‘Dog of death’: The horrific killing of Diane Whipple in San Francisco

In the years following the tragedy, a torturous and bizarre saga unfolded that involved the Aryan Brotherhood, an adult adoption and several legal precedents. Marjorie Knoller, the former attorney who was convicted of second-degree murder in the dog-mauling death of Whipple in 2001, was denied parole again last week — still deemed by a parole board to be a threat to society.

Whipple was born and raised on the East Coast and had been an accomplished athlete her entire life. She was a lacrosse star and narrowly missed qualifying for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics in the 800-meter. Her playing days over, she’d taken a job at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, gaining a reputation as an innovative and warm lacrosse coach who always kept a drawer full of candy.

“We were the Bad News Bears when she came here, but she made us a team,” player Megan Bryan would say at a memorial service. “She helped us get so close. We were her creation.”

Whipple lived in an apartment on Pacific Avenue with her longtime partner, Sharon Smith. A month before her death, Whipple came home with a harrowing tale: She told Smith the neighbors’ big dog Bane had snapped at her wrist. She’d been wearing a large sports watch, so the bite could have been worse, but Smith said Whipple was shaken. From then on, she would open their front door slowly to check if the neighbors were walking their dogs.

Those neighbors were Robert Noel, 59, and Knoller, 45. They were a married couple who worked as lawyers, and their bizarre personal lives would soon burst into the public.

They had two Presa Canarios, a rare breed that originated in the Canary Islands. With their thick, muscular bodies and huge heads, they were sometimes bred for dogfighting in Spain. Those traits made them powerful attack dogs — which allegedly drew the attention of Paul “Cornfed” Schneider, a 38-year-old member of the Aryan Brotherhood serving a life sentence at Pelican Bay for a long list of felonies. His lawyers were Noel and Knoller, and he’d asked them to care for two of his Presa Canarios.

Noel and Knoller’s dogs, male Bane and female Hera, soon gained a reputation at the quiet Pacific Heights apartment. One neighbor told the Chronicle that she bought pepper spray to protect herself. Others said Bane in particular was known as the “dog of death” around the complex. Other neighbors with dogs rearranged schedules to avoid running into Bane and Hera, who were known to lunge at people and pets; they were so strong, neither Noel nor Knoller could fully control them.

As police investigators combed the grisly crime scene, they heard story after story from fearful neighbors. They began to wonder if this was more than a tragic accident.

Three days after the attack, police and the public were astonished to learn that Noel and Knoller had officially adopted their imprisoned client, Schneider. No one could figure out why they’d adopted an adult inmate, and when Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross asked Noel, he flippantly responded, “You don’t have to change diapers, or worry about the sheriff bringing him home at 14 for underage drinking. At 11 o’clock, you’ll know where he is.”

Officials from the Department of Corrections said they believed Noel and Knoller were serving as intermediaries in Schneider’s illicit prison business: selling dogs to criminal buyers. “They were raising attack dogs. San Francisco police suspected [the dogs] were going to the Mexican Mafia, going to protect their drug operations,” one corrections official told the press. Schneider had underworld connections and was using associates on the outside to handle the buying, rearing and selling of the dogs, the official said. When San Francisco police talked to an associate who previously cared for Bane and Hera in rural Northern California, she admitted she’d given them to Noel and Knoller because the dogs kept attacking her sheep, chickens and pet cat.

While detectives ran down leads, Noel and Knoller went on the offensive. They sent a 19-page letter to San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan accusing Whipple of bringing death on herself. They speculated she may have been using steroids or wearing a perfume that triggered Bane’s attack instincts when their paths crossed in the hallway. They also claimed that Bane didn’t bite until “Ms. Whipple struck Marjorie [Knoller] in the face” during the melee.

It was by then clear to Hallinan’s office that criminal negligence was involved. (Or, as one SFPD officer put it, “The attorneys had to know these animals were vicious. We’re not talking Lassie here.”) They brought charges of manslaughter against Noel, who wasn’t present at the time of attack, and second-degree murder against Knoller. After a grand jury indicted them both, San Francisco police found them at a farm in Tehama County and arrested them.

