The Lost Dogs (14 page)

Merck was aware of the controversy, so she did the only thing she could. One by one, she lowered each carcass into a vat of hot water that reduced it to nothing more than a pile of bones.

AS JULY STRETCHED ON
and the investigation moved toward its pinnacle, Jim Knorr and Bill Brinkman realized they had a dog problem. Or was it a man problem? Brownie continued to be a thorn in Knorr’s side. He called too much; he didn’t call at all. He showed up where he wasn’t supposed to; he disappeared. Brinkman and Knorr were constantly dealing with Brownie. Driving him back to Virginia Beach, moving him from one hotel to another, scraping together money out of their own pockets to keep him full of McDonald’s and Wendy’s. Now, as things were getting serious, Knorr planned to send Brownie to a safe house in Florida.

The thought of a trip to the Sunshine State didn’t do much for Brownie. He remained irascible. He did what he wanted, which kept Knorr up at night as much as the phone calls. Among the things Brownie wanted was his pooch. One of the dogs in Vick’s compound, a giant male presa canario, belonged to him, but it had been taken away with the rest. Knorr thought if he could get the man’s dog back, maybe Brownie would be so grateful that he’d be more cooperative.

Finally, after months of trying to spring the dog through legal channels, Brinkman and Knorr took matters into their own hands. They finagled some paperwork and showed up at the shelter where the dog was being kept, flashed their badges and the letter, and walked out with the dog. Problem solved. At least for one dog.

The forty-nine pit bulls that were now the property of the federal government were a different story. The forfeiture statutes that had been used to seize the dogs gave the court a role in deciding what would become of them. Gill and the other attorneys knew that judges preferred to receive some sort of guidance or suggestion about how to rule when odd things like this popped up. The natural inclination is to look at what has been done in the past and use that as a precedent, but since dogs from fight busts are usually put down, that was a bleak alternative.

To the surprise of many, this was exactly the course prescribed by some of the loudest voices in animal welfare. Wayne Pacelle, the president and chief executive of the Humane Society of the United States, told the
New York Times
he thought the dogs would and should be destroyed. “Officials from our organization have examined some of these dogs and, generally speaking, they are some of the most aggressively trained pit bulls in the country. Hundreds of thousands of less-violent pit bulls, who are better candidates to be rehabilitated, are being put down. The fate of these dogs will be up to the government, but we have recommended to them, and believe they will eventually be put down.”

PETA took an equally dim view. “These dogs are a ticking time bomb,” a spokesperson for the organization said. “Rehabilitating fighting dogs is not in the cards. It’s widely accepted that euthanasia is the most humane thing for them.”

The assistant district attorneys in the office of the Eastern District of Virginia weren’t sure they agreed. Gill brought it up one day in a conversation with Merck and she got the sense that he was not terribly concerned about what had been done in the past or what outside forces thought should happen. He seemed to feel that a lot of those experts were more interested in getting their names in front of the public to spur donations than they were in the welfare of the dogs.

Gill didn’t even have any idea what the rehabilitation options were, but he wanted to know. Merck suggested he speak with Dr. Stephen Zawistowski, the ASPCA’s top behavior expert. At fifty-two Zawistowski, known universally as Steve Z or Dr. Z, was stout with white hair, a bushy white beard and mustache, rimless glasses, and apple cheeks. Affable and avuncular, he peppered his speech with thoughtful tugs at his facial hair and spiced up his outfits with ties that had flying doghouses and cat prints on them. He was the animal rescue world’s Santa Claus. Santa Claws, maybe.

With a Ph.D. in behavior genetics and a specialty in animal psychology, Dr. Z could bring the combination of science and compassion that Gill sought. In twenty years at the ASPCA Dr. Z had tackled everything from pet overpopulation to issues of behavior and welfare. During that period he’d risen from vice president of education to executive vice president of national programs and science advisor. The twenty books he either authored or edited included a history of the ASPCA, and he was fond of telling tales of the organization’s flamboyant founder, Henry Bergh, who got his start breaking up illegal dogfighting and bear-baiting exhibitions in lower Manhattan in the 1870s.

Gill first approached Dr. Z in early July about other possible outcomes for the dogs. Dr. Z said there was some chance that a few of the dogs could be salvaged, but there was no way to know without meeting them face-to-face. It was possible, he suggested, to put together a panel of experts to individually evaluate each dog and make suggestions about what should become of them.

