Lis­ten: One Seg­ment

In Jan­u­ary of 2000, Diane Whip­ple, the coach of the women’s lacrosse team at St. Mary’s col­lege, was mauled to death by two 120-pound Presa Canario dogs at her res­i­dence in San Fran­cisco. (The rel­a­tively rare Presa Canario is a breed that is adapted to fight­ing and secu­rity activ­ity.) As inves­ti­ga­tion of the case pro­ceeded, a num­ber of strange and dis­turb­ing details began to emerge.

1. The dogs belonged to two San Fran­cisco attor­neys, Robert Noel and Mar­jorie Knoller, who are mar­ried. Inves­ti­ga­tors soon deter­mined that the attor­neys were car­ing for the dogs on behalf of two of their clients, who were mem­bers of the Aryan Broth­er­hood, a pow­er­ful, white suprema­cist gang based in cor­rec­tional insti­tu­tions. “The dog that killed a San Fran­cisco woman had a long his­tory of vicious­ness and was secretly owned by two Aryan Broth­er­hood prison gang mem­bers as part of an under­ground scheme to breed and sell ani­mals while in max­i­mum secu­rity at Pel­i­can Bay [a Cal­i­for­nia maximum-security prison], offi­cials said. At the time of Friday’s fatal attack on Diane Whip­ple, the 120-pound Presa Canario dog, Bane, was being kept by the inmates’ attor­neys, Robert Noel and Mar­jorie Knoller of Pacific Heights, as was another dog, Hera. . . . Author­i­ties said Pel­i­can Bay inmates Paul ‘Corn­fed’ Schnei­der and Dale Bretches were inves­ti­gated by state prison author­i­ties last year and found guilty in Feb­ru­ary of run­ning a dog-breeding scheme while in the maximum-security hous­ing unit at the prison.” (“Prison gang Duo Linked to Dog that Killed Woman” by Jaxon Van Der­beken; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 1/30/2001; p. A1.)

2. Even­tu­ally, it turned out that Schnei­der (38 years old) was the couple’s recently adopted son. “News that the lawyers whose dog mauled a San Fran­cisco woman to death have adopted the animal’s prior owner—a prison inmate and a mem­ber of the Aryan Brotherhood—has vet­eran fam­ily attor­neys shak­ing their heads in dis­be­lief. Adult adop­tions are not unusual, but when Robert Noel, 59, and Mar­jorie Knoller, 45, became the par­ents of 38-year-old Paul John ‘Corn­fed’ Schnei­der, now serv­ing time in Pel­i­can Bay for aggra­vated assault and attempted, it turned a tragic sit­u­a­tion into a bizarre one. Adop­tion lawyers and schol­ars say they have never heard of a lawyer adopt­ing an adult client, a sit­u­a­tion that raises a spec­trum of eth­i­cal issues. ‘I don’t know what’s going on in this dog case,’ said Nordin Blacker, a promi­nent San Fran­cisco fam­ily lawyer. ‘This seems par­tic­u­larly strange.’” (“Lawyers’ Adop­tion of Inmate Stuns Legal Experts” by Har­riet Chi­ang; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 2/1/2001; p. A20.)

3. The case was to become stranger still. After being charged with second-degree mur­der, Noel and Knoller pro­ceeded to drive at very high speed to the rural res­i­dence of a friend and client, and were tick­eted by pur­su­ing police. “As the grand jury delib­er­ated, Noel and Knoller headed north on Intes­tate 80 in a maroon Chevro­let Impala. Under­cover San Fran­cisco police in unmarked cars fol­lowed close behind, but [San Fran­cisco D.A. Ter­ence] Hal­li­nan would not say why author­i­ties ordered the sur­veil­lance. A Cal­i­for­nia High­way Patrol offi­cer stopped Noel in Wood­land at 4:29 p.m. after he report­edly made sev­eral unsafe lane changes while dri­ving through south­ern Yolo County at speeds report­edly top­ping 90 mph. ‘Mr. Noel was very cor­dial and didn’t seem to be too upset by the inci­dent,’ said CHP Sgt. Willie Brooks. Noel was issued a ticket for reck­less dri­ving. Before head­ing off, Noel told the San Fran­cisco offi­cers where he was headed, said Lt. Henry Hunter. The cou­ple arrived at a ranch owned by their friend and client James Pat­ton in Corn­ing, a small Tehama County town about 170 miles north of San Fran­cisco, shortly after 6 p.m. . . . Three days after the attack a judge final­ized the couple’s adop­tion of Paul ‘Corn­fed’ Schnei­der, a 38-year-old con­vict serv­ing a life sen­tence at Pel­i­can Bay State Prison.” (“Mur­der, Manslaugh­ter Charges in Dog Attack” by Jaxon Van Der­beken; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 3/28/2001; p. A8.)

