Hella Nation - Evan Wright [85]
Several years ago, Schneider and Bretches began producing artwork. Since they were forbidden art supplies by prison authorities, they collected scrap paper and soaked it in toilet water until the ink came off. They made pigments by scraping the colors off ads in magazines. “If you want a lot of red,” Schneider says, “you look for a Marlboro ad.”
His intricate creations look like a cross between tattoo art and the air-brushed murals that adorned vans in the 1970s. The paintings are frequently chock-full of runes—cryptic symbols found in the works of Tolkien. Schneider often depicts himself in his paintings as a bare-chested Norse god riding on the prows of ships surrounded by noble animals.
Devan Hawkes, a special intelligence officer for the CDC, has spent years investigating Schneider. He believes the runes found in Schneider’s work contain “secret codes” that convey instructions to Aryan Brotherhood associates outside prison.
Looking for subjects to draw, Schneider began to pester his sister for pictures of the “white Siegfried and Roy tigers” and for copies of Field & Stream, which he claims was banned by the prison because it contained photos of guns. Then Schneider came across a magazine that would change his life: Dog Fancy. “Looking at dogs made me forget I was in prison,” says Schneider. Soon, they inspired him to become a dog owner once more.
AFTER THEY WERE ARRESTED for the dog-mauling case, Knoller and Noel were so broke they were unable to make bail. They have spent nearly a year living separate but parallel lives in different wings of the San Francisco city jail. When he enters the jail visitation room in his orange jumpsuit, Robert Noel slides into a chair and smiles warmly. Noel is an imposing six-foot-four. His golden-boy features have aged comfortably beneath his shaggy blond hair and walrus mustache. Though he faces up to three years in prison, he projects confidence and freewheeling good cheer.
After chatting amiably about his once high-powered social life, Noel produces a copy of a painting that Schneider made. It depicts Noel, Knoller and Schneider at a medieval feast presided over by their “royal dog,” Bane. Noel traces his finger across the paper and says dreamily, “There’s our family,” then points to the big dog in the foreground and says affectionately, “That’s the Banester.”
Noel’s first wife, Karen, whom he divorced in 1986 after nearly twenty-three years of marriage, says, “Robert is mentally ill.” She furnishes no proof of her opinion but adds that his three children ceased having contact with him several years ago. Noel’s only biological son, his namesake, Robert Jr., who is thirty-one, said of his father, “He’s a jackass. I don’t like my dad, and I never have.”
Noel grew up in a working-class home in Baltimore. His father was a pipe fitter and his mother a beautician. His only brother works in the electrical trades. Robert, the family overachiever, entered the University of Maryland on a Marine Corps scholarship. He married his high school sweetheart, Karen, the day after John F. Kennedy was shot. A year later, he entered law school. In 1969, when he was twenty-seven, Noel took a job in the Justice Department. When he was thirty-four, in 1980, he moved west to become an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District Court of San Diego.
Working for the government began to disillusion him. “Being inside the system gave me a unique perspective on its power to crush the individual,” he says. He quit the U.S. attorney’s office after a year and joined a prestigious corporate-law firm in San Diego. By 1987, he had divorced, moved to San Francisco, briefly married and then divorced a legal secretary, then met and fallen in love with Marjorie Knoller—all in the space of about a year. “I would trust my life in Marjorie’s hands,” he says.
THE IMPRESSION MARJORIE KNOLLER makes upon entering the visitation room is one of meekness. Her faded, silver-threaded brown hair is pulled back in a ponytail, and