Texas: Devan Taylor Diltz, 19, accused of torturing and killing his family's pets, has bond revoked after committing new crime

TEXAS -- Prosecutors want a teen facing felony animal cruelty charges in Miller County, Ark., back behind bars.

Devan Taylor Diltz, 19, is accused of torturing and killing his family's two pet rabbits and and a tabby cat. 

Diltz posted bond on a $15,000 bail in January and has appeared for pretrial hearings. But an arrest for burglary last month in Garland, Texas, prompted Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Connie Mitchell to file a petition to revoke Diltz's bond Monday.

Circuit Judge Kirk Johnson signed off on the order, but Diltz had not been taken into custody as of Wednesday afternoon. Diltz, who is living with his mother in Garland, is scheduled to appear before Johnson for a pretrial hearing next week.

Diltz's Arkansas bail bond company does not have the legal authority to cross state lines and return him to the Miller County jail, said bondsman Mark Luckett of J.E. Bonding. If Texas authorities arrest Diltz on the outstanding Arkansas warrant, a Miller County deputy will likely be tasked with picking him up and returning him to Arkansas. If Diltz remains free and shows for his hearing in Miller County next week, he will be taken into custody then.

A charge of felony aggravated cruelty concerns Diltz's alleged strangulation of Socks the cat, according to a probable cause affidavit used to create the following account. Diltz allegedly threw the cat he'd killed out the window of a moving car Dec. 10 as he traveled on Jefferson Avenue in Texarkana, Ark.

Diltz is facing two misdemeanor counts of animal cruelty for allegedly torturing Huckleberry and Aurora, two rabbits his stepmother, father and sister kept as pets at their Texarkana, Ark., home until they vanished Dec. 8. All of the animal cruelty charges are pending before Johnson.

Diltz was charged earlier this year with misdemeanor terroristic threatening involving statements he made about his stepmother. Diltz entered a no contest plea to the charge in Texarkana, Ark., district court April 26 and ordered to pay $520 in fines and court costs.

Diltz expressed hatred for his stepmother and said, "He knew if he killed her how he would do it," the affidavit states.

Diltz reportedly told a local counselor and staff at a Shreveport, La., psychiatric facility that maiming and killing animals gives him a thrill, according to reports prepared by investigators with Texarkana, Ark., Animal Services. Diltz allegedly admitted to witnesses that he tortured and suffocated the rabbits before nailing them to a tree, dismembering and burying them at Ed Worrell Park in Texarkana, Ark.

Diltz allegedly disinterred the rabbits later, dismembered them further, and burned their remains before burying them a second time at two Texarkana, Ark., locations. Diltz allegedly showed a friend an area near a lone tree in Ed Worrell Park where he claimed to have buried the remains of one rabbit. The friend reported that Diltz showed her a second burial site on the grounds of Sugar Hill Methodist Church in Texarkana, Ark.

Investigators inspected an area of recently disturbed ground at Sugar Hill Methodist Church, where Diltz allegedly buried some of the remains of one rabbit in a cardboard box he claimed to have set on fire there. The charred remains of a cardboard box containing maggots were collected as evidence as was a Dr Pepper soda bottle filled with yellowish liquid.

One of Diltz's family members said he had taken lighter fluid from her room and that he often drank Dr Pepper. The family told investigators the liquid could also be whiskey, which they had in their home.

If convicted of felony animal cruelty in the death of Socks the cat, Diltz could be fined up to $10,000 and sentenced to up to six years in prison. The two misdemeanor animal cruelty counts involving the rabbits, Huckleberry and Aurora, are punishable by up to a year in the county jail and fines up to $1,000 on each count.

According to Dallas County court records, Diltz was arrested May 13 on the Texas burglary charge and posted bond on a $5,000 bail the following day. Burglary of a habitation is punishable by two to 20 years in Texas.

(Texarkana Gazette - June 9, 2016)

Name: Devan Taylor Diltz
Sex: Male
Race: White
Height: 6'
Weight: 160
DOB: 02/20/1997
Age at arrest: 18
Booking date: 01/11/2016
Booked by: Caddo, Louisiana
Charge:

• Out Of State Fugitive