SWFL.io - Local NewsWINK Digital Team
•7/30/2026
FORT MYERS — A Bonita Springs man is heading to prison for 20 years after a disturbing case involving mutilated cats and threats against a local couple.
Robert James Luther III was sentenced to the maximum five years in prison on each of four counts, to be served one after another, according to the Lee County court case.
Luther was convicted in May following a three-day trial in Lee County on two counts of aggravated animal cruelty and two counts of aggravated stalking.
The case began on March 13, 2025, when a man found a box on top of his mailbox containing the severed heads of two cats. The box was wet and smelled of gasoline.
The Lee County Sheriff's Office launched an investigation and confirmed Luther's van had been in the area that morning.
Around the same time, a deputy spotted Luther at a nearby car wash scrubbing his van. Surveillance video showed him spending about three hours cleaning it, with a red gas can sitting on top of the van.
The victim identified Luther using a still image from the car wash video and his driver's license photo. Luther was then arrested while sitting parked in his van behind a closed business.
A search of the van turned up multiple firearms including two rifles and a shotgun, a safe with two more firearms, a pellet gun, a machete, a saw blade, dark clothing and two rolls of duct tape.
Investigators also searched Luther's phone and found video from the day before the crime showing him shooting two cats in the woods and making graphic comments about them.
The cats in the video matched the heads found in the box and a firearm seen in the video matched one found in his van.
The homeowner and his wife had reportedly been threatened by Luther for more than a year before the crime.
Assistant State Attorneys Erin Hughes and Lisney Agramonte prosecuted the case.