Miriam Petrova, holding a photo of her cat Gogo, and other owners of cat victims are a mix of tears and smiles after the sentencing of Robert Farmer on July 14. Farmer received the maximum sentence of 16 years, without parole, for the kidnapping, torturing and killing of 21 cats in the Cambrian neighborhood of San Jose in 2015. (Jacqueline Ramseyer/Bay Area News Group)
Photo Jacqueline Ramseyer/Bay Area News Group/July 14, 2017 Jane Maurer, left, owner of Rayden, and Miriam Petrova, owner of Gogo, hug through tears and smiles after the sentencing of Robert Farmer. Farmer received the maximum sentence of 16 years, without parole, for the kidnapping, torturing and killing of 21 cats in the Cambrian neighborhood of San Jose in 2015 (Jacqueline Ramseyer/Bay Area News Group)
A crowd of people are a mix of tears and smiles after the sentencing of Robert Farmer on July 14. Farmer received the maximum sentence of 16 years, without parole, for the kidnapping, torturing and killing of 21 cats in the Cambrian neighborhood of San Jose in 2015. (Jacqueline Ramseyer/Bay Area News Group)
(Photo illustration by Jeff Durham/Bay Area News Group)
The Bay Area has seen its fair share of of crimes — from the dark and twisted (the Satanic “Night Stalker”) to the mysterious (Zodiac killer) to the plain bizarre (“Wendy’s Finger Lady”). The following list is not comprehensive; it simply serves to highlight some of the region’s most infamous crimes. (Photo illustration by Jeff Durham/Bay Area News Group)
Killing of Chauncey Bailey: On Aug. 2, 2007, Chauncey Bailey, editor-in-chief of The Oakland Post, was gunned down while walking to work. Bailey had been investigating the financial struggles and internal strife of Your Black Muslim Bakery. Nearly four years after his death, Yusuf Bey IV, the former leader of Your Black Muslim Bakery, was convicted of ordering the killings of Bailey and two other men in 2007 and was sentenced to three consecutive life terms in prison without parole. Accomplice Antoine Mackey was sentenced to two life sentences. The shooter, Devaughndre Broussard, took a plea deal. He testified against against Mackey and Bey — and confessed to having killed Bailey and another man — and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. (Bay Area News Group archives)
The Night Stalker: From June 1984 until August 1985, Richard Ramirez, who media outlets would dub the “Night Stalker,” went on a killing spree — starting in the Los Angeles area and later moving to San Francisco. Ramirez become known for leaving Satanic signs at his grisly murder scenes. In his first court appearance, he raised his hand, on which a pentagram was drawn, and yelled, “Hail Satan!” Ramirez was eventually convicted of 13 murders, as well as charges of rape, sodomy and attempted murder, among others. He was sentenced to die in the gas chamber, but he died on death row in 2013 of complications stemming from his B-cell lymphoma. (Associated Press archives)
The assassinations of Harvey Milk and George Moscone: On Nov. 27, 1978, former San Francisco Supervisor Dan White killed Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person in the state to be elected to public office. The killings rocked the nation, sparking the “White Night” riots and popularizing the term “Twinkie defense,” which has since been used, albeit erroneously, to characterize White’s defense as attributing his behavioral changes to sugary foods. White was convicted of manslaughter — not murder — served five years and killed himself less than two years after his release. (Associated Press archives)
Zodiac killer: From December 1968 through October 1969, the Zodiac killer shot or stabbed seven Bay Area residents, mostly young couples in secluded places near Vallejo and at Lake Berryessa in Napa County, according to the official police count. He killed five people, including a San Francisco cab driver he shot in the head at point-blank range. The killer, who became known for using cryptic messages and ciphers, sent the region into a panic. The enigmatic figure inspired the first “Dirty Harry” movie (the villain in that movie’s name? Scorpio) as well as 2007’s “Zodiac.” To this day, the case is one of the most notorious unsolved mysteries in the Bay Area. (San Francisco Chronicle archives)
Helzer brothers: In 2000, Justin and Glenn Taylor Helzer (who went by Taylor) — along with roommate Dawn Godman — attempted to carry out a bizarre plan to fund a self-help group with an ultimate goal of hastening Christ’s return to Earth. The money was to come from the extortion of Taylor’s former brokerage clients and the creation of an underage prostitution service. Five people were killed in the murder-extortion plot, including guitarist Elvin Bishop’s daughter. In March 2005, the brothers were sentenced to death. Justin Helzer hanged himself in his San Quentin Prison cell in 2013. A previous suicide attempt — in which he stabbed himself in the eye with pens and pencils — had left him blind and partially paralyzed. (Bob Larson/Bay Area News Group archives)