“It will be a scorched earth defense,” Noel said. “I’d rather not go through it, but if we have to go through it, I’m confident we’ll be vindicated and we will make them sorry they ever went down that path.”

Tensions were running high in the Bay Area, and the judge agreed a change of venue was needed. Proceedings were moved to Los Angeles.

Among the lawyers for the prosecution was an ambitious up-and-comer named Kimberly Ann Guilfoyle. The daughter of working-class San Francisco parents, she’d attended UC Davis for undergrad and the University of San Francisco for her law degree. A pretrial profile on Guilfoyle that ran in Chronicle said the 32-year-old “favors librarian glasses” and “wants people to know that she is not some ‘cupcake.’”

“True, she has been a fashion and lingerie model and hobnobs with the city’s elite, being seen with Bill Getty and now Supervisor Gavin Newsom,” the profile went on. Shortly before the trial, Guilfoyle and Newsom got married.

The chaotic and tearful trial catapulted Guilfoyle to national fame, as news broadcasts carried nightly coverage of the day’s proceedings.

The trial kicked off with photographs of Whipple’s grisly injuries, some so disturbing that her loved ones left the courtroom. Next, the prosecution brought forward witness after witness to testify that it was well known to the owners that Bane and Hera were dangerous. One vet who treated the dogs in 2000 said he took the unprecedented step of writing Knoller a letter after his office found Bane unsafe to handle.

“I felt that these dogs had a potential of being very serious [risks],” he testified. “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.” He wrote in the letter that the dogs would be a “liability in any household.”

More than 30 incidents with the dogs were recounted to jurors, including testimony from first responders at Whipple’s apartment. One paramedic recalled that Knoller “not once” asked about Whipple’s condition. It was also revealed to the jury that Noel was missing a finger — Bane had severed it in a previous attack.

Defense attorney Nedra Ruiz came out swinging, using shockingly aggressive tactics. When Whipple’s partner Smith took the stand, still reeling with shock, Ruiz grilled her on her knowledge of the dogs’ behavior.

“Do you consider that if you had made a complaint that Diane Whipple might be alive today?”Ruiz askedprompting audible gasps from the gallery. The judge told Smith she didn’t have to answer, and Smith did not.

Ruiz also asked first responders if they’d spent too much time chasing down the dogs and not enough time helping Whipple, suggesting their actions prevented her from receiving life-saving care. The medical examiner refuted her suggestion; Whipple was too gravely wounded to be helped.

After dozens of witnesses and weeks of fraught testimony, the prosecution and defense rested. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is it,” the judge told the jury. “The administration of justice is now in your hands.”

It took the jury members just 11 hours to return their verdict: Noel and Knoller were guilty of all charges. Their case went through a series of appeals, primarily fighting Knoller’s second-degree murder charge, but her final appeal was quashed in 2016. Her sentence was 15 years to life in prison.

Smith also sued the couple for damages in a civil suit. As gay marriage was still illegal in California at the time, the defense argued Smith had no standing to even file such a lawsuit. Many legal experts agreed; as far as anyone knew, no same-sex partner had ever successfully sued for damages in the wrongful death of a partner.

But a judge sided with Smith. She was awarded $1.5 million in damages, some of which she put toward a scholarship foundation in Whipple’s name.

In 2003, Noel was paroled. Smith asked that he not be released to San Francisco, a request that was granted by the Department of Corrections. Noel went to Fairfield, where he reportedly worked for a whi le as a baker. In June 2018, he died of heart failure at a La Jolla nursing home on his 77th birthday. Knoller claims she didn’t learn he was dead until three months later.

On Feb. 15, Knoller came before the Board of Parole Hearings. Several of Whipple’s loved ones spoke out against Knoller’s release. “There’s no way to measure the full impact of that loss,” Smith said. “… For years I was in shock. Much of my life became unrecognizable.”

The parole board determined Knoller remains a threat to society and will remain incarcerated. She is not eligible for parole again until 2026.