Don't forget the 2001 dog mauling case of Diane Whipple. Marjorie Knoller and her husband, Robert Noel,owned two very large 120-pound Presa Canario dogs named Bane (male) and Hera (female). One day the dogs attacked Diane Whipple and tore her throat out. She died a horrible death.
guards find photo
There was evidence that Noel and Knoller practiced bestiality with their dogs. Pelican Bay Prison Sgt. Joe Akin reported finding "a letter disguised as legal mail addressed to (inmate Paul) Schneider" that discusses "sexual activity between Noel, Knoller and the dog Bane." Noel and Knoller are Schneider's attorneys and adoptive parents.

Akin reported that he saw "numerous photos of Knoller posing nude with fighting dog drawings" among the property of Paul "Cornfed" Schneider and cellmate Dale Bretches. Both inmates are artists, and have made the Presa Canario dogs the subjects of many of their works.

Akin also reported that he "discovered communications between Noel and Knoller to Schneider that described sexual activities between Knoller and Noel and included photos and drawings of dogs and fighting dogs" as well as a photo of a male dog's genitals.

Robert Noel said the nude photos of his wife found in his adopted son's prison cell were a private matter. He stated that it was nothing deviant and reminded reporters that it wasn't long ago that homosexuals were considered deviant.

Hmmm....the pair also referred to their dogs in strangely affectionate terms, claiming Bane to be a "pet me, pet me" dog and Hera a "certified lick specialist." Kind of gross when you think of the sick inside joke they could have had between themselves. In any event, these dogs were abused.
 

Ferocious: Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller Build the Perfect Beast Dog's O War Paul “Cornfed” Schinder was thrilled that someone would take care of Bane and Hera that would treat them the way they needed to be treated to keep them in a healthy environment. Marjorie would get up early three days a week to cook bacon, steak, and fresh hamburger to mix in their dog food. Robert was very proud of both dogs, especially Bane. Loved the ladies He bragged that Bane, “loved the ladies” and discussed how the dog developed an erection the first time he met Marjorie. That comments was grounds for suspicion, and one that I’m sure raised many an eyebrow. That comment set the grounds for one of the more notorious rumors that plagued this case. A long series of correspondence went back and forth before Robert and Marjorie went to pick up the dogs. After they arrived in San Francisco, Marjorie took both Bane and Hera to see a vet. The Dr. was very cautious with the animals. Both Bane and Hera weighed over 100 pounds each and were intimidating, but the Dr. was not threatened by either. He had seen many dogs and had evaluated all breeds and types. The two Presa Canarios had some health problems, due to substandard care while on Janet Coombs farm. Being chained outside, rain or shine, and not fed well, both dogs were reacting more positively now that they were being cared for. But there was something nagging the vet about Bane and Hera. He wrote a letter to Marjorie, stating that “These dogs would be a liability in any home,” Marjorie later claimed she saw the letter only after the attack on Diane Whipple, she said that she never knew the Dr sent the letter. Hard to believe? You decide. Marjorie and Robert took Bane and Hera in and their lives in San Francisco started to change. They were taking a lot of pro-bono work, helping inmates sue the system for what they believed was injustice and sub-standard care in a state run facility. Marjorie and Robert ran their lives around the dogs. They were huge and scared many people that lived in neighborhood. There were many occasions that people were curious about the unusual breed. Some people pet them and came away with a feeling of unease. When Marjorie and Robert walked the dogs, they were often approached and met with a sense of foreboding. Marjorie and Robert didn’t care. DA’s office prosecutor, James Hammer said,” These dogs were bred to be aggressive. And Knoller and Noel got off on the fact that their dogs scared people.” When the hearing was held to see if there was enough evidence to charge them with a crime, more than 30 people came forward to complain about Bane and Hera. Bane had bitten several people, Diane Whipple being one of them. Sadly, she had been killed in a way no one should have to die, and would not be alive to talk about how scared she was by the massive animals. Nearby their apartment, there is a large park that many people took their dogs on sunny days. On one particular day, a woman named Kathy Brooks, was in the park with her dog when she saw Robert Noel walking Bane through the park. She had seen the dogs with Marjorie in the past, and confronted Noel. She told him that he was not being a responsible pet owner by having a dog that there had been so many neighborhood complaints about. He responded by saying,”I can walk my dog wherever I God damn well please,” and walked off, leaving Kathy stunned by his arrogance and his total indifference over the fact that Bane and Hera were dangerous animals. The dogs were notorious in the community and soon they would be notorious to everyone in America. Cornefed_photo Robert and Marjorie acted as surrogate parents to Paul. Bane and Hera were well taken care of, and Paul, Noel and Marjorie had a steady stream of correspondence. Noel wrote Paul a letter that said how happy he was that Paul trusted him enough to let them inside his mind, and would trust them to “…invade his body, ” Then came the photo controversy. During the search of the apartment many incriminating letters were found between Noel, Knoller, and Schineder. Many of them were very sexually explicit, leading some to believe that there were photos of Marjorie engaged in bestiality with Bane. It certainly didn’t help the case when in the hearing; Marjorie referred to one of the dogs as her “certified lick therapist”. The penal system got wind of this and locked down Paul’s cell to look for photos of Marjorie engaging in intercourse with Bane but nothing was found. In a press release, Marjorie said, “A three way fantasy is normal, many people have them, the most thing you’d find is possibly a photo with me and Bane where I am topless, showing my breasts. That’s hardly pornographic, much less bestiality.” The photos were never found. Many people were disgusted by the allegations, true or not, and that just made things worse for Marjorie, worse than she knew at the time. That accusation would work against not only her personally, but professionally as well. Her career was shot, and she knew it. Noel seemed not to care. Next Page: The Trial and The Trajedy