The Polly Klaas case: On Oct. 1, 1993, 12-year-old Polly Klaas was kidnapped from her mother’s home during a slumber party in Petaluma. The large-scale search effort that ensued gained international attention. Her body was found two months later near U.S. Highway 101, 35 miles away from her home. In 1996, career felon Richard Allen Davis was convicted of Polly’s kidnap and murder. After he was found guilty, Davis raised both middle fingers and flashed them at a courtroom camera. Davis received the death penalty and remains on death row. The state’s Three Strikes Law was a direct result of this case. (Associated Press archives)
San Jose News archives
Mob lynching of Thomas Thurmond and John M. Holmes: On Nov. 26, 1933, in one of the most notorious crimes in San Jose’s history, a mob of vigilantes dragged Thomas Thurmond and John M. Holmes from the Santa Clara County Jail and lynched them in St. James Park in front of thousands of onlookers. Earlier that day, the corpse of Brooke Hart, the son of a local department store owner, had been found floating in the bay. Hart was kidnapped by Thurmond and Holmes, who, according to a confession signed by Thurmond, bound Hart with wire, hit him over the head with a concrete block, and tossed him from the San Mateo Bridge. Despite reportedly killing Hart within hours the kidnapping, Holmes and Thurmond demanded ransom from Hart’s father. (San Jose News archives)
Kidnapping of Jaycee Dugard: On June 10, 1991, while on her way to a bus stop near her South Lake Tahoe home, 11-year-old Jaycee Dugard was kidnapped by Phillip Garrido and his wife, Nancy, of Antioch. The captors held Jaycee as a sex slave in their backyard, and she bore two children by Phillip. The kids eventually were noticed by neighbors and later, when Phillip took them to the UC Berkeley campus to pass out religious literature, by police. Dugard’s captivity ended in 2009. (Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images)
The killing of Oscar Grant: In the early morning of New Year’s Day 2009, BART Police officer Johannes Mehserle shot Oscar Grant III, an unarmed 22-year-old African-American man, at the Fruitvale BART station in Oakland. Mehserle shot Grant in the back while he was restrained facedown on the platform. Footage of the shooting, taken by multiple onlookers, received widespread attention, and outrage and protests quickly ensued. Mehserle, who said he mistook his gun for his Taser, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to two years in prison but was released early. (Cathleen Allison/Associated Press archives)
Oikos University massacre: On April 2, 2012, 43-year-old former Oikos University student One Goh went on the campus of the small Korean Christian college in Oakland and opened fire, killing seven people and injuring three others, resulting in the worst massing shooting in the state in two decades. About an hour after the killings, Goh turned himself in to police. Goh, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic who reportedly believed the school’s administration was conspiring against him, had dropped out of the school after a fight with administrators over tuition. Five years after the rampage, Goh was sentenced to life in prison (Laura A. Oda/Bay Area News Group archives)
The Patty Hearst saga: On Feb. 4, 1974, newspaper heiress and UC Berkeley sophomore Patricia Hearst was living with her fiance in their apartment near campus when she was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army terrorist group. The ensuing period with the SLA — during which Hearst robbed banks and set off bombs — raised questions about whether she was brainwashed by the group or a willing accomplice to their crimes, an issue that is still debated. Hearst was arrested in September 1975, and she was later convicted of bank robbery and using a firearm during a felony. Hearst spent nearly two years in prison before her sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter. President Bill Clinton later pardoned her. (Associated Press archives)
Chili Finger Lady: Finger food, anyone? Anna Ayala gained international attention when she “discovered” a finger in her chili at a Wendy’s fast-food restaurant in San Jose in 2005. The “discovery” was actually a scam she cooked up with her husband — who acquired a human finger for $100 from a co-worker who had lost it in an accident — to bilk money out of the fast-food franchise. Wendy’s claimed to have lost $21 million because the ordeal — though fabricated — was too much to stomach for would-be customers. (Paul Sakuma/Associated Press archives)
Escape from Alcatraz: In June 1962 — the night of June 11 or the early morning of June 12 — brothers John and Clarence Anglin and Frank Morris placed papier-mache facsimiles of their own heads in their beds and and broke out of Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary through a utility corridor, apparently escaping the island on a makeshift raft. Despite intense investigation that followed the escape, it is unclear whether the trio survived the frigid waters of the San Francisco Bay. (Associated Press archives)
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.
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.
