Diane Whipple, an attractive college lacrosse coach, lived down the hall from a pair of eccentric married lawyers in San Francisco's trendy Pacific Heights neighborhood, but the neighbors had barely been acquainted.

Whipple

The 33-year-old blonde, however, had come to know the couple's dogs.

Bane and Hera, both Presa Canarios raised by the neighbors, Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller, were fierce-looking pets. Diane Whipple's longtime partner, Sharon Smith, would later say one of them had even bit her girlfriend on the hand.

But when Whipple's path crossed Knoller's on January 26, 2001, it would prove deadly. Whipple was returning from grocery shopping just as Knoller, 46, was returning from the roof with Bane, who outweighed the 110-pound Whipple.

Knoller and Noel

Bane was the more powerful of the couple's two dogs and more difficult to control, so walking him was usually a task Knoller left to her husband, Robert Noel, 60. But on that day, Noel was out of town. Instead of walking Bane on the street, Knoller decided it would be easier for her to take Bane to the roof.

Upon their return, however, Bane charged down the hall at Whipple. According to Knoller's account, Bane began pulling at Whipple's clothes, but she didn't think he was being too aggressive at first. Knoller said she jumped in between her neighbor and the dog, but at some point, Knoller claims, Whipple struck her, causing the dog to react in Knoller's defense. The dog attacked Whipple's throat. Neighbors said they heard Whipple's cries.

Whipple's blood at the scene

While Whipple lay bleeding, Knoller said she got control of Bane and her other dog, Hera, who had come out of the couple's apartment, and forced both dogs inside. She walked back to Whipple's apartment and began to hunt for her keys.

"I noticed that I didn't have my keys. I was kind of jogging back out in the hall to see where my keys were located," Knoller told a grand jury.

By the time Knoller found her keys, police were already arriving on the scene in response to a neighbor's call to 911. Knoller herself never called for help.

Her bizarre reaction touched off a string of oddities displayed by the couple, who were indicted more than a month later

Police rope off the deadly scene

by a grand jury. Their findings even stunned prosecutors when the 19-member panel returned an indictment against murder for second-degree murder. Knoller and Noel were both also indicted on charges of involuntary manslaughter and raising vicious dogs.

What could have been deemed a tragic accident initially has evolved into a criminal case filled with more drama, twists and turns than a soap opera.

 

 

From the beginning, Knoller and Noel went public with their feelings that they bore no responsibility for the incident.

Rather, they implied that the victim, a coach at St. Mary's College in Moraga, Calif., contributed to her own demise. Noel wrote a letter to prosecutors blaming the attack on Whipple's perfume — and even suggesting that since she was an athlete, perhaps she was using steroids which also could be sensed by the dogs.

The defendants's public image was further tarnished when they legally adopted a 39-year-old convict serving a life sentence. The convict had been tied to a white supremacist prison gang.

The inmate, Paul Schneider, who goes by the nickname "Cornfed," reportedly ordered a contract on the life of one of the prosecutors in the dog mauling case, Kimberly Guilfoyle-Newsom, a former lingerie model who's now the wife of a county supervisor, Gavin Newsom, whom many are saying will be the next mayor of San Francisco. Her co-counsel, James Hammer, is a former seminarian who left the priesthood to pursue and openly gay lifestyle, and they both work for a district attorney who likes to speak to the press but who also has a few legal skeletons in the closet of his own.

Add to the mix the victim's lover, Sharon Smith, who is being hailed as a heroine for the strides she's making in the gay rights arena. Shortly after Whipple's death, Smith filed a wrongful death suit against Noel and Knoller. The case has raised larger legal issues since domestic partners do not have the same right to bring wrongful death suits as heterosexual couples. Her efforts led to a landmark legal ruling in California.

And though tawdry allegations that the defendants have been involved sexually with Schneider or even the dogs will not be heard by the jury because of lack of evidence, it certainly shows the complexity of a case that jurors will have to decide.

So many San Francisco residents were familiar with the case that presiding Judge James Warren — grandson of the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren — granted a change of venue.

