A Texas judge this week rejected a plea deal offered to a Waco man who admitted killing his estranged wife’s dog and laying their bodies out in her parking space at the church where she worked.

The McLennan County District Attorney’s Office offered Scott Riggleman deferred probation for 10 years in return for pleading guilty to two felony counts of cruelty to non-livestock animals, KWTX reported.

Judge Thomas West allowed Riggleman to withdraw his guilty plea and put the case on the trial docket. Riggleman will also stand trial for making terroristic threats, a misdemeanor. He faces up to 10 years in prison on the cruelty counts.

Riggleman had also threatened to kill his wife and himself and was initially charged with stalking, but District Attorney Josh Tetens decided not to pursue that charge.

Neither Tetens nor Riggleman’s attorney commented after the judge’s decision.

Riggleman and his wife separated in September 2022, and he was admitted to a hospital under an emergency detention order after police said he threatened to kill himself and his wife.

He was arrested in December when his estranged wife reported finding the bodies of her black Labrador, Smoky, and white pit bull mix, Frankie, in her work parking space. A witness also reported that she and her husband had found the dogs while taking their daughter to school and that they had been stabbed and shot several times in the chest, neck, and flank.

Riggleman’s wife told police that she found a note on her car the previous day from Riggleman, saying he needed to meet with her and that he “was going to lose his beloved pets now too” because of the separation.

An arrest affidavit says that he threatened to come to his wife’s workplace to kill her, her co-workers, and himself, and that she and another relative saw him parked across the street from the church as they left one evening in November.

Another time, she said, he followed her from work, prompting her to drive “erratically” to get away from him.

“The victim advised that she is in fear for her life and made statements that suggest that she has altered her home and work life out of fear that the accused will hurt or kill her,” an affidavit says. “She also believed that the dogs were left at her workplace in a manner intended to alarm her and suggest that she would also be killed by the accused.”

Riggleman remains behind bars on a $40,000 bond.

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[Featured image: Scott Riggleman/McLennan County Sheriff’s Office]