January 24, 2002 - Dog Mauling Trial Weighs Blame, Bestiality

Jury selection began today in the trial of a San Francisco couple accused of criminal responsibility for the death of their neighbor, who was mauled by their dogs in the doorway of her apartment.

Nearly 300 potential jurors were sworn in today and given 29-page questionnaires that focused on their attitudes towards dogs and how much they knew about the highly publicized case. Roughly 800 prospective jurors have been called for today and Friday. Jury selection is expected to take up to two weeks.

Marjorie Knoller and Robert Noel, the pair charged in the case, were able to convince a judge that the trial should be moved to Los Angeles because of publicity the mauling received, but failed to win separate trials or the right to keep evidence related to their relationships with the dogs out of the trial.

Both are charged with involuntary manslaughter and keeping a vicious dog. Knoller, who was with the dogs at the time that Diane Whipple was attacked on Jan. 26, 2001, also faces a charge of second-degree murder.

Knoller could face a minimum of 15 years to life in prison if she is convicted of the murder charge. Noel faces a maximum of four years in prison if he is found guilty.

innappropriate

The case could involve evidence that the couple, a pair of San Francisco lawyers who got the presa Canario dogs from a pair of convicts they defended and befriended, engaged in "inappropriate sexual conduct" with the animals, according to prosecutors.

"They blurred the boundaries between dogs and humans, with fatal consequences," San Francisco prosecutor Jim Hammer testified during a hearing earlier this month.

Judge James Warren ruled on Jan. 15 that any evidence related to sexual activity would only be admitted if prosecutors can show how it affected the way the dogs behaved.

"If there is sex that is relevant in this case, either with dogs or with humans, it would be scrutinized outside the presence of the media," Warren said at that hearing.

Today, Warren ruled that television cameras would be allowed in the courtroom for opening arguments, scheduled for Feb. 19, as well as for closing arguments and the verdict.

Placing the Blame

At a grand jury hearing in March, Hammer testified that Bane, the male dog who was determined to be the primary aggressor in the attack, "put his head in Miss Whipple's crotch" and responded to her the way he would have to a "bitch in heat."

The allegations of "inappropriate sexual conduct" are just one of the strange turns the case has taken since Whipple was attacked as she tried to get into her apartment with her groceries a year ago.

First Noel made a series of bold statements to the media in which he seemed to blame Whipple, a university lacrosse coach, for somehow bringing the attack on herself, either by perfume she might have been wearing or by using steroids -- a claim that was never substantiated.

Noel, 59, and Knoller, 45, said they had gotten the dogs from a Pelican Bay State Prison inmate, Paul "Cornfed" Schneider, whom they had taken as their legally adopted son. Schneider and another inmate, both members of the Aryan Brotherhood who are serving life without parole, were allegedly trying to operate a business from behind bars raising attack dogs for illegal drug labs.

Schneider and the other inmate had first put the two dogs in the care of another woman, who said she could not keep them because they had grown too vicious.

Prison Documents

Documents found in Schneider's cell, including letters and nude photographs of Knoller, provided evidence of sexual activity between the couple and Bane, according to an investigator in the San Francisco District Attorney's office.

In July, the two inmates filed a motion claiming that they should be the targets of the wrongful death suit that Whipple's domestic partner, Sharon Smith, had filed against Noel and Knoller.

Finally, the couple tried to get their trials separated, claiming that statements each had made could prejudice the jury against the other, but Warren denied the motion.

