Myriam Martinez / Myriam Martinez Photo: Myriam Martinez / Myriam Martinez Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close San Jose serial cat killer gets 16-year sentence 1 / 1 Back to Gallery 
   
   A serial cat killer in San Jose who pleaded guilty to torturing and dismembering a number of beloved neighborhood felines was sentenced Friday to a maximum term of 16 years in jail. 
   
   Robert Farmer, 26, pleaded guilty in October to 21 felony counts of animal cruelty. Though Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Sharon Chatman imposed the strictest sentence she could on Farmer, she did not require him to register as a sex offender as county prosecutors had requested. 
   
   Prosecutors and owners of the cats alleged that Farmer had sexually abused one of the slain felines, but the judge rejected that argument. 
   
   The owners of the dead cats — police say he killed up to 16 of them, though only four bodies were recovered — say that Farmer terrorized their Cambrian Park neighborhood in south San Jose for months, causing pet owners to keep outdoor cats inside as animal after animal disappeared. 
   
   Gayle Goodson, a self-described cat-lover — who owns three felines — and supporter of those who lost their pets, said the courtroom was packed. There were tears when pet owners spoke about “their beloved cats and what they meant to them,” Goodson said, followed by a “big sigh of relief” when Farmer was sentenced. 
   
   “We are disappointed that the judge did not” require Farmer to register as a sex offender, Goodson said, “but we understand her reasoning, though we may not necessarily agree with it.” 
   
   Dozens of animal rights activists had joined the victims in demanding a stringent sentence for Farmer, spurred on by an online petition that gathered tens of thousands of signatures. The bereaved cat lovers started a campaign to hold Farmer accountable — writing letters to the judge, calling up the district attorney’s office and creating memes demanding justice on a Facebook group called “Justice for our CATZ.” 
   
   Because he does not have to register as a sex offender, Farmer will serve his time — with almost two years in credit for time served — in county jail, not state prison. His attorney, Wesley Schroeder, said his client could be released in as little as 4½ years. 
   
   “He got max sentence 16 YEARS !!!,” a woman wrote on the Facebook group, adding a thumbs-up emoji. The woman wrote that Farmer “was murdering animals in the neighborhood where he grew up, among people who trusted him.” 
   
   Others chimed in, commenting that it was “too bad” that the judge didn’t include the sex offender requirement. 
   
   When Farmer is released, he will have to register for probation until the terms of his entire 16-year sentence are satisfied. Conditions of his probation include staying away from Cambrian Park, not owning or caring for any animal for 10 years and undergoing mandatory psychological treatment. 
   
   Police said they arrested Farmer in October 2015 inside a car, where they found a beaten and bloody corpse of a cat in a garbage bag, along with an assortment of collars. 
   
   Schroeder said the county’s probation officer had recommended a sentence of nine years, which the judge nearly doubled. 
   
   The attorney had argued that Farmer had for years before the cat killings lived with an increasing number of mental health issues, for which he had received no treatment. That, coupled with a methamphetamine addiction, did not excuse Farmer’s “horrific” actions, he said. 
   
   But Schroeder said Farmer’s long-running addiction acted as an “accelerant” to a spiral of problems that resulted in the death of the felines. 
   
   “The underlying problem was that the match had already been lit, but the meth just made it more extensive,” Schroeder said. 
   
   Farmer was stuck in a “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde situation,” Schroeder said, adding that he hoped he would be able to help Farmer obtain counseling and medication while in jail so this does not happen again. ||||| A San Jose man was sentenced to 16 years in jail today for killing 21 cats and sexually abusing a dead one, a bittersweet outcome for those whose pets began disappearing almost two years ago. 
   
   Santa Clara Superior Court Judge Sharon A. Chatman credited Robert Roy Farmer, 26, for twice the 646 days he already has served since his arrest for crimes that shocked the Cambrian Park community where most of the cats were abducted. 
   
   Farmer will not have to register as a sex offender when he is eventually released, a proposed sentencing condition that had become a point of contention between his attorney Wesley Schroeder and Deputy District Attorney Alexandra Ellis. 
   
   Schroeder had argued that a test performed by a San Jose Animal Services and Care veterinarian showed no signs of a cat having been sexually assaulted by Farmer. But the same veterinarian testified during a pre-sentencing hearing in May that the possibility couldn’t be eliminated because other physical exams showed otherwise and “because limited literature in this field says there may be no injuries at all on an animal.” 
   
   Before the sentencing, Schroeder read a letter written by Farmer, in which he said “it feels like another man committed these crimes, but I know it was me.” 
   
   “It’s so hard to grasp I did this,” Farmer wrote, adding that he grew up with cats and horses. “I stole a member of their family. The fact that I was out of my mind was no excuse.” 
   
   Ellis dismissed the letter as “manipulation” that contradicts his previous interviews with police, written by a disturbed individual with no hope for rehabilitation. Because of Farmer’s antisocial personality disorder diagnosis by a court doctor, she urged the judge to consider mental health reports that state he had a “profound lack of empathy and remorse” for his crimes and “significant anger” toward his family. The doctor also considered him a possible danger to the community, with a prognosis for recovery that was “poor, with potential escalation to higher life forms in the future.” 
   
