LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – Warning: the details in this story are extremely graphic and disturbing.

Seven-year-old Bear Olds, a black Labrador Retriever, with a love of snacks and balancing them on his nose, making friends, retrieving ducks and geese, and a love for his human parents Samantha and Justin as well as his fur brother, Ralph, was shot and killed in early February of this year.

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Bear had gone missing after being let outside by his owner, Samantha, around 6:00 p.m. on February 3rd. She had gone looking for him around her property when he didn’t come back to the door after about 20 minutes. Samantha and her husband Justin went to the neighbor, Thomas William Middaugh, to see if he had seen their dog. Because of the way Middaugh responded saying, “Yeah, I saw him,” Justin asked, “Well, did you shoot him?” Middaugh said “no” and told him he had seen the dog about 3:00 p.m., pointed and said “he went down that way.” The Olds knew he was lying because Samantha hadn’t gotten home from work yet at that time.

The Michigan State Police (MSP) responded to a report of a dog possibly being killed in Wexford County on February 4th at 11:00 a.m. The Olds told the law enforcement officer that their dog went missing the evening before and that after searching the area, they had followed the dogs’ tracks to their neighbor’s property. The next morning, they continued looking for Bear and saw an area of snow where it looked like their dog had circled and stopped – and there was a pool of blood in the snow. They also saw tire tracks.

9 and 10 News reports that after Samantha and Justin contacted the MSP Cadillac post, Middaugh then admitted that he killed the dog. But he did more than that. Middaugh had dismembered Bear into six pieces, which the Olds family got back in a box. Samantha said, “Seeing our baby like cold and stuff and just it’s not something you can just get over and we’re still furious…I don’t think the anger will ever go away.”

The investigation of the event led the MSP find out that Middaugh had shot the dog multiple times with a .22 caliber rifle. He had also cut the head and legs off the dog, wrapped the Bear in a tarp and put him in a box inside of his barn.

Middaugh was arrested in March and was charged with killing/torturing an animal as well as having a habitual offender third notice (online records show that his other two crimes were not animal-related). Those two charges were dropped when Middaugh pled guilty in May to an attempted third degree animal cruelty charge of killing or torturing animals that had been added. If Middaugh had been found guilty of the original charges, he could have faced up to two years in prison and fines that could have reached $2,500.

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Middaugh was sentenced in court on Monday to 60 days in prison (with 2 days credit) and 24 months of probation. He also has to pay $1298 in attorney fees, court costs and other fines.

Before the sentencing, Judge Jason Elmore said there hadn’t been any evidence that Middaugh had “tortured” the dog but that what happened with the dismemberment afterwards didn’t make sense and was “quite disturbing.” He also told the crowd in the court gallery that he was limited in what he could do regarding Middaugh’s sentencing.

Samantha Olds is channeling her anger and love of Bear into action. She told 9&10 News, “I’ll be taking an action moving forward to try to see what we can do as a community to make a difference.” She discussed her new mission and the hearing on her Facebook page after Middaugh was sentenced. Samantha posted, “Thomas Middaugh has been given 60 days of jail time and after that a 24 month probation period. 60 days will never sound or feel like enough, but boy that was a major win today as we were not expecting him to receive any jail time. Judge Elmore and prosecutor Wiggins did a phenomenal job speaking through their work today and we are grateful for them giving clarity on what control courts do and do not have.”

Samantha continued, “Moving forward we are laying this case to rest. However, I will not be backing down the fight to make a difference in future cases like this. I will be gathering information over time so see what options the people have to make a difference in legislation down state, because that is where the major problem with this case (and countless others) resides. This is why what you vote on matters people. Changes need to be made!”

Wexford County Prosecutor Corey Wiggins said that there wasn’t a way for the case to end in a good way as the old laws on the books don’t take into account how people currently treat their dogs as family. He also noted that he received more emails about this case than he has about murder cases than he’s prosecuted in the county.

Michigan News Source reached out to the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) about the case and the sentence that Middaugh received. Blake Goodman, Michigan state director for the HSUS said, “While we’re grateful that the Wexford County Prosecuting Attorney’s office has secured a conviction for this horrible crime, for many Michiganders this outcome seems unjust. Bear and his family experienced tremendous suffering. HSUS will continue to work alongside law enforcement and state lawmakers to strengthen animal cruelty laws and ensure that violent crimes against animals receive the attention they deserve.”

Middaugh apologized for killing Bear while he was in court on Monday. Although the apology was appreciated, the Olds family are unsure if the apology was genuine. Samantha said, “Around the community, we’ve heard of him making comments that projected that he was not sorry for doing it.”

At the hearing, Bear’s owners were allowed to make a crime victim’s impact statement and Samantha said that the situation has been “heartbreaking” for her family and described receiving the dirty, bloodied box that Bear was in and the horror of removing his decapitated body from a garbage bag inside of the box. She said, “You can’t unsee that” and she wondered if Middaugh could do that to a dog, what about children or other people.

In a Facebook post, Samantha thanked everyone who showed up at the court house for the sentencing hearing and those who have reached out to her and her husband, signed a petition for justice for Bear, and also watched on Zoom in support of #JusticeForBear. She said that those who have supported them have been the “glue who held our family together in this miserable time and gave us hope.”

Middaugh’s attorney, Wexford-Missaukee Chief Public Defender Robert Champion, was disappointed that Middaugh received jail time and said that his client had received death threats. He said, “It is important to note that the dog owners were routinely allowing their dog to roam at large and trespass on other people’s property. Both are a crime. If the dog owners had followed the law, we would not have been in court.”