"There isn't anything one way or the other that will show that one defendant is prejudiced by the other," Warren said when he ruled on the motion last week. "This is a classic case for a joint trial."

On Friday, San Francisco will hold an official day of commemoration for Whipple, and family and friends plan to hold a public service for her on Saturday.

In all dog bite cases it is essential that measures be taken promptly to preserve evidence, investigate the incident in question, and to enable physicians or other expert witnesses to thoroughly evaluate any injuries. If you or a loved one is a victim of a dog bite, call The Law Offices of Chuck Ervin now at 916-447-4357 or CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT A SIMPLE CASE FORM. The initial consultation is free of charge, and if we agree to accept your case, we will work on a contingent fee basis, which means we get paid for our services only if there is a monetary award or recovery of funds. Don’t delay! You may have a valid claim and be entitled to compensation for your injuries, but a lawsuit must be filed before the statute of limitations expires.

 FTR#297—Going to the Dogs—(One 30-minute segment) (Sources are noted in parentheses.) (Recorded on 4/29/2001.)

In January of 2000, Diane Whipple, the coach of the women’s lacrosse team at St. Mary’s college, was mauled to death by two 120-pound Presa Canario dogs at her residence in San Francisco. (The relatively rare Presa Canario is a breed that is adapted to fighting and security activity.) As investigation of the case proceeded, a number of strange and disturbing details began to emerge.

1. The dogs belonged to two San Francisco attorneys, Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller, who are married. Investigators soon determined that the attorneys were caring for the dogs on behalf of two of their clients, who were members of the Aryan Brotherhood, a powerful, white supremacist gang based in correctional institutions. “The dog that killed a San Francisco woman had a long history of viciousness and was secretly owned by two Aryan Brotherhood prison gang members as part of an underground scheme to breed and sell animals while in maximum security at Pelican Bay [a California maximum-security prison], officials said. At the time of Friday’s fatal attack on Diane Whipple, the 120-pound Presa Canario dog, Bane, was being kept by the inmates’ attorneys, Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller of Pacific Heights, as was another dog, Hera. . . . Authorities said Pelican Bay inmates Paul ‘Cornfed’ Schneider and Dale Bretches were investigated by state prison authorities last year and found guilty in February of running a dog-breeding scheme while in the maximum-security housing unit at the prison.” (“Prison gang Duo Linked to Dog that Killed Woman” by Jaxon Van Derbeken; San Francisco Chronicle; 1/30/2001; p. A1.)

2. Eventually, it turned out that Schneider (38 years old) was the couple’s recently adopted son. “News that the lawyers whose dog mauled a San Francisco woman to death have adopted the animal’s prior owner—a prison inmate and a member of the Aryan Brotherhood—has veteran family attorneys shaking their heads in disbelief. Adult adoptions are not unusual, but when Robert Noel, 59, and Marjorie Knoller, 45, became the parents of 38-year-old Paul John ‘Cornfed’ Schneider, now serving time in Pelican Bay for aggravated assault and attempted, it turned a tragic situation into a bizarre one. Adoption lawyers and scholars say they have never heard of a lawyer adopting an adult client, a situation that raises a spectrum of ethical issues. ‘I don’t know what’s going on in this dog case,’ said Nordin Blacker, a prominent San Francisco family lawyer. ‘This seems particularly strange.’” (“Lawyers’ Adoption of Inmate Stuns Legal Experts” by Harriet Chiang; San Francisco Chronicle; 2/1/2001; p. A20.)

3. The case was to become stranger still. After being charged with second-degree murder, Noel and Knoller proceeded to drive at very high speed to the rural residence of a friend and client, and were ticketed by pursuing police. “As the grand jury deliberated, Noel and Knoller headed north on Intestate 80 in a maroon Chevrolet Impala. Undercover San Francisco police in unmarked cars followed close behind, but [San Francisco D.A. Terence] Hallinan would not say why authorities ordered the surveillance. A California Highway Patrol officer stopped Noel in Woodland at 4:29 p.m. after he reportedly made several unsafe lane changes while driving through southern Yolo County at speeds reportedly topping 90 mph. ‘Mr. Noel was very cordial and didn’t seem to be too upset by the incident,’ said CHP Sgt. Willie Brooks. Noel was issued a ticket for reckless driving. Before heading off, Noel told the San Francisco officers where he was headed, said Lt. Henry Hunter. The couple arrived at a ranch owned by their friend and client James Patton in Corning, a small Tehama County town about 170 miles north of San Francisco, shortly after 6 p.m. . . . Three days after the attack a judge finalized the couple’s adoption of Paul ‘Cornfed’ Schneider, a 38-year-old convict serving a life sentence at Pelican Bay State Prison.” (“Murder, Manslaughter Charges in Dog Attack” by Jaxon Van Derbeken; San Francisco Chronicle; 3/28/2001; p. A8.)