“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.”
Miriam Petrova, holding a photo of her cat Gogo, and other owners of cat victims are a mix of tears and smiles after the sentencing of Robert Farmer on July 14. Farmer received the maximum sentence of 16 years, without parole, for the kidnapping, torturing and killing of 21 cats in the Cambrian neighborhood of San Jose in 2015. (Jacqueline Ramseyer/Bay Area News Group)
Photo Jacqueline Ramseyer/Bay Area News Group/July 14, 2017 Jane Maurer, left, owner of Rayden, and Miriam Petrova, owner of Gogo, hug through tears and smiles after the sentencing of Robert Farmer. Farmer received the maximum sentence of 16 years, without parole, for the kidnapping, torturing and killing of 21 cats in the Cambrian neighborhood of San Jose in 2015 (Jacqueline Ramseyer/Bay Area News Group)
A crowd of people are a mix of tears and smiles after the sentencing of Robert Farmer on July 14. Farmer received the maximum sentence of 16 years, without parole, for the kidnapping, torturing and killing of 21 cats in the Cambrian neighborhood of San Jose in 2015. (Jacqueline Ramseyer/Bay Area News Group)
(Photo illustration by Jeff Durham/Bay Area News Group)
The Bay Area has seen its fair share of of crimes — from the dark and twisted (the Satanic “Night Stalker”) to the mysterious (Zodiac killer) to the plain bizarre (“Wendy’s Finger Lady”). The following list is not comprehensive; it simply serves to highlight some of the region’s most infamous crimes. (Photo illustration by Jeff Durham/Bay Area News Group)
Killing of Chauncey Bailey: On Aug. 2, 2007, Chauncey Bailey, editor-in-chief of The Oakland Post, was gunned down while walking to work. Bailey had been investigating the financial struggles and internal strife of Your Black Muslim Bakery. Nearly four years after his death, Yusuf Bey IV, the former leader of Your Black Muslim Bakery, was convicted of ordering the killings of Bailey and two other men in 2007 and was sentenced to three consecutive life terms in prison without parole. Accomplice Antoine Mackey was sentenced to two life sentences. The shooter, Devaughndre Broussard, took a plea deal. He testified against against Mackey and Bey — and confessed to having killed Bailey and another man — and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. (Bay Area News Group archives)
The Night Stalker: From June 1984 until August 1985, Richard Ramirez, who media outlets would dub the “Night Stalker,” went on a killing spree — starting in the Los Angeles area and later moving to San Francisco. Ramirez become known for leaving Satanic signs at his grisly murder scenes. In his first court appearance, he raised his hand, on which a pentagram was drawn, and yelled, “Hail Satan!” Ramirez was eventually convicted of 13 murders, as well as charges of rape, sodomy and attempted murder, among others. He was sentenced to die in the gas chamber, but he died on death row in 2013 of complications stemming from his B-cell lymphoma. (Associated Press archives)
The assassinations of Harvey Milk and George Moscone: On Nov. 27, 1978, former San Francisco Supervisor Dan White killed Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person in the state to be elected to public office. The killings rocked the nation, sparking the “White Night” riots and popularizing the term “Twinkie defense,” which has since been used, albeit erroneously, to characterize White’s defense as attributing his behavioral changes to sugary foods. White was convicted of manslaughter — not murder — served five years and killed himself less than two years after his release. (Associated Press archives)
Zodiac killer: From December 1968 through October 1969, the Zodiac killer shot or stabbed seven Bay Area residents, mostly young couples in secluded places near Vallejo and at Lake Berryessa in Napa County, according to the official police count. He killed five people, including a San Francisco cab driver he shot in the head at point-blank range. The killer, who became known for using cryptic messages and ciphers, sent the region into a panic. The enigmatic figure inspired the first “Dirty Harry” movie (the villain in that movie’s name? Scorpio) as well as 2007’s “Zodiac.” To this day, the case is one of the most notorious unsolved mysteries in the Bay Area. (San Francisco Chronicle archives)
Helzer brothers: In 2000, Justin and Glenn Taylor Helzer (who went by Taylor) — along with roommate Dawn Godman — attempted to carry out a bizarre plan to fund a self-help group with an ultimate goal of hastening Christ’s return to Earth. The money was to come from the extortion of Taylor’s former brokerage clients and the creation of an underage prostitution service. Five people were killed in the murder-extortion plot, including guitarist Elvin Bishop’s daughter. In March 2005, the brothers were sentenced to death. Justin Helzer hanged himself in his San Quentin Prison cell in 2013. A previous suicide attempt — in which he stabbed himself in the eye with pens and pencils — had left him blind and partially paralyzed. (Bob Larson/Bay Area News Group archives)