   The bizarre saga unfolded in September 2015 when cats began mysteriously disappearing from the Cambrian Park neighborhood. Stories started to spread among neighbors about a man who had tried luring two cats into a backpack. One cat escaped and was later treated by a veterinarian for a “bite that was not an animal bite, as well as the bleeding head injury,” Cambrian resident David Stine said at the time. 
   
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   Several cats subsequently turned up dead, including two discovered in a dumpster. And Cambrian resident Janice McKimmie’s 15-year-old cat Beardsly was found dead several miles away wrapped in plastic inside a shoebox with his collar missing and rocks placed on the lid. Stine was surprised when McKimmie said her cat went missing the same morning as did his 16-year-old orange tabby cat Chablis, who still has not been seen to this day. 
   
   Video footage from Miriam Petrova’s security camera later that week showed a young man grabbing a 17-year-old orange tabby cat named GoGo from her front porch. Neighbors soon after helped San Jose police identify Farmer as the man in the video, though no trace of GoGo was ever found. 
   
   Farmer, the son of a retired San Jose Police Department captain, was found the morning of Oct. 8, 2015 at a Home Depot parking lot near Hillsdale and Leigh avenues. He was sleeping inside his car with a dead cat curled up in the center console when police officers apprehended him. Chunks of fur and streaks of blood covered the interior of Farmer’s vehicle, where police also found a backpack with a pair of fur-covered gloves and a hunting knife in a sheath. 
   
   Farmer was originally charged with three felony counts of animal cruelty, one count of attempted animal cruelty, and one misdemeanor count each of battery and being under the influence. Subsequent DNA tests on blood, fur and other items found in Farmer’s car eventually shot that number up to 21 charges of felony animal cruelty–one for each of his feline victims. 
   
   Family members and others who knew Farmer told police they were often terrified around him. An elderly woman who let Farmer stay with her and her grandson shortly before his arrest recounted him tying up the back legs of her cat Angel and smacking it against a wall. One time she said Farmer hit her grandson in the face, unprovoked, and on another occasion he shot the same boy in the leg with a pellet gun. Her grandson also told her that Farmer had commented once about “what it would feel like to kill a person.” 
   
   The case took a shocking twist when a necropsy report from Animal Services found signs of sexual abuse on the orange female tabby cat inside the car, including dilated genitals. Crime laboratory reports also stated a match was discovered between Farmer and DNA found under claw clippings. Schroeder contested the prosecution’s argument that the cat was sexually abused. 
   
   The conflicting accounts triggered a debate about whether Farmer should be required to register as a sex offender when someday released from prison. Ellis argued that Farmer’s molestation of the dead cat was sexually motivated but Schroeder proffered other theories. 
   
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   “Doing something to the body in that area doesn’t necessarily indicate sexual motivation,” Schroeder said, adding that Farmer’s methamphetamine use at the time could have contributed to his behavior. Torture was another possibility that Schroeder also mentioned but Ellis said that wasn’t possible. 
   
   “You can’t torture a dead cat,” she said. 
   
   “If there was an animal cruelty registry then Mr. Farmer would be the perfect picture for that,” Chatman said. But the judge declined to require Farmer to register as a sex offender upon release, stating that Ellis’ arguments “did not meet that burden” for such an order. 
   
   “We don’t have experts to form an opinion that similar conduct was sexually motivated,” Chatman told Ellis. “The entire veterinary community doesn’t study it and so it’s not a piece of evidence I can put on your side of the scale.” 
   
   But the judge ordered him to stay away from cats for 10 years after his release and away from the 95124 Cambrian Park ZIP code area. 
   
   Throngs of people crowded outside the courtroom in anticipation of the long-awaited sentencing. 
   
   Many of the owners whose cats fell victim to Farmer read statements in the courtroom expressing their grief and outrage before he was sentenced. Farmer listened with his back turned to the crowd. 
   
   Petrova wept as she told onlookers how “our sweet GoGo” would cuddle in bed with her children and mourned the fact that “we didn’t have the chance to say a proper goodbye.” 
   
   “It’s still painful to come home knowing GoGo isn’t waiting for us,” Petrova said. “Now the only image burned in our minds is GoGo running for his life” on camera as Farmer chased after him. 
   
   “GoGo never hurt anybody,” she added, before addressing Farmer directly: “And for you, Robert Farmer–what have you done to GoGo? Where is he?” 
   
   Although she had hoped Farmer would have to register as a sex offender, Petrova said she’s “relieved” that the ordeal is finally over. 
   
   “When I spoke up to (Farmer), I felt relieved,” she said. “It’ll be not closure completely, but partially.”
target: – A grisly and bizarre animal cruelty case has come to a close in San Jose, with a serial cat killer sentenced to 16 years in jail. Police say Robert Farmer killed at least 16 cats after stealing and torturing them in 2015. Prosecutors also alleged that he sexually abused at least one of the cats, but the 26-year-old avoided having to register as a sex offender, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. He had pleaded guilty to 21 counts of animal cruelty prior to sentencing. Pet owners celebrated the maximum sentence, though Farmer's attorney says he could be released in about 4 years. “It’s so hard to grasp I did this,” Farmer wrote in a letter read by his attorney in court, per the Mercury News. "It feels like another man committed these crimes, but I know it was me.” Neighbors in the Cambrian Park community began sharing stories when their cats started disappearing without a trace. Most of the time, the bodies would turn up discarded in dumpsters or elsewhere. Farmer was arrested after being captured on a pet owner's surveillance camera snatching the family's 17-year-old pet from the property.