4. As the case became ever stranger, indications emerged that there may have been a sexual dimension to the attorneys’ relationship to their clients. “What’s more, prison officials said Hallinan’s investigators found nude photos of Knoller in Schneider’s cell while searching for evidence.” (Idem.)

5. Subsequent articles indicated at the possibility of bestiality. “The documents, including affidavits for search warrants of the couple’s Pacific Heights apartment, suggest that authorities suspected sexual abuse of the dogs by the couple. Investigators theorized that possible sexual abuse of the animals may have contributed to the attack on Whipple. But officials said yesterday that it appears found little to support that theory. Yet, according to one affidavit, Pelican Bay Prison Sgt. Joe Akin reported finding ‘a letter disguised as legal mail addressed to (inmate Paul) Schneider’ that discusses ‘sexual activity between Noel, Knoller and the dog Bane.’ Noel and Knoller are Schneider’s attorneys and adoptive parents. Akin reported that he saw ‘numerous photos of Knoller posing nude with fighting dog drawings’ among the property of Paul ‘Cornfed’ Schneider and cell-mate dale Bretches. Both inmates are artists, and have made the Presa Canario dogs the subjects of many of their works. Akin also reported that he ‘discovered communications between Noel and Knoller to Schneider that described sexual activities between Knoller and Noel and included photos and drawings of dogs and fighting dogs’ as well as a photo of a male dog’s genitals.’” (“Killer Dogs Had Attacked Blind Woman” by Jaxon Van Derbeken; San Francisco Chronicle; 3/302001; p. A19.)

6. Noel’s background also raised some interesting questions about the case. Noel worked for the National Security Agency, in addition to the Department of Justice. “For five years, during college, he worked at the National Security Agency, developing surveillance photos among other work. In 1969, he became a tax lawyer for the Department of Justice in the Nixon administration. By 1981, now moved to San Diego, he joined Rogers & Wells, a private San Diego firm run, in part, by a Nixon associate. His wife at the time worked in early childhood education.” (“Owners of Killer Dog Abandoned Conventional Career Paths” by Dan Reed and Michael Bazeley; San Jose Mercury News; 2/3/2001; p. 7A.)

7. It would not be unreasonable to ask whether Noel may still have some connection to NSA, or some other intelligence agency. While at Rogers & Wells, he worked with an attorney who had previously represented C. Arnholt Smith, one of Richard Nixon’s principal financial backers. He had worked opposite that attorney (Mitch Lathrop) while working for the Nixon Justice Department. “Lathrop was impressed: Bob Noel was barely 34 years old, fresh from his stint in Washington, dispatched to clean up after the failure of U.S. National Bank. For someone trying to master the art of trial work, this was litigation heaven. ‘It was like something out of a grade-B novel,’ said Lathrop, a San Diego attorney whose firm represented the bank’s owner, C. Arnholt Smith. ‘Everyone wanted to depose Noel’s client, the Comptroller whose auditors had gone through the bank records. Bob’s role,’ said Lathrop, ‘was to protect the United States government.’ Lathrop asked Noel in 1981 to join him at the San Diego office of Rogers & Wells, headed by William Rogers, attorney general under Eisenhower and Nixon’s secretary of state. Noel handled big-name clients, earning good money to support Karen, the red-haired woman he’d married the day after President Kennedy was shot, and their three kids.” (“Story of Torn Family, Estranged Son May Offer Insight into Actions in Mauling Case” by Patrick May; San Jose Mercury News; 3/29/2001; p. 18A.)

8. An odd coincidence enabled Noel’s son by his first marriage to escape prison himself. “One night in 1983, a San Diego police officer pulled up at the front door with the boy. ‘The officer was going to write up a report the next day, which meant Rob would have entered the juvenile justice system.’ It never happened. In a bizarre incident, Noel said, the officer was murdered later that night.” (Idem.)

9. Both Noel and Knoller represent themselves to the media as championing the downtrodden. Their choice of clients (in addition to the Aryan Brotherhood members in the case discussed here) seems odd in light of their representations to the media. “. . .[they] started taking cases involving guards accused of wrongdoing at Pelican Bay.” (Idem.)

