"Lesbian-killing attack dogs for sale. One dead lesbian offered as proof of family's history of violence and offspring's potential power. Proud descendants sure to carry on the tradition. These dogs of war are cute and cuddly."
OK, so maybe the recent, creepy ad that ran in the classified ads section of the Saturday, Aug. 4 and Sunday, Aug. 5 issues of The Los Angeles Times wasn't quite as brazen as my liberally paraphrased rewrite of it above. But it might as well have been.
There's no doubt in my mind that the owner of descendants of a killer dog that infamously mauled to death a San Francisco lesbian in the beginning of this year was trying to capitalize on the gruesome incident as a money-maker.
On the afternoon of Jan. 26, Dianne Whipple, a college lacrosse coach, was unlocking the door to her San Francisco apartment. She had just stopped by the grocery store and was planning to make tacos for herself and her partner, Sharon Smith, before the two of them headed out together to the movies that night.
But Whipple's evening wouldn't end romantically as she and Smith had planned.
Instead, it would be more like a horror film, and before the afternoon was over, Whipple would be dead.
As Whipple was unlocking her door, neighbor Marjorie Knoller appeared in the hallway with two dogs, Bane and Hera.
These were not ordinary dogs. They were Presa Canario dogs, bred specifically as attack dogs. Their combined weight was 230 pounds.
The two dogs ruthlessly attacked Whipple as she found herself trapped just on the wrong side of the safety of her own home. While their owner watched and was either unwilling or unable to stop them, the ferocious animals tore into Whipple's flesh, causing such severe damage that Whipple lost almost all her body's blood right there in the hallway. By the time an ambulance arrived and rushed Whipple to San Francisco General, it was too late. Several hours later, she died.
The story received national attention, partly because of the gruesome nature of Whipple's untimely death, and partly because of the lack of remorse that seemed to be expressed by the dogs' owners, lawyers Marjorie Knoller and Robert Noel. In television interviews, they even suggested that Whipple was responsible for her own death, that she must have done "something" to provoke the dogs. In a thinly veiled anti-lesbian dig, Knoller questioned if Whipple was taking steroids, something that she claims would have left enough of a scent to disturb the dogs and initiate the attack. Knoller even had the gall to recount how Whipple allegedly punched the dogs while she was fighting for her life, saying if she hadn't done that the dogs wouldn't have killed her.
Luckily, public opinion swelled against Knoller and Noel and their killer dogs, particularly when it was unearthed that the dogs had originally been owned and trained by two white supremacists serving life sentences without the possibility of parole in Pelican Bay, a notorious California state prison. The two were clients of Knoller and Noel. The whole surreal story got even thicker when it was discovered that just three days after Whipple's death, Knoller and Noel adopted one of the white supremacist convicts.
Currently, Knoller and Noel, as the owners of the dangerous dogs, are in jail, waiting trial related to Whipple's death. Knoller is charged with second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter. Noel is charged with involuntary manslaughter. Both have pleaded not guilty.
Sharon Smith, Dianne's partner, and Penny Whipple, Dianne's mother, have both filed wrongful death suits against Knoller and Noel.
One dog, Bane, has already been put down by the state for the attack on Whipple. The other, Hera, has been ordered euthanized as well, but there is some legal debate about whether or not the dog is needed alive for evidence in the trial.
And just as we thought this drama couldn't get any weirder, any more inhumane and revolting, the boastful ads...which name the killer dog Bane by name, as a sort of bragging and selling point...appear in The Los Angeles Times.
"Dog-O-War Presa Canario Pups!" the ad read. "Bane's daughter bred to imported son of CH. Urco-Big, Bad to the bone, Protective + Stable. Guaranteed."
Fortunately, The Los Angeles Times pulled the ad after a complaint from a reader. A newspaper spokesperson has said the paper did not originally make the connection between the ad and the attack on Whipple, or it would never have allowed the ad to run.
The ad was placed by Carolyn Murphy, whose son is incarcerated at Pelican Bay...the prison that is home to the dogs' original owners. Murphy is trying to sell seven dogs at the price of $1,200 each. All the dogs are descendants of Bane, the dog directly responsible for Whipple's death. The mother of the seven "pups" is Roka...Bane's daughter. Murphy even admits that she purposely bred Roka for puppies after Whipple's death.
Despite Murphy's protests to the contrary, there seems little logical explanation for breeding offspring of Bane, and blatantly advertising it as a selling point, except to make money of off Whipple's tragic death.
Continuing the surreal horror behind these killer dogs and the people who own and breed them, Murphy describes the animals as "friendly with everybody." She told The Los Angeles Times that she hopes the dogs end up with a "good owner and a good environment, with children hopefully." Yeah right.
As San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan told The Los Angeles Times, owning and breeding these kind of dangerous attack animals is "a cult thing," and it seems clear that Murphy was "seeking to profit from the fact that this dog's grandfather killed this poor woman."
The only thing worse than using Whipple's death as a selling point for these dogs would be using it as a reason to buy one.
Before the ads were pulled, they evoked seven inquiries.
Dahir receives email at MubarakDah@aol.com
