A Knoxville man pleaded guilty Thursday to charges he crushed the neck of his stepdaughter’s puppy, suffocated it with liquid makeup and then laughed about his misdeed.

Timothy David Sawyer, 40, admitted at a hearing in Knox County Criminal Court that he was guilty of aggravated cruelty to animals. His case is the first-ever felony animal cruelty case pursued in Knox County.

“What he did was so cruel, so deliberate,” Harper said.

Harper told Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner that Knoxville Police Department officers summoned to the home of Sawyer’s estranged wife on Jan. 13 found the two-month-old Jack Russell terrier named “Sophie” dead on a bed with “makeup around her mouth.”

The puppy belonged to Sawyer’s 13-year-old stepdaughter.

Sawyer told police the puppy must have accidentally ingested the liquid makeup, Harper said.

Police asked for a necropsy. A necropsy is the equivalent of an autopsy.

The necropsy showed that the puppy suffered “blunt trauma to the head,” Harper said. The puppy’s neck was broken, she said, and makeup was found in the puppy’s lungs.

“Basically, as the puppy was dying, it was forced to take the makeup into its lungs,” Harper said.

Five days later, Sawyer called his estranged wife.

“He told her if she pursued (charges) she’d be dead,” Harper told Baumgartner.