10. Interestingly, guards at Pelican Bay have been accused of collaborating with Aryan Brotherhood members, whom they allegedly used as enforcers within the institution. At the same time that the Whipple death made headlines, the Aryan Brotherhood were alleged to have conspired to murder Arizona prison officials. “The Aryan Brotherhood prison gang has an ‘ongoing plan’ to kill Terry Stewart, state prisons director, and other correctional officers, according to a Department of Corrections intelligence report, written late last year. The October 18 report, obtained by The Arizona Republic, says members of the white-supremacist organization are mounting a terror campaign in hopes that the department will overturn a policy requiring the permanent isolation of gang members.” (“Prison Officials on Aryan Death List” by Dennis Wagner; The Arizona Republic; 2/4/2001; p. A1.)

11. One of the questions posed in the broadcast concerns the possibility that Robert Noel’s background working in the corridors of power (NSA, Department of Justice, etc.) might betoken ongoing involvement with some aspect of the intelligence community. That, in turn, might suggest that his and Knoller’s activities in connection with the Aryan Brotherhood might entail more than meets the eye. The possibility that some of the alleged illicit sexual activities might involve the making or underground bestiality or pornography materials and/or sexual blackmail of individuals who use such material is not one to be too readily cast aside.

12. It is interesting to speculate about some of the possibilities that may arise from George W. Bush’s faith-based initiatives program. One of the institutions that Bush wants to empower to expand its work within prisons is the organization of convicted Watergate burglar Charles Colson. (For more about Colson, see also: G#3, Miscellaneous Archive Show M59, and FTR#’s 253, 259.) “But for Mr. Bush, this idea is more than an abstraction. He points to the prison program here, just outside Houston, as a model of the sort of thing he would like to see spread across the country. The program, called InnerChange, is the brainchild of Charles Colson, the convicted Watergate felon who himself found religion while serving time. It attempts to rehabilitate with an intensive two-year indoctrination in biblical teachings and proper Christian behavior. Nearly 200 inmates, mostly drug dealers and thieves, are enrolled in this seven-days-a-week regimen designed to set them right in the months before they return to society. As governor of Texas, Mr. Bush helped persuade state-prison officials to embrace the program in 1997.” (“Some Texas Prisoners Get Religion—16 Hours a Day, 7 Days a Week” by Jim VandeHei; Wall Street Journal; 1/26/2001; p. A1.)

13. In that same context, it is interesting to note who the director of Bush’s program is going to be. “And now John DiIulio, the author of the tough-on-crime manifesto Let ‘Em Rot, who falsely prophesied a ‘rising tide of juvenile superpredators,’ has been made the first director of the brand-new White House office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.” (“Legislation: The 107th Congress: A Look Ahead, A Call to Action” by Kyle O’Dowd; The Champion; March/2001; p. 47; www.criminaljustice.org.) (See also: Miscellaneous Archive Shows M14-17, as well as FTR#’s 02, 7.) (Recorded on 4/29/2001.)

 

Descent into Darkness
Two liberal San Francisco attorneys got involved in the Aryan Brotherhood. It cost them their freedom, and their souls
By David Barry



LOS ANGELES -- Bill Kuenzi was visiting a friend in San Francisco's posh Pacific Heights neighborhood on the afternoon of Jan. 26, 2001. He was unlocking his friend's third-story apartment door when he heard a woman begin to scream.
"It was high-pitched, desperate, continuous screaming," Kuenzi testified in Superior Court in Los Angeles early this year, "of a woman who was obviously being attacked. I knew I had to do something and I tried to call 911 on my cell phone."

Kuenzi's phone didn't work where he was. So he went to the stairs for better reception and began climbing toward the screaming. The cell phone still didn't work.

Kuenzi continued until he reached the fifth floor. Then fear stopped him. The screaming was coming from the sixth floor.

"I assumed it was a domestic violence situation," said Kuenzi, a 35-year-old stockbroker. "Or a woman being sexually assaulted. I realized that when I climbed to the sixth floor landing, I would be exposed to the situation, which I knew was violent, and I was scared."

He had good reason. The violence that Kuenzi feared was not being perpetrated by some enraged boyfriend who might be calmed down, or even a rapist who could be scared off by the arrival of other people.

The attack taking place a floor above Kuenzi was being carried out by two huge Canary Island mastiffs bred as vicious attack dogs by a pair of prison cellmates who belong to the white supremacist Aryan Brotherhood — possibly the most frightening race-based prison gang in this country.

The dogs were mauling to death Diane Whipple, a petite 34-year-old college lacrosse coach and resident of the sixth floor.

Descending again, Kuenzi finally got through to police. As he reached the ground floor, he heard Whipple's cries change to a low moan.

