DODGEVILLE — A 23-year-old Avoca man was sentenced Sept. 20 to life in prison for killing his mother and their family dog.

Sean R. Pickett was convicted by an Iowa County jury July 7 of first-degree intentional homicide and mistreatment of animals causing death at the end of a 2½-day trial and after about 90 minutes of deliberation.

Grant County Circuit Judge Craig Day, who presided over the trial, set Pickett’s first parole eligibility at 40 years on the homicide charge.

Iowa County Assistant District Attorney Curtis Johnson and the state Department of Corrections recommended denying Pickett eligibility for parole. Pickett’s attorney, Jeffrey Erickson, had sought parole eligibility after 20 years. 

Day also sentenced Pickett to 18 months in prison and 24 months extended supervision on the animal mistreatment charge. 

Pickett was charged with killing his mother, Susan Pickett, 54, and the family dog, a pit bull named Chico, in a house at Third Street and Williams Street May 10, 2021.

Pickett initially pleaded not guilty, changed his plea to not guilty by mental disease or defect last August, then changed his plea back to not guilty June 30.

Avoca police chief Daniel Carey responded to the 911 call from Pickett, who said his “mother and dog were deceased at her residence” May 10 at 3:41 p.m.

Carey said Pickett told him “he just returned home and found his mother and dog deceased at the residence.” Carey noticed Pickett’s jeans, shirt and shoes had “blood spatter all over them.”

Carey said he placed Pickett in his squad car, and “When I placed him into the squad he began sobbing.”

Carey and Muscoda police chief Bill Schramm then searched the house. Schramm found Susan Pickett and the dog in a bedroom. Carey said she had been “deceased for some time,” and that Susan Pickett had stab wounds and bruising on her head, while the dog had multiple stab wounds to its chest.

The officers found a “small lock-blade knife” near Susan Pickett’s head and a machete with a 20- to 24-inch blade with blood spatter in the bedroom. They also found a steep pipe about three feet long with parachute cord wrapped around one end.

Department of Justice Division of Criminal Investigation special agent Kenneth Folkers interviewed Sean Pickett in the Avoca village hall. Folkers said Pickett admitted he “stabbed her in the throat and then beat her with the metal bar six to eight times,” and admitted to killing the dog by beating it with the metal bar and stabbing it “several times.”

According to the criminal complaint, Pickett initially claimed he had been tied up and held hostage by his mother’s boyfriend, who he claimed killed his mother and the dog, leaving Pickett there to “be blamed for the murders.”

But according to the criminal complaint, Pickett later said that story “did not really happen.” Pickett told DCI special agent Michael Mansavage that “he had blacked out,” thought he “was possessed,” and “was hearing evil voices in his head.”

According to the criminal complaint, Pickett said, “The evil in my head said I had to kill my mom and Chico in order to go to peace. In order to find rest.”

Then at the start of the trial July 5, Erickson claimed that Sean Pickett killed his mother in self-defense. Erickson claimed Sean Pickett found his mother stabbing Chico and that she then turned on him with a knife.

UW Hospital pathologist Robert Corliss, who autopsied Susan Pickett and the dog May 12, testified at Pickett’s preliminary hearing that Susan Pickett had “extensive head injuries” including three “very significant impacts” that caused brain trauma and skull fractures. The head injuries “clearly from a linear object that struck the head” were the cause of her death. She also had stab wounds to her neck and chest.

Sean Pickett was sentenced to 30 days in jail in 2019 after he pleaded no contest to misdemeanor battery — domestic abuse.

Pickett also was sentenced to two years probation, including 30 days in jail, in 2017 after he pleaded no contest to misdemeanor battery — domestic abuse, criminal damage to property, and possession of drug paraphernalia. A charge of aggravated battery to an elderly victim was dismissed, according to court records. According to media reports, Pickett hit his mother and another man in Mineral Point in 2016, when Pickett asked the man for a beer and the man said he would have to ask his mother first.