Hella Nation - Evan Wright [90]
“She was staring at Bane,” says Knoller. Then, for no obvious reason, Knoller says, Bane dragged her toward Whipple. “I battled him the whole way,” Knoller insists. While Knoller struggled for several minutes with Bane and Hera, who was also in the hall, Whipple, she says, simply stood silently in front of her apartment. Her front door was open, but according to Knoller she didn’t bother to go inside, even after Bane jumped up on the wall and stuck his head in her crotch. All Whipple said, according to Knoller, was, “Your dog jumped on me.”
Knoller says that she finally tried to push Whipple into her apartment for her own good, but Whipple resisted, at which point Bane bit her throat and proceeded to rip her clothes apart. Knoller claims the entire attack lasted a good twenty minutes, during which time, she says, “I put my life on the line. It’s only dumb luck he didn’t kill me.”
Knoller denies that Hera took part in the attack, though Hera was also found with blood on her coat by animal-control officers. Later, after Hera was taken into custody by animal control, an employee at the city kennel where she was being kept observed fibers that appeared to be multicolored fabric coming out in the dog’s stools, though no one at the time thought—or volunteered—to collect this as evidence. Dog behaviorist Saul Saltars points to the shredding of Whipple’s clothing as evidence that one or both of the dogs had been taught to be hostile. “Someone trained that dog to bite rags,” says Saltars. “It’s a technique to build aggression.” While Knoller and Noel claim the dogs weren’t trained to be aggressive, police recovered a book from their apartment titled Manstopper!, a training manual that teaches owners techniques, such as “ragging out,” to nurture viciousness in dogs.
Though the grand jury largely rejected Knoller’s account of the attack (they found it hard to believe that Whipple would stand motionless for such a long time while Bane rampaged through the hall), until now there has been no concrete suggestion that Knoller fabricated her story. But according to Schneider’s sister Tammy, Knoller called her that evening and offered an account of the attack that diverges significantly from what Knoller told the police and the grand jury. “Marjorie said she and her neighbor ‘got into it,’ ” says Tammy. “They had an argument before anything happened with those dogs. Marjorie asked her to shut her door so she could take her dogs out in the hall, and that lady was like, ‘No, I’m not shutting my door now. Fuck you!’ ”
Knoller denies this ever occurred, but if this is true, Knoller’s defense—that the attack happened spontaneously—is suspect. From the standpoint of the law, a powerful attack dog might be viewed as a weapon not much different from a gun. In other words, if you were holding a gun, and your neighbor was found shot to death, it’s a lot harder to prove the whole thing was accidental if people found out you and your dead neighbor were having an argument right before your gun shot her.
There is one element of Knoller’s account of events that afternoon in the hallway that no one disputes:
What was the last thing Diane Whipple said to you?
“‘ Help me,’” Knoller whispers. Then she pauses. Knoller says, “My husband still talks about Bane like we used to, how much he loves him. I can’t think of that dog the same way. All I see is the horror, the horror.”
Knoller’s adopted son expresses his feelings about the attack differently. Schneider’s blue eyes peer out impassively from behind the security glass at the visitation booth, and he says,