"Then the screaming stopped," he said.

Known as Presa Canarios, the dogs belonged to Whipple's neighbors, Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller, husband-and-wife attorneys whose practice had put them in contact with the two life-term prisoners at Pelican Bay, the most secure facility in the California system.

With Noel and Knoller's help, Paul "Cornfed" Schneider and Dale Bretches were running a dangerous business — against prison rules that outlaw such long-distance entrepreneurship — that they called Dog o' War.

Officials believe that huge dogs were being raised for sale to guard methamphetamine labs.

Noel, 60, and Knoller, 46, were convicted here in late March of involuntary manslaughter and, in Knoller's case, second-degree murder as well. They face sentences of up to four years and 15 years, respectively, for their roles in Whipple's death.

These were hardly your run-of-the-mill Aryan Brotherhood associates. Noel is a former federal prosecutor, and both attorneys had a fondness for the opera and causes like helping the homeless and the mentally ill.

But in the days following Whipple's death, both made grotesque comments that essentially blamed the victim for her own death. For them, it seemed clear, Whipple's savaging was, at worst, an inconvenience and annoying public relations problem.

Beyond the issue of criminal liability for the dogs' behavior lies the deeper puzzle that seems beyond logical explanation:

What was the Aryan Brotherhood doing in the latte-and-Pellegrino realm of Noel and Knoller's toney Pacific Heights neighborhood? What possible explanation was there for the couple's transformation from socially aware attorneys into apparently depraved human beings?

Those questions may never be fully answered. But the circumstances of Whipple's death and the events leading up to it — including the attorneys' illicit ties to the Aryan Brotherhood — make it clear that Noel and Knoller's descent into darkness involved the age-old attractions of power, violence and forbidden sex.

'Afraid for our Lives'
The bloodshed that Schneider and Bretches' Dog o' War business visited upon an upscale apartment building in San Francisco was beyond the emotional and professional scope of the emergency workers who responded.

The first police officers at the scene found Whipple in the sixth-floor hallway, nude, mutilated, covered in blood, and trying to crawl to her open apartment door.

On the witness stand in the Knoller-Noel trial, veteran officers said they radioed for backup before giving Whipple first aid.

"We were afraid for our lives," Patrol Sgt. Lesley Forrestal explained. "We saw what the dogs had done to her and we didn't know whether we would be attacked, too. I radioed that I was going to shoot on sight."

Whipple was beyond help. Her larynx was crushed and her jugular vein had been severed by dog bites. She would die in the emergency room 70 minutes after the attack.

Meanwhile, as more police and paramedics arrived minutes after Forrestal's call, Marjorie Knoller emerged from her apartment down the hall, her sweatshirt bloodied, blood on her hair and face, and small cuts on two fingers of one hand that she claimed she had suffered in trying to stop the fatal attack.

Knoller, a small woman, usually did not try to manage both dogs herself because Bane, the 140-pound male, substantially outweighed her. Hera, the 115-pound female, was plenty.

On the day of Whipple's death, Knoller says she took both dogs out because Noel was away. When she opened her apartment door, Bane supposedly bolted in a mad rush for Whipple, dragging Knoller after him down the hall toward Whipple, who just had time to unlock her door and set one grocery bag down inside her apartment.

Then, in a scene that suggested a horror movie, Bane mauled Whipple from head to toe while Hera ripped off her clothing.

Michael Scott was the second animal control officer to arrive at the scene.

"I was told that the bigger of the two dogs — Bane — was in the bathroom," he testified. "I could hear him, panting, snarling and pacing behind the bathroom door. The bathroom door was being covered by a police officer with a machine gun, backed up by another officer with a drawn gun."

Two other officers stood with drawn guns guarding the door to the bedroom where Hera could be heard bashing the door from inside, so hard that Scott feared the door might give way.

Scott cracked the bathroom door and fired three tranquilizer darts at Bane, none of which had any effect. Then he attempted to remove Bane with a come-along, a device with a steel braid loop that functions as a rigid leash.

"When I tried to move the dog," Scott said, "he rushed me and almost knocked me off my feet. I was lucky I was wearing a bulletproof vest. It took all my strength to force him with the come-along away from the door opening and shut the door."

Scott waited until a third animal control officer arrived. Then the two of them were able to control Bane, using two come-alongs. He was quickly put to death.

If that had been all, as horrible as it was, that might have been the end of it. But lawyers Noel and Knoller could not seem to keep their mouths shut.