Even as Gill plotted a course for the live dogs, Melinda Merck continued to focus on the dead ones. Within a week of receiving the bodies, she gave Gill a preliminary report of her findings. It was good news. Most of what she found backed up Brownie’s account. The insect evidence—the fly larvae, the maggots, the flies themselves—indicated that the dogs had been in the ground for about two months. Almost every dog had little puncture marks or scoring on the bones, especially on their legs and faces, that indicated they had been bitten by other dogs. Based on the depth of the markings, the other dogs had most likely been pit bulls. Even more damning were the preponderance of facial fractures, which almost always resulted from fighting. And a few of the dogs had broken necks, which suggested hanging.

But it went beyond that, too. There were broken legs and vertebrae, some severe bone bruising. Most of the dogs, seven out of nine, had skull fractures, at least one of which appeared to be the result of a blow from a hammer. Brownie had reported that he’d once seen a Bad Newz member kill a dog by beating it with a shovel. Vick and friends had not simply eliminated these dogs with a cold efficiency, they’d beaten them first. The revelation added another layer of brutality to the already nasty case.

And then there was one last body that stood out from the rest. It had signs of bruising on all four ankles and all along one side. Its skull was fractured in two places and it had four broken vertebrae. Brownie had said that all of the dogs that didn’t die from being hanged were drowned, except one.

As that dog lay on the ground fighting for air, Quanis Phillips grabbed its front legs and Michael Vick grabbed its hind legs. They swung the dog over their head like a jump rope then slammed it to the ground. The first impact didn’t kill it. So Phillips and Vick slammed it again. The two men kept at it, alternating back and forth, pounding the creature against the ground, until at last, the little red dog was dead.

Most federal indictments are one or two pages long, giving the names of the accused, the crimes they’re being charged with, and little else. On July 17 a federal grand jury heard testimony from Brownie and Oscar Allen, read the affidavits of the imprisoned drug dealers who’d fought dogs with Vick, and heard Melinda Merck’s findings. When Mike Gill was done, the jury accepted an eighteen-page indictment against the four founding members of Bad Newz Kennels. It was part of a carefully planned approach to bring the case to a quick and just end.

The document, known as a walking indictment, laid out the actions and offenses of the accused in painful detail. As much as it was meant to ensure a charge, it was also intended to send a message to the defense: We have a lot of information from multiple sources and we’re not afraid to spell it all out for the jury and the public.

The reaction was swift. Protests sprung up outside the offices of the NFL, the Atlanta Falcons, and Nike. Nike suspended the introduction of a new Michael Vick footwear line and Falcons owner Arthur Blank called a press conference at which he deemed Vick’s actions horrific. Reebok stopped selling Vick jerseys and Upper Deck removed all Vickrelated products from its Web site.

Nine days after the indictment there was a line outside the federal courthouse in Richmond as both protesters and supporters waited to get a seat at the arraignment. For the first time in longer than anyone could remember the court had to funnel onlookers into overflow rooms where they could watch the proceedings live on closed-circuit TV. Those who didn’t make it inside lined the streets outside, chanting and carrying signs.

All four of the accused—Michael Vick, Purnell Peace, Quanis Phillips, and Tony Taylor—pled not guilty to the charges: conspiracy to travel in interstate commerce in aid of unlawful activities and sponsoring a dog in an animal fighting venture. For the first time since late April, when he denied ever being at the house, Vick spoke:

That sounded good but it had little bearing on reality. Legally, Vick had only one hope of “clearing his good name.” He needed the other three guys to tell the same story and stick to it. But any dreams of a united front were soon quashed.

Gill and his associates had never stopped negotiating with Tony Taylor’s lawyer and on July 30, less than two weeks after the indictment, Taylor pled guilty and agreed to cooperate with the investigation. He sat for an extensive interview and then signed a thirteen-page summary of facts in which he detailed the Bad Newz operation, including many of the fights the group hosted and traveled to.

He admitted to the original plan to start the operation, buying the dogs, and having the sheds, the kennel, and eventually the house built. Organizing the fights and training the dogs. Handling the dogs in the ring and placing bets. Killing dogs. The most damning part of Taylor’s confession was not where he detailed his own role, but where he laid out Vick’s participation. The star quarterback had not only bankrolled the operation, he’d become involved in running it. On numerous occasions when the group tested dogs, Vick was present. He attended fights and bet large sums of money, although he never kept any of the winnings.

The pressure on the remaining three defendants increased dramatically. Lawyers for Peace and Phillips reached out about deals for their clients. They were willing to accept a plea bargain but they didn’t want jail time. They had a point. Although the maximum sentence for the crimes they had been accused of was five years, the government’s official sentencing guidelines, based on factors that included criminal history and cooperation with the prosecution, called for zero to six months in jail. And even with previous records it was not unreasonable to think they could avoid being locked up.