Man Busted For Animal Cruelty So Extreme That Cop Said He Had To Gather Himself
Sergeant Darrell McMann of the Atmore Police Department said neighbors heard yelps before officers arrived. McMann spotted the dog's badly burned body on the driveway.
'When I got there, I was just at a loss for words, you know,' McMann told WALA. 'I just stood there and looked at the dog for a little bit and I had to get myself together.'
James Williamson, 44, was charged with aggravated animal cruelty, WALA noted.
McMann, who also owns a chihuahua, called the case 'horrible and inhumane.'
While the suspect was arguing with a family member, witnesses said Williamson followed through on an earlier threat to place the dog in the oven and turn up the heat because he was annoyed by its barking, the Atmore News reported. He had barricaded the dog inside the appliance with a chair, WSFA reported.
One witness heard the dog yelping a short time later, according to the Atmore News, which wrote from the police report.
Authorities found evidence of the animal's death in the kitchen, according to the report cited by the local outlet.
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Amanda Knox knows she's the story. Becoming a mom made her ready to tell it onscreen, on her own terms.
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'The first letters that I ever got in prison were from people from [our high school],' she tells me, her voice softening as we begin our conversation. 'I'm going to get emotional right now, because everyone else in my life — my parents, my college friends — they were all just like, 'Oh, Amanda's going to get out any day now.' But I think [our school] had this sort of established sense of how to respond to a crisis, and we're going to do it collectively. Like, we know this girl. To receive those messages when I was in the middle of this insane story that was blowing up around me? That was a huge relief.' To call her story insane is an understatement. Knox was convicted of murder and spent four years in prison before she was acquitted in 2011. The case took several twists: In 2014, an appeals court reversed that acquittal and reconvicted her. That second guilty verdict, for Knox and her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, was thrown out in 2015 by Italy's highest court, ending the legal saga. Rudy Guede, whose DNA was found at the crime scene, remains the only person convicted of Kercher's murder. Through it all, Knox says, her story was often misrepresented, both in the media and by the public. The Hulu series, which premieres on Aug. 20, is her attempt to tell it herself onscreen. The Lewinsky effect The series itself came together at a pivotal moment in Knox's life. She had just given birth to daughter Eureka in 2021 and was struggling with how to reconcile the trauma she had endured with her new role as a mother. 'I was sitting with this feeling of needing to be OK,' Knox says, explaining she had to confront her past to avoid 'consciously or unconsciously passing on this dark cloud that had been hovering over me onto my children.' (She also shares son Echo with husband Christopher Robinson.) 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Knox wrote her first memoir, Waiting to Be Heard, in 2013, and her second book, Free: My Search for Meaning, came out in March. But a scripted series is a different challenge, offering a chance to show the emotional nuances and psychological complexity that words alone can't always capture. With Lewinsky's guidance, Knox finally felt ready. 'She wasn't just like, 'Here's a horrible thing that happened to a girl and here's a courtroom drama.' It's a more personal story of who you were before a traumatic event enters your life, and who you are after. How do you make sense of it? What do you do to reclaim a sense of ownership over your own life? That's what the [show] is about,' Knox, who produced the series alongside Lewinsky, says. 'That's why we frame it the way we do in the show: I'm going back to Italy to confront my prosecutor.' Aside from Lewinsky, Knox credits creator and showrunner K.J. 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