Early in 2008, off-duty FBI S.W.A.T. sniper Lovett Leslie Ledger of McLennan County, Lorena, in central Texas not far from Waco, stepped onto the front porch of his home with a pellet gun.

As one of his children watched this appalling roll-model, he shot Sassy, an eency three-pound chihuahua with a pink rhinestone collar who was walking outside in front of her own house doing nothing whatsoever wrong. Sassy ran onto another neigbhor's lawn, that of witness Cyndi Mitchell who said, "I've never heard a noise like that from an animal. It was a screaming sound."

Ledger would at first lie his ass off to the police, claiming it wasn't him who killed the dog. Sociopaths lie with great ease. But as witnesses came forth, he admitted he did it but had intended only to injur, not kill Sassy. Sociopaths also reason badly and easily believe wishing to do injury to a harmless animal is no big deal and since that's all he wanted to do there should be no repurcussions from the damned dog dying in agony.

Having never shown the least remorse, Lovett "Les" Ledger (for Less than Human) has never offered any apology to the Davis family, whose wee dog he killed for sport, to the everlasting sorroows of two small children.

He had not even a feeble excuse for his dispicable actions, other than he merely meant savage injury not death. Sassy'd never done anything to him at all. So several months later, he pleaded no contest on charges of animal cruelty. It's doubtful even then he realized he had no defense, but his attorney no doubt told him that "no contest" pleas meant the guilty verdict could not later be used against him in a civil court.

He should've been tossed in jail for a few months, but in Waco agents are permitted even to gun down and set fire to men, women, and children if they join a loony cult, so Les only had to do 300 hours community service, with deferred probation, which at least was more than agents in Waco got for killing children. Still, talk about slap on the wrist! Let's hope the community service was not around dogs or children. Cleaning out diaper pales and scrubbing men's urinals in roadside rest stops would be too good for him.

So he got practically no punishment at all, though animal cruelty is well-documented as one of the predicating behaviors of men who eventually commit homicides. As reporter Cynthia Hunt noted: "I bet Ledger wets his bed too," bedwetting being another of the key behavioral markers for nascent homicidal maniacs.

Meanwhile the FBI did an internal investigation, and for a while everyone expected him to get nothing but a reprimand letter in his file. You can usually kill somebody on any feeble excuse and get it covered up if you're a cop or FBI agent, because "internal investigation" generally means "white wash." But even the thin blue line couldn't hold up to randomly killing someone's harmless pet. It took close to two years, but eventually they flushed that turd out of the FBI.

So there is no longer a sniper with a badge playing lethal games with his SWAT skills. Not that I'd risk dog or child anywhere around him even if he's not a badged agent any longer. He's still a disgusting citizen and a potential menace to any neighborhood he lives in. He had five years later killed a neighbor's lab and gotten away with it. He committed crime in front of his own children without regard for what they witnessed.

I'm sure he now "qualifies" to be a Burns security guard, but if he's ever put on duty in your neighborhood, really everyone should be informed, as they would need to be with a registered offender on their block, that the well-being of their children and pets was in the hands of a fiend.