Dimitri Diatchenko of the "Sons of Anarchy" fame has been charged with killing and eating his ex-girlfriend's pet rabbit, sending her photographs of the grisly act and threatening a similar treatment to her.
The 46-year-old television and video game actor was charged on Tuesday with felony counts of cruelty to an animal with the use of a knife and also making criminal threats, the Los Angeles County District Attorne's office said in a statement on Wednesday.
The authorities said that Diatchenko, who has appeared in many episodes of "Sons of Anarchy", sent his ex-girlfriend a series of blow-by-blow pictures of what he was doing.
The two had lived together "for some time" before calling it quits.
The ex-girlfriend wasn't identified by the prosecutors.
The actor resorted to the gruesome act after she told him that they can't be roommates after the end of their relationship.
The incident took place on Sunday when she was not at the North Hollywood house.
"Diatchenko skinned the pet, cooked it and ate half of it while sending her step-by-step pictures of what he did. When she returned, the defendant allegedly told her he would do the same to her," the district attorney's statement said, CNN reports.
If convicted, he faces up to four years and eight months in prison. But, at preset he is out on bail.
The crime was similar to a scene from the 1987 film "Fatal Attraction", where Glenn Close's character boils her lover's daughter's pet rabbit.
He used to frequently post photographs of a rabbit named Miss Ella on his Facebook page. However, it is still not clear if the unfortunate creature was Miss Ella.
Diatchenko, an actor as well as a musician, was born in San Francisco. He reportedly mainly played Russian and Eastern European characters on television. He also had a brief part in the film, 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull'.
