23-year-old Ashley Richards of Houston, Texas was sentenced to 10 years in prison after producing videos of herself torturing animals.
According to ABC13, she was sentenced after pleading guilty to three counts of animal cruelty.
Court documents obtained by Breitbart Texas claim that the abuse took place between 2010 and 2012. Richards apparently recorded herself torturing cats and dogs with meat cleavers, high heeled shoes, and knives.
Using the footage, she created “animal crush videos.” Crush videos allegedly show women torturing live animals–they are typically then viewed by individuals who are sexually aroused by them.
A criminal complaint defined crush videos as depicting “actual contact with one or more living non-human mammals, birds, reptiles, or amphibians [being] intentionally crushed, burned, drowned, suffocated, impaled, or otherwise subjected to serious bodily injury.”
A spokesman from the Houston Police Department told Breitbart Texas, “We have a unit that investigates these crimes–specifically, crimes relating to animal cruelty. Officers are made aware of such crimes by a variety of ways.”
In this particular case, Richards was ultimately caught after PETA discovered the videos 2012. The activist group immediately reached out to Texas law enforcement, according to reports.
ABC13 reported that 52-year-old Brent Justice, Richards’ co-defendant, has not yet been sentenced. He will allegedly appear in court on July 17.
Follow Kristin Tate on Twitter @KristinBTate.