Hella Nation - Evan Wright [80]
On July 1, 2004, Sean Southland was arrested in Canada across Alexandria Bay, New York, trying to smuggle six kilos of cocaine into the United States on a boat, with the help of a Canadian girlfriend.
After his arrest by Canadian authorities, he informed them that he was an undercover DEA agent working on a sting operation. He produced a business card belonging to Phoenix police detective Tom Britt and told his questioners that Britt would vouch for him. When called, Britt did not.
Southland was transferred to U.S. custody. Convicted of drug trafficking, he was sentenced to ten years in prison. In court documents it emerged that Southland had promised his girlfriend they would use the money from drug smuggling to invest in a company called Sea Castle.
When Britt calls me with the news of Southland’s arrest for coke smuggling, he turns back to Simberg, as he frequently does. Aside from Simberg’s parents and his girlfriend, Britt appears to be the only person in America who mourns his death. “Kostya was not a bad kid,” Britt says, using Simberg’s diminutive nickname. “He just had the wrong influences. He became involved with a very bad American, Sean Southland.”
MAD DOGS & LAWYERS
It was about four o’clock on a Friday afternoon, January 26, 2001, when Esther Birkmaier, a single retiree in her seventies, heard screams outside her front door. Birkmaier lives on the sixth floor of an Art Deco apartment building in the Pacific Heights area of San Francisco, one of the city’s prime neighborhoods, known for its panoramic views of the Golden Gate Bridge. As Birkmaier pressed her eye against the peephole, a woman in the hallway outside yelled, “Help me!” Birkmaier couldn’t see much from her limited fish-eye perspective, but what she did see shocked her. There was a blond woman on the floor. A huge dog was attacking her.
Birkmaier phoned 911 and reported “dogs running wild” in her hallway. When she hung up, something began pounding on her door. She panicked, phoned 911 again and this time just screamed into the phone. A man heard the screams and also phoned 911 to report what he thought was a rape. Alec Cardenas, a SWAT-team medic and one of the first cops on the scene, arrived about seven minutes later to find the victim lying facedown on the hall carpet in front of her apartment. She was naked, covered in blood, her upper back punctured with dog bites. Blood was splashed on the walls for about twenty feet down the hall. As Cardenas approached, the woman attempted to push herself up and crawl into her home.
About this time, a middle-aged woman who identified herself as Marjorie Knoller stepped out of apartment 604. She too was covered in blood. But aside from a cut on her hand and a few scratches on her arms, she was not injured. She told the police she had been walking her dog Bane down the hall when he lunged at the victim, who was entering her apartment carrying a bag of groceries. “I told her to stay still,” Knoller said. “If she had, this would have never happened.” Knoller told police she had managed to lock Bane and his mate, Hera, in her apartment. She was afraid to go back inside.
Animal-control officers found Bane in Knoller’s bathroom. The officers inched open the bathroom door and peeked inside. Bane was a massive creature. He weighed 120 pounds and was just under three feet tall, with a brindle coat of black and tan tiger stripes. Most of his weight was centered in his powerful chest, bulging legs and squat head, his most imposing feature. Bane had defecated all over the bathroom. He was soaked in blood. Even his teeth were red.
The animal-control officers carried a tranquilizer