An independent survey commissioned by the defense found that more than a whopping 97 percent of San Francisco residents were familiar with the case — and of them, more than 70 percent had already decided that Noel and Knoller were guilty or probably guilty.

The case was moved to Los Angeles, where the quest to find a panel of 12 jurors and six alternates began on January 24.

Since the start of jury selection, Warren has issued numerous decisions regarding what evidence will be admissible at trial.

Dogs Behaving Badly?

Bane and Hera, both Presa Canarios, wound up in the care of Noel and Knoller after the couple represented Schneider in a bid to get the dogs back from a woman who was caring for them.

According to the suit, Schneider and fellow inmate, Dale Bretches, say that Janet Coumbs, who was raising Bane and seven other dogs on her four-acre farm, abused the animals and charged that restraints used rubbed their skin off.

But according to Coumbs, she was unwittingly participating in a dog-breeding scheme that she wanted no part of. According to Coumbs, the dogs had become so wild that she needed a steel-reinforced door to keep them out of her home.

In February 2000, Schneider and Bretches were found guilty of running a dog-breeding scheme and using third-parties to do all the work on the outside. But with none of these third-parties breaking any laws, no charges were ever brought against any others in connection with the investigation.

According to prison officials, the Aryan Brotherhood was breeding the dogs for the Mexican Mafia to be used for fighting or for guarding drug labs.

Immediately after the attack, Bane was destroyed. Hera, the canine present in the hallway who apparently did not bite Whipple during the deadly attack, was also ordered destroyed soon after the attack. But the canine was kept alive at the request of prosecutors who needed her tested for evidence.

Hera underwent tests to evaluate whether she was trained to be an attack dog. Witnesses came forward to say that Hera displayed violent behavior in the past. Despite efforts to keep her alive, a hearing held on the matter resulted in her death sentence being upheld. Hera died by lethal injection on Jan. 30, 2002, at the San Francisco Animal Care and Control shelter.

Eyewitnesses

Witnesses who said they observed past violent behavior by Bane and Hera will be permitted to take the stand in Knoller and Noel's trial, but will not be allowed to testify about their fears of the dogs.

Their testimony will be limited to prior run-ins with the dogs and about what they said to the defendants during those incidents.

Perhaps a key witness for the prosecution will be Sharon Smith, who claimed that one of the Presa Canarios bit Whipple on the hand in a previous incident. Smith says that Whipple relayed to her during a lunchtime phone conversation that the dog bit her on the hand — and that she warned Noel to keep the dog under control.

Though testimony regarding third-party accounts are often considered hearsay, Warren ruled that Smith could testify about the conversation because it would be considered an "excited utterance."

Also admissible at trial will be testimony regarding the Aryan Brotherhood, the white supremacist gang authorities say Paul "Cornfed" Schneider is a powerful member of.

But while jurors will find out about the inner workings of the prison gang, they will not be told about its white supremacist credo.

Sex Questions

The relationship between the couple and Schneider — and even the dogs — has raised questions by prosecutors.

Judge James Warren initially said he would permit evidence of sexual conduct between either of the defendants and Bane or Hera — or "any canines at all" — if the prosecutors proved it was relevant to the attack on Whipple.

Prosecutor Hammer went as far as to say that the defendants "blurred the boundaries between dog and human."

But Knoller's attorney, Nedra Ruiz, countered that the allegations were "specious filth," and the prosecutors were using the sex issues to distract jurors from the evidence — or lack of it.

The defense lawyer even asked Warren to admonish Hammer for his suggestion.

Among the evidence presented was an affidavit by a prison sergeant who said that a letter from the defendants discusses sexual activity between the defendants and Bane.

The guard, Sgt. Joe Akin, also says he saw photos of Knoller topless and drawings by Schneider, the convict, of dogs fighting and of the dog's genitals.

There was also a letter found in Schneider's cell written by Noel, in which Noel talks about Schneider's request for full frontal pictures of Knoller, about the couple "inhabiting your mind and body," and statements that had Knoller been allowed to marry two men, she would have married Schneider rather than the couple adopting him.