The Polly Klaas case: On Oct. 1, 1993, 12-year-old Polly Klaas was kidnapped from her mother’s home during a slumber party in Petaluma. The large-scale search effort that ensued gained international attention. Her body was found two months later near U.S. Highway 101, 35 miles away from her home. In 1996, career felon Richard Allen Davis was convicted of Polly’s kidnap and murder. After he was found guilty, Davis raised both middle fingers and flashed them at a courtroom camera. Davis received the death penalty and remains on death row. The state’s Three Strikes Law was a direct result of this case. (Associated Press archives)
San Jose News archives
Mob lynching of Thomas Thurmond and John M. Holmes: On Nov. 26, 1933, in one of the most notorious crimes in San Jose’s history, a mob of vigilantes dragged Thomas Thurmond and John M. Holmes from the Santa Clara County Jail and lynched them in St. James Park in front of thousands of onlookers. Earlier that day, the corpse of Brooke Hart, the son of a local department store owner, had been found floating in the bay. Hart was kidnapped by Thurmond and Holmes, who, according to a confession signed by Thurmond, bound Hart with wire, hit him over the head with a concrete block, and tossed him from the San Mateo Bridge. Despite reportedly killing Hart within hours the kidnapping, Holmes and Thurmond demanded ransom from Hart’s father. (San Jose News archives)
Kidnapping of Jaycee Dugard: On June 10, 1991, while on her way to a bus stop near her South Lake Tahoe home, 11-year-old Jaycee Dugard was kidnapped by Phillip Garrido and his wife, Nancy, of Antioch. The captors held Jaycee as a sex slave in their backyard, and she bore two children by Phillip. The kids eventually were noticed by neighbors and later, when Phillip took them to the UC Berkeley campus to pass out religious literature, by police. Dugard’s captivity ended in 2009. (Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images)
The killing of Oscar Grant: In the early morning of New Year’s Day 2009, BART Police officer Johannes Mehserle shot Oscar Grant III, an unarmed 22-year-old African-American man, at the Fruitvale BART station in Oakland. Mehserle shot Grant in the back while he was restrained facedown on the platform. Footage of the shooting, taken by multiple onlookers, received widespread attention, and outrage and protests quickly ensued. Mehserle, who said he mistook his gun for his Taser, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to two years in prison but was released early. (Cathleen Allison/Associated Press archives)
Oikos University massacre: On April 2, 2012, 43-year-old former Oikos University student One Goh went on the campus of the small Korean Christian college in Oakland and opened fire, killing seven people and injuring three others, resulting in the worst massing shooting in the state in two decades. About an hour after the killings, Goh turned himself in to police. Goh, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic who reportedly believed the school’s administration was conspiring against him, had dropped out of the school after a fight with administrators over tuition. Five years after the rampage, Goh was sentenced to life in prison (Laura A. Oda/Bay Area News Group archives)
The Patty Hearst saga: On Feb. 4, 1974, newspaper heiress and UC Berkeley sophomore Patricia Hearst was living with her fiance in their apartment near campus when she was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army terrorist group. The ensuing period with the SLA — during which Hearst robbed banks and set off bombs — raised questions about whether she was brainwashed by the group or a willing accomplice to their crimes, an issue that is still debated. Hearst was arrested in September 1975, and she was later convicted of bank robbery and using a firearm during a felony. Hearst spent nearly two years in prison before her sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter. President Bill Clinton later pardoned her. (Associated Press archives)
Chili Finger Lady: Finger food, anyone? Anna Ayala gained international attention when she “discovered” a finger in her chili at a Wendy’s fast-food restaurant in San Jose in 2005. The “discovery” was actually a scam she cooked up with her husband — who acquired a human finger for $100 from a co-worker who had lost it in an accident — to bilk money out of the fast-food franchise. Wendy’s claimed to have lost $21 million because the ordeal — though fabricated — was too much to stomach for would-be customers. (Paul Sakuma/Associated Press archives)
Escape from Alcatraz: In June 1962 — the night of June 11 or the early morning of June 12 — brothers John and Clarence Anglin and Frank Morris placed papier-mache facsimiles of their own heads in their beds and and broke out of Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary through a utility corridor, apparently escaping the island on a makeshift raft. Despite intense investigation that followed the escape, it is unclear whether the trio survived the frigid waters of the San Francisco Bay. (Associated Press archives)
