A day doesn’t go by when Deborah Parker doesn’t have visions of her pet goose, Lily, being bludgeoned to death by three laughing teenagers with an aluminum bat, she told a judge Friday.
Christopher Mullan, now 20, Anthony Karney, 18, and a 17-year-old pleaded guilty to felony cruelty to animals and threw themselves on the mercy of the court. They apologized and begged for leniency. Behind them relatives and friends of Deborah and David Parker sat holding pictures of the beloved pet.
Asking for the harshest sentence, Parker spoke of a goose with “beautiful blue eyes” that liked to have her toenails painted, preferably red.
“The thoughts kill me inside every day,” she said. “How can three human beings do something like this for enjoyment?”
Mullan, Karney and the 17-year-old were sentenced to one year in jail, three years’ probation. The youngest, who the South Florida Sun-Sentinel is not identifying because of his age, will serve his time under house arrest. The two others will spend nine months in the county jail before they are eligible for house arrest.
Judge Krista Marx also required that they earn high school diplomas in jail, perform community service working with animals and undergo psychiatric evaluations.
Lily was killed the night of Dec. 16 when the three teens got a ride to the Parker home west of Lake Worth. After chasing Lily around the yard, the 17-year-old held the goose while Mullan and Karney took turns swinging the bat at her head.
They then drove off with the bloodied and broken bird hanging out the car door and dumped her a few blocks away.
It took detectives four months to piece together the crime. The first break came when an acquaintance heard one of the teens bragging and alerted detectives.
Prosecutor Moira Lasch said Karney and Mullan were initially uncooperative and had to be interviewed twice. Mullan pointed the finger at the wrong person, prolonging the investigation.
On March 20, all three were arrested.
Karney told the court that he’d begun turning his life around before he was arrested and enrolled in Palm Beach Community College. He had a job and was honoring a curfew his parents imposed. He said he loved animals, and his mother testified that he frequently rescued them and worked at an animal shelter as a youth.
“I take full responsibility for what I did,” he said. “I just didn’t know what I was thinking at the time. … I have no explanation.”
The 17-year-old also apologized, saying his time in jail has helped him grow spiritually and mentally. He recently took the GED.
“Jail is not part of my future plan,” he said.
Mullan, described by the prosecution as the ringleader, also said he didn’t know what he was thinking and apologized.
Lasch said all three have been on probation and that Karney and the 17-year-old were actually in violation of their probation when they killed Lily after they cut a deal to plead a felony burglary to misdemeanors.
The three faced maximum sentences of five years for killing Lily and an added year for the two who violated probation.
“I am troubled by the fact that at such a young age, you have such checkered pasts,” the judge told them.
Parker said the apologies were empty and she wished for stiffer sentences.
“There’s no excuse for what they did and no apologizing could make it better,” she said. “To me, five years would not be enough either. My baby’s dead.”
Dianna Cahn can be reached at or 561-243-6645.
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