4. As the case became ever stranger, indi­ca­tions emerged that there may have been a sex­ual dimen­sion to the attor­neys’ rela­tion­ship to their clients. “What’s more, prison offi­cials said Hallinan’s inves­ti­ga­tors found nude pho­tos of Knoller in Schneider’s cell while search­ing for evi­dence.” (Idem.)

5. Sub­se­quent arti­cles indi­cated at the pos­si­bil­ity of bes­tial­ity. “The doc­u­ments, includ­ing affi­davits for search war­rants of the couple’s Pacific Heights apart­ment, sug­gest that author­i­ties sus­pected sex­ual abuse of the dogs by the cou­ple. Inves­ti­ga­tors the­o­rized that pos­si­ble sex­ual abuse of the ani­mals may have con­tributed to the attack on Whip­ple. But offi­cials said yes­ter­day that it appears found lit­tle to sup­port that the­ory. Yet, accord­ing to one affi­davit, Pel­i­can Bay Prison Sgt. Joe Akin reported find­ing ‘a let­ter dis­guised as legal mail addressed to (inmate Paul) Schnei­der’ that dis­cusses ‘sex­ual activ­ity between Noel, Knoller and the dog Bane.’ Noel and Knoller are Schneider’s attor­neys and adop­tive par­ents. Akin reported that he saw ‘numer­ous pho­tos of Knoller pos­ing nude with fight­ing dog draw­ings’ among the prop­erty of Paul ‘Corn­fed’ Schnei­der and cell-mate dale Bretches. Both inmates are artists, and have made the Presa Canario dogs the sub­jects of many of their works. Akin also reported that he ‘dis­cov­ered com­mu­ni­ca­tions between Noel and Knoller to Schnei­der that described sex­ual activ­i­ties between Knoller and Noel and included pho­tos and draw­ings of dogs and fight­ing dogs’ as well as a photo of a male dog’s gen­i­tals.’” (“Killer Dogs Had Attacked Blind Woman” by Jaxon Van Der­beken; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 3/302001; p. A19.)

6. Noel’s back­ground also raised some inter­est­ing ques­tions about the case. Noel worked for the National Secu­rity Agency, in addi­tion to the Depart­ment of Jus­tice. “For five years, dur­ing col­lege, he worked at the National Secu­rity Agency, devel­op­ing sur­veil­lance pho­tos among other work. In 1969, he became a tax lawyer for the Depart­ment of Jus­tice in the Nixon admin­is­tra­tion. By 1981, now moved to San Diego, he joined Rogers & Wells, a pri­vate San Diego firm run, in part, by a Nixon asso­ciate. His wife at the time worked in early child­hood edu­ca­tion.” (“Own­ers of Killer Dog Aban­doned Con­ven­tional Career Paths” by Dan Reed and Michael Baze­ley; San Jose Mer­cury News; 2/3/2001; p. 7A.)

7. It would not be unrea­son­able to ask whether Noel may still have some con­nec­tion to NSA, or some other intel­li­gence agency. While at Rogers & Wells, he worked with an attor­ney who had pre­vi­ously rep­re­sented C. Arn­holt Smith, one of Richard Nixon’s prin­ci­pal finan­cial back­ers. He had worked oppo­site that attor­ney (Mitch Lath­rop) while work­ing for the Nixon Jus­tice Depart­ment. “Lath­rop was impressed: Bob Noel was barely 34 years old, fresh from his stint in Wash­ing­ton, dis­patched to clean up after the fail­ure of U.S. National Bank. For some­one try­ing to mas­ter the art of trial work, this was lit­i­ga­tion heaven. ‘It was like some­thing out of a grade-B novel,’ said Lath­rop, a San Diego attor­ney whose firm rep­re­sented the bank’s owner, C. Arn­holt Smith. ‘Every­one wanted to depose Noel’s client, the Comp­trol­ler whose audi­tors had gone through the bank records. Bob’s role,’ said Lath­rop, ‘was to pro­tect the United States gov­ern­ment.’ Lath­rop asked Noel in 1981 to join him at the San Diego office of Rogers & Wells, headed by William Rogers, attor­ney gen­eral under Eisen­hower and Nixon’s sec­re­tary of state. Noel han­dled big-name clients, earn­ing good money to sup­port Karen, the red-haired woman he’d mar­ried the day after Pres­i­dent Kennedy was shot, and their three kids.” (“Story of Torn Fam­ily, Estranged Son May Offer Insight into Actions in Maul­ing Case” by Patrick May; San Jose Mer­cury News; 3/29/2001; p. 18A.)