Descent into Darkness Page 2



Faulting the Pheromones
San Francisco, a dog-friendly town known also for its sizable and politically powerful gay and lesbian population, was horrified by the brutal death of Whipple, a world-class marathon runner who lived with her partner Sharon Smith, an investment company manager.
What made it even worse were the words of the lawyers, who virtually blamed Whipple for her own death. Knoller told reporters she'd instructed Whipple to stay still, adding coolly that the woman would still be alive if she had done so.

Noel made a thinly veiled dig at Whipple's sexual orientation, suggesting she might have excited Bane by a pheromone-bearing perfume (pheromones are chemicals produced by an animal that stimulate other animals) or the use of steroids.

Appearing before a grand jury, Knoller reportedly claimed that she had tried to save Whipple's life, but then added that Bane had sniffed Whipple's crotch "like she was a bitch in heat" — a comment that did not sit well with grand jurors.

Again and again, the pair described their dogs as peaceful animals with no record of violence.

There was more. Two weeks before Bane's fatal attack on Whipple, Noel wrote Schneider in a joking, sarcastic tone, telling of an incident in which both dogs rushed out of the elevator and almost knocked Whipple down, terrifying her.

Noel mocked Whipple as a "timorous little mousy blond" who "almost ha[d] a coronary" during the incident.

In contrast to the couple's courtroom claims that the dogs had no history of threatening behavior, the prosecution presented testimony about more than 30 incidents of terrifying encounters between neighbors and the dogs — and it was hard to avoid the impression that the lawyers had enjoyed the fear their dogs provoked.

It turned out that a veterinarian, after examining the dogs when the lawyers first got them, had written the couple with a warning: "These animals would be a liability in any household."

Outside the courtroom, prosecutor James Hammer acknowledged that Whipple's death most likely would not have been investigated as a crime without Noel and Knoller's statements.

The outraged response to those remarks, Hammer said, included so many reports of previous frightening encounters with the dogs that there was immediate pressure for a criminal investigation. That probe turned up more and more evidence that the dogs had always presented an unmistakable threat.

Outrage over Noel and Knoller's apparent indifference to Whipple's death intensified with the news of the Aryan Brotherhood connection.

Evidence brought out in the trial would show that the lawyers had taken in the huge, frightening dogs to accommodate Aryan Brotherhood members Schneider and Bretches, who were allegedly running the dog business in order to produce fighting dogs and guard dogs for methamphetamine labs run by the Mexican Mafia.

The cellmates deny that, although their artwork and correspondence make it perfectly clear that a chief aim was to breed animals that were as large and terrifying as possible.

But the news that really rocked San Francisco came four days after Whipple's death, with the revelation that Noel and Knoller had legally adopted Paul Schneider, 39, a particularly ruthless leader of the Aryan Brotherhood.

From Pacific Height to Pelican Bay
Most San Franciscans were probably only dimly aware of the Aryan Brotherhood, the widely feared white prison gang formed in San Quentin in 1967 in response to the founding of the Black Guerilla Family and the rising power of Nuestra Familia and La Eme, which is short for the Mexican Mafia.

Though powerful in the prison system through violence and intimidation, the Aryan Brotherhood does not actively recruit outside prison walls. It is not a political organization and has no direct connection with the Aryan Nations, the neo-Nazi organization that was based for more than 25 years in Idaho.

Inside the 160,000-inmate California prison system, the Aryan Brotherhood claims only a few dozen full members. Its power is sustained by its reputation for ruthless, unhesitating violence.

The California Department of Corrections attributes at least 40 prison killings to the group, with seven murders at Pelican Bay alone in just two years, 1996 and 1997.

Nationally, the Aryan Brotherhood is believed to have several hundred members, although no one is sure of the precise number; experts say there are major concentrations of members in the Florida, Missouri and Texas prison systems.

The group's history and undisputed position at the top of the white prison-gang pyramid makes the Aryan Brotherhood the status gang for young Skinhead prisoners, many of whom already belong to newer gangs like the Nazi Low Riders, the Peckerwoods or pen1, short for Public Enemy Number One.

During the trial, which was moved to Los Angeles because of massive pre-trial publicity in San Francisco, Knoller's attorney Nedra Ruiz, a histrionic and confrontational woman who seemed to have a gift for antagonizing the courtroom, derided the significance of Noel and Knoller's Aryan Brotherhood connection.

Ruiz went to great pains to paint the pair as fine, warm-hearted, public-spirited citizens devoted to good causes, a couple who loved their dogs as family members.

Ruiz said that Noel and Knoller had become involved with Schneider and Bretches through their commitment to individual rights, first by representing prison guards against the California Department of Corrections, then by representing prisoners in lawsuits against prison guards and the department.

