LOS ANGELES – Prosecutors displayed gut-wrenching autopsy photos yesterday of a bloodied and battered woman, killed by two vicious dogs who tore her flesh from head to toe.
Long Island native Diane Whipple was 33 and a popular lacrosse coach at St. Mary’s College when she was mauled to death by two massive Presa Canario attack dogs in the hallway of her San Francisco apartment building on Jan. 26, 2001.
Marjorie Knoller, who was caring for the dogs, faces a second-degree murder charge, while her husband, Robert Noel, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter.
Knoller could be sentenced to up to 15 years to life in prison if convicted; Noel faces a possible sentence of up to four years.
The defendants, both lawyers, lived down the hall from Whipple. Prosecutors claim Knoller and Noel were part of a scheme run from inside Pelican Bay State Prison to raise savage attack dogs for criminals.
The dogs belonged to one of the lawyers’ clients, a member of a white-supremacist prison gang.
San Francisco Assistant District Attorney James Hammer told jurors he’ll show that Knoller and Noel had 30 warnings – from neighbors, a dog trainer, a vet and the dogs’ previous caretakers – that 125-pound “Bane” and 115-pound “Hera” were bloodthirsty time bombs.
“The evidence will show they disregarded all of the warnings and Diane Whipple is dead as a result of that,” Hammer said.
Grisly autopsy photos showed Whipple with massive injuries to her neck and throat, and bite marks up and down her petite 110-pound frame.
She died of blood loss and asphyxiation – the dog crushed her trachea so she couldn’t breathe, Hammer said.
To win a conviction on the most serious charges, prosecutors will have to show Knoller and Noel recklessly ignored warnings.
Their case got some support from Janet Coumbs, the dogs’ original caretaker, who said one of the dogs, Hera, had killed sheep and her daughter’s cat.
When Knoller and Noel picked up the dogs from her farm, Coumbs said she expressed concern.
“I told them I was worried about the dogs and where they were going,” she said. “I said that Hera and Fury [another dog on her farm] should be shot before they left the property, because they were not going to bond with anyone else.”
In his opening argument, Hammer also said he’ll argue that Knoller did little to help Whipple as she lay bleeding to death, naked in the apartment hallway.
But Knoller’s lawyer, Nedra Ruiz, tried to counter that claim in an odd courtroom spectacle. Ruiz spent much of her opening statement screaming and writhing on the floor, to show how Knoller fought to keep Bane from Whipple.