8. An odd coin­ci­dence enabled Noel’s son by his first mar­riage to escape prison him­self. “One night in 1983, a San Diego police offi­cer pulled up at the front door with the boy. ‘The offi­cer was going to write up a report the next day, which meant Rob would have entered the juve­nile jus­tice sys­tem.’ It never hap­pened. In a bizarre inci­dent, Noel said, the offi­cer was mur­dered later that night.” (Idem.)

9. Both Noel and Knoller rep­re­sent them­selves to the media as cham­pi­oning the down­trod­den. Their choice of clients (in addi­tion to the Aryan Broth­er­hood mem­bers in the case dis­cussed here) seems odd in light of their rep­re­sen­ta­tions to the media. “. . . [they] started tak­ing cases involv­ing guards accused of wrong­do­ing at Pel­i­can Bay.” (Idem.)

10. Inter­est­ingly, guards at Pel­i­can Bay have been accused of col­lab­o­rat­ing with Aryan Broth­er­hood mem­bers, whom they allegedly used as enforcers within the insti­tu­tion. At the same time that the Whip­ple death made head­lines, the Aryan Broth­er­hood were alleged to have con­spired to mur­der Ari­zona prison offi­cials. “The Aryan Broth­er­hood prison gang has an ‘ongo­ing plan’ to kill Terry Stew­art, state pris­ons direc­tor, and other cor­rec­tional offi­cers, accord­ing to a Depart­ment of Cor­rec­tions intel­li­gence report, writ­ten late last year. The Octo­ber 18 report, obtained by The Ari­zona Repub­lic, says mem­bers of the white-supremacist orga­ni­za­tion are mount­ing a ter­ror cam­paign in hopes that the depart­ment will over­turn a pol­icy requir­ing the per­ma­nent iso­la­tion of gang mem­bers.” (“Prison Offi­cials on Aryan Death List” by Den­nis Wag­ner; The Ari­zona Repub­lic; 2/4/2001; p. A1.)

11. One of the ques­tions posed in the broad­cast con­cerns the pos­si­bil­ity that Robert Noel’s back­ground work­ing in the cor­ri­dors of power (NSA, Depart­ment of Jus­tice, etc.) might beto­ken ongo­ing involve­ment with some aspect of the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity. That, in turn, might sug­gest that his and Knoller’s activ­i­ties in con­nec­tion with the Aryan Broth­er­hood might entail more than meets the eye. The pos­si­bil­ity that some of the alleged illicit sex­ual activ­i­ties might involve the mak­ing or under­ground bes­tial­ity or pornog­ra­phy mate­ri­als and/or sex­ual black­mail of indi­vid­u­als who use such mate­r­ial is not one to be too read­ily cast aside.

12. It is inter­est­ing to spec­u­late about some of the pos­si­bil­i­ties that may arise from George W. Bush’s faith-based ini­tia­tives pro­gram. One of the insti­tu­tions that Bush wants to empower to expand its work within pris­ons is the orga­ni­za­tion of con­victed Water­gate bur­glar Charles Col­son. “But for Mr. Bush, this idea is more than an abstrac­tion. He points to the prison pro­gram here, just out­side Hous­ton, as a model of the sort of thing he would like to see spread across the coun­try. The pro­gram, called Inner­Change, is the brain­child of Charles Col­son, the con­victed Water­gate felon who him­self found reli­gion while serv­ing time. It attempts to reha­bil­i­tate with an inten­sive two-year indoc­tri­na­tion in bib­li­cal teach­ings and proper Chris­t­ian behav­ior. Nearly 200 inmates, mostly drug deal­ers and thieves, are enrolled in this seven-days-a-week reg­i­men designed to set them right in the months before they return to soci­ety. As gov­er­nor of Texas, Mr. Bush helped per­suade state-prison offi­cials to embrace the pro­gram in 1997.” (“Some Texas Pris­on­ers Get Religion—16 Hours a Day, 7 Days a Week” by Jim Van­de­Hei; Wall Street Jour­nal; 1/26/2001; p. A1.)

13. In that same con­text, it is inter­est­ing to note who the direc­tor of Bush’s pro­gram is going to be. “And now John DiIulio, the author of the tough-on-crime man­i­festo Let ‘Em Rot, who falsely proph­e­sied a ‘ris­ing tide of juve­nile super­preda­tors,’ has been made the first direc­tor of the brand-new White House office of Faith-Based and Com­mu­nity Ini­tia­tives.” (“Leg­is­la­tion: The 107th Con­gress: A Look Ahead, A Call to Action” by Kyle O’Dowd; The Cham­pion; March/2001; p. 47.)