Ultimately, Warren ruled that any evidence of possible sexual connections between the defendants and Schneider or the dogs is inadmissible and will not be presented to a jury.

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Prosecutors themselves admit they didn't expect to be trying a murder case. Even Assistant District Attorney James Hammer admits that the "odds are stacked way against us on murder."

But the state does not need to prove that Knoller had any intent in order to prove her guilty of second-degree murder. They must show that the Knoller did something inherently dangerous with a conscious disregard for human life.

Knoller, they say, not only raised vicious dogs, but admitted a blatant disregard in her own grand jury testimony. She testified that after the attack, as Whipple lay bleeding in the hallway of the apartment building, the lawyer went down the hall to her own apartment and returned to Whipple's to locate her keys — but never bothered calling 911.

"If they had behaved differently, it would have been different. It wouldn't have been murder, that's for sure," said District Attorney Terence Hallinan, according to a San Francisco Chronicle Magazine article. "We went into that grand jury thinking we had a manslaughter and vicious dog case. The difference was they went into the grand jury and testified."

But their grand jury testimony wasn't the only time the couple raised eyebrows over at the district attorney's office. In the days following the attack, Noel wrote an 18-page letter to Hallinan's office, laying blame on Whipple and even lacing into Hallinan.

The letter suggested that Whipple, an athlete, was perhaps taking steroids, or that she was wearing pheromone-based perfume which attracted the dogs. Noel reiterates his request that her medicine and cosmetics found in her apartment be preserved for the investigation.

Noel, who has filed numerous lawsuits against his apartment building — including one over a broken shower head — also charges that Whipple perhaps was at his apartment door minutes before the attack as a favor to the apartment manager.

Prosecutors maintain that both Knoller and Noel were part of a dog-raising scheme dreamed up by Schneider, and were well aware their animals were not friendly pets. A copy of the book "Manstopper," a training manual for raising attack dogs, was reportedly spotted during a television interview in Noel's apartment. Noel even admitted owning the book, saying that it was a gift from Bretches.

"They enjoyed creating these monster dogs," Hammer said.

The Defense's Case

The defense in this case may truly turn into a case of "He said, she said." The seemingly united pair recently showed their finger-pointing abilities when they asked the judge to be tried separately.

One account, that Noel called a dog walker who complained about Bane "a bitch," could unfairly prejudice a jury against Knoller, argued Knoller's lawyer Nedra Ruiz.

Ruiz maintained that there was "no way under sun, the stars or the moon that my client did anything to exacerbate violent tendencies."

Knoller also claimed that Noel's comments about the victims and others could damage her own chances of acquittal.

Ruiz contends that witnesses who gave accounts of previous displays of violence by the dogs were exaggerated.

She also said that Knoller was a hero for putting herself between Bane and Whipple.

"She tried to save this woman from a horrible fate," she told Warren at Knoller's August 31, 2001, bail hearing. "Those actions can hardly be considered callous and inconsiderate."

But Noel's lawyer, Bruce Hotchkiss, blamed Knoller's conduct for the attack that killed Whipple, and stressed that Noel was out of town the day the attack happened.

Hotchkiss also says that Noel took proper precautions with the dogs, using a muzzle on them. Noel says he was not raising attack dogs, and only had a copy of "Manstopper" to understand what was involved to keep the breed as a house pet.

The Stakes

There has been no previous murder convictions in California for a dog attack, though there was one in Kansas.

Sabine Davidson was convicted of unintentional second-degree murder for the death of a young boy by three rottweilers. She was also convicted of endangering the welfare of a child under 18. On March 2, 1998, Davidson was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison.

If convicted in this case, however, Knoller could get life in prison. She is charged with second-degree murder, which carries a sentence of 15 years to life. She and Noel are both charged with involuntary manslaughter, which carries up to a four-year term, and failing to control a vicious animal, which carries a three-year maximum sentence.

Opening statements, closing arguments and the verdict will air live Feb. 19 on Court TV. Warren has barred cameras from the courtroom for the rest of the trial, which is expected to last approximately a month.

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