LETTER FROM AMERICA: For sheer theatricality this grisliest of Los Angeles murder trials has it all.
Blood by the bucket, killer "war dogs", a pet-loving Nazi with an artistic streak, prison murder gangs, a lesbian lover, and a weeping defence lawyer straight from central casting. Not to mention the defendants, two of the strangest partners in law and life who you will ever come across. You couldn't invent it, and America is riveted.
January 2001, Pacific Heights, San Francisco: Diane Whipple (33), a popular sports teacher, is unlocking the front door of her flat when she is attacked by her neighbour's dog, Bane, a 120-lb presa canario, a rare cattle dog hybrid breed known for its loyalty to its master and its viciousness to others. Despite attempts by its owner, Marjorie Knoller (46), to pull the dog off it mauls the teacher to death, leaving her sprawled in a pool of blood, her clothes ripped to shreds.
Within hours it emerges that Bane and his companion, Hera, also a presa canario, have been the subject of multiple complaints by frightened neighbours, all allegedly ignored by Knoller and her husband and law partner, Robert Noel (60).
To compound matters evidence emerges that the dogs, which are put down, were actually being cared for by the couple on behalf of a lifer in a local jail, Paul "Cornfed" Schneider (39), who allegedly wanted to breed them to sell as fighting dogs.
Schneider, doing time in Pelican Bay for aggravated assault and attempted murder, and whom the couple met and befriended while doing legal work in the prison, is a member of a notorious jail gang, the Aryan Brotherhood.
Stranger still, within days of the killing, the couple, both of whom claim to be Jewish, legally adopt him.
They claim it's a legal move inspired by friendship. As legal parents, they would have to be notified in an emergency and they could make decisions on his behalf.
"He needed a family, and we didn't have one," said Noel. "It worked out well for both of us." The comment is strange for two reasons - Noel in fact has three children from his first marriage with whom he has cut contact, and guards find pictures of the naked Knoller in Schneider's cell.
Knoller is charged with second-degree murder, and she and Noel, with involuntary manslaughter and with owning a vicious dog that caused a death.
The trial venue is moved to Los Angeles because of prejudicial coverage.
July 2001: The case makes an important legal precedent when a California Superior Court judge rules that Whipple's gay partner, Sharon Smith, can enter a civil suit for damages against the two accused.
Their lawyers had contended that, unlike a spouse, Smith, had no standing to sue.
They were not present for the hearing but argued in court papers that the lawsuit was a "fraud" and a "sham," because Smith wrongfully referred to herself as a "surviving spouse". "(No) matter how often she makes the allegation, (Smith) is not a spouse," Noel and Knoller stated in the motion.
September 2001: In another, but unrelated, sideshow, Schneider and other members of the white-supremacist gang are indicted on 13 charges of conspiring from behind bars to kill some two dozen people over more than a decade.
February 2002, Los Angeles: The trial opens with an extraordinary performance from defence lawyer, Nedra Ruiz, on Tuesday. At times in tears she pleads with the jury to recognise her client, Knoller, as a heroine who tried desperately to save Whipple, even going down on her knees in the well of the court to demonstrate how Knoller tried to interpose herself between the dog and its victim.
Yet, in evidence on Wednesday, Schneider is portrayed by Janet Coumbs, the woman who raised Bane and Hera initially for him while he was in jail, in an altogether different light. She says he told her he was a fine artist and wanted to draw pictures of the dogs.
Not so, says Devan Hawkes, a special agent with the state Department of Corrections who investigates prison gangs.
Testifying on Thursday before a string of witnesses who give evidence of previous encounters with the two dogs, Hawkes claims that Knoller clearly knew that she was training the dogs to fight, referring to the "Dogs O' War" project in a letter to Schneider's roommate.
Hawkes says there is also evidence of collusion between the two and the Aryan Brotherhood, with Noel in one letter to Schneider quoting his wife's retort upon her hearing that Schneider had stabbed a lawyer: "If he did, he must have had a damned good reason and the schmuck probably deserved it." In the same letter, Noel said he and Knoller would not stand in the way if Schneider tried to escape.
A vet, Dr Donald Martin, says he was so alarmed after examining Bane that he fired off a warning letter to the woman who had hired him to check on the dog's health before taking custody of the animal. "I felt that these dogs had a potential of being very serious (risks)," Martin said. "I have never written a letter like this - I just felt so convinced that the potential was so great. I wanted to let Marjorie know."
"They were massive, massive dogs," he testifies in response to questioning by prosecutor James Hammer. "They had big mouths, big teeth." But the prosecution faces a difficult challenge. There are no California precedents for a successful murder charge in a dog killing, and two recent cases involving children being mauled to death by vicious guard dogs resulted in juries rejecting even manslaughter in favour of lesser offences.
The jury need not find an intent to kill in order to convict of second-degree murder - only that a defendant did something "inherently dangerous" with a "conscious disregard for human life". The prosecution hopes to convince jurors that the defendants knew Bane and Hera were "time bombs" and recklessly ignored the risk.
The accused, anti-social loners with a history of bitter almost paranoid litigiousness, are unsympathetic and their own worst enemies. They will not be helped by the Schneider adoption just days after the killing, or their initial claims in a letter to prosecutors that Whipple may have brought the attack on herself because she was wearing a pheromone-based perfume, or maybe, they speculated, because she was taking steroids.
And there's another letter from Noel, written shortly before Whipple died, that referred to her as a "timorous little mousy blonde" in describing an earlier run-in she had with the dogs.
"I tell all my clients to keep their mouth shut, and I don't follow my own advice," Noel says in an interview, as bemused as everyone else by his behaviour.
