Broken Arrow Murder Suspect's Ex Says He Tortured, Killed Cat

Jon Scarce is in jail, accused of murdering his girlfriend's 3-year-old son in Broken Arrow. Before his arrest, Scare's ex-girlfriend filed a protective order against him in the spring.

She said he killed her cat and sent her pictures of it, threatening she was next. She said she tried to tell people he was a ticking time bomb.

"He didn't just kill my cat, he tortured it," Leah Valentine said. "He - it - was morbid."

Leah Valentine started dating Jon Scarce last fall and she says at first, he was charming, funny and kind. Once he made a joke about her cat, Garfield, hanging himself that she didn't like. Then in December, she found her cat badly injured.

"Blood was coming out of his nose, eyes and ears and mouth and his head was swelled up like a grapefruit," Valentine said.

She rushed him to the vet who thought Garfield had been hit by a car, but she noticed his whiskers had been cut, so she believed someone attacked him.  She broke up with Jon a month later and not long after that, Garfield disappeared from her locked house.

In March, she accused Jon of taking Garfield and that's when she says he sent her a text that made her scream in agony.

8/14/2015 Related Story: Mother's Boyfriend Charged In Death Of 3-Year-Old Broken Arrow Boy

"He said 'you better watch your back, you're next,' and he said, 'I want you to view a media file.'" 

"The link was pictures of my dead cat. He had strangled him with a shoelace, put nails through his body, looked like his ears were burned," she said.

She filed a police report and filed a protective order. but no charges were filed. She was told it was because she didn't have Garfield's body as proof to positively identify him. She says Scarce even went back after the cat started to decay and sent her additional pictures.

She started a Facebook page and a petition drive, hoping to get justice.

"I knew he wouldn't stop there, that he would escalate and escalate and escalate until something like this happened," said Leah Valentine, ex-girlfriend of a man now jailed for the murder of a 3-year-old boy.

Leah says she was devastated to hear Scarce had been charged with murdering a child. Records show he told police the boy climbed a tree in the backyard and fell, but police say there were no trees or limbs in the yard.
Leah feels had Scarce been punished for killing her cat, maybe this wouldn't have happened.

"My heart goes out to the family," she said.

Records show police arrested Scarce August 8th for violating Leah's protective order.  He was also convicted of misdemeanor assault in 2014 for hitting his father's girlfriend. He got a 90-day suspended sentence, fines and work hours.