Their track record, however, seems a little more ambiguous than the trial lawyer suggested.

Into the Abyss
Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller met while working at a San Francisco law firm where they concentrated on various aspects of commercial and tax law.

In 1994, they took their first prison case, representing a Pelican Bay guard who claimed that other guards were harassing him because he had testified on behalf of brutalized inmates. They lost the case, and their client hanged himself.

Three years later, the couple seemed to be moving in a different direction. Now they were representing a Pelican Bay guard accused of conspiring with the Aryan Brotherhood to help arrange beatings and murders.

They lost this case as well, but not before calling Paul Schneider as a witness. Schneider was serving a life sentence for robbery and attempted murder — he had once stabbed a lawyer he didn't like in a courtroom, after smuggling in a prison knife that he apparently concealed in his rectum — but Noel and Knoller seemed to like him just the same.

Schneider, a well-muscled, 220-pound blond, was no garden-variety criminal. Prison officials say Schneider and Bretches' cell in the maximum-security Secure Housing Unit serves as the Pelican Bay State Prison headquarters of the Aryan Brotherhood.

Officials have labeled Schneider as an Aryan Brotherhood "shot-caller," meaning that he is believed to order killings for the group, both inside and outside prison.

California Department of Corrections prison gang expert Devan Hawkes learned of the dog-raising business in 1999, when a woman named Janet Coumbs reported that she had been frightened by individuals at Pelican Bay who had consigned a number of Presa Canarios to her care.

Schneider and Bretches had invested almost $20,000 cash in the business, which they told Coumbs had come from the settlement in a lawsuit won by another inmate.

Even as Hawkes looked into the apparent violation of rules prohibiting inmates from running unapproved businesses, Schneider asked Noel and Knoller to help recover the dogs from Coumbs, who found them terrifying. Noel and Knoller did so, taking Hera and Bane into their own apartment.

At the same time, the lawyers' involvement with Schneider was deepening. After Whipple's death, the authorities learned that Schneider had had topless photos of Knoller in his cell, and they also served a search warrant looking for photos that supposedly depicted Knoller and the dogs having sex.

There were erotic letters from the lawyers to the man they now call their son. And there was Schneider's prison artwork, much of it depicting a nearly nude Knoller with the big dogs.

 

A Flirtation No Longer
What happened to Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller?
One lawyer at the trial suggested that Noel, himself a big man, was attracted to the extreme machismo and violence that was represented by Schneider and was so different from his own well-to-do life.
dog's balls

A former Pelican Bay guard quoted in Rolling Stone magazine said he saw Noel change. "I'd get on the phone with Bob to ask him about a case," Keith Whitley said, "and all he did was talk about how big Bane's balls were."
 

The Jew was arouse by dog's penis

Noel himself bragged to the magazine about the size of the dog's penis and its erections.

Noel made similar comments in some of his correspondence, and he seemed to revel in the fear that the dogs inspired in his neighbors. He did not seem to mind Knoller's apparent attraction to Schneider, however, and in fact wrote in sexual terms about his wife in letters to the Aryan Brotherhood boss.

Knoller seemed simply smitten. "I think Marjorie Knoller just fell in love with Schneider," said Hawkes, the gang expert. "She fell in love, and that's it."

Clearly, the couple was consumed with the dark world they now lived in. Police found in their apartment a book entitled Manstopper! that described how to train a killer dog.

Some experts believe that the lawyers had trained the dogs in their apartment using a rag-biting technique — training that could explain Hera's tearing off of Whipple's clothing.

"They used to have this charming flat," said Whitley, who visited just days before Whipple's killing. "The dogs turned it into a piss pot."

cornfed
 

Whatever the reasons, how far Noel and Knoller had traveled into a world of violence and death became even more apparent on Sept. 5, when Schneider and seven others, one of them a former girlfriend, were charged with racketeering in the attempted murders of 24 people over a 15-year period. Schneider is also charged with the 1995 murder of a sheriff's deputy killed by Aryan Brotherhood associates who were carrying out a series of robberies allegedly ordered by Schneider from his prison cell. Those charges are in addition to the attempted murder and the armed robbery convictions that earned him a life sentence.

For three years, Noel and Knoller flirted with the violent codes, along with the explosively repressed sexuality, of prison gang life. Little by little, they abandoned the trappings of middle-class professional life, taking up the work and attitudes of the Aryan Brotherhood instead.

Now, barring a highly unlikely sentencing decision, Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller are about to join that life for themselves.

David Barry is a free-lance writer based in Los Angeles.