The Lost Dogs (8 page)

It didn’t take long to figure out the source of the discontent. Brinkman later told the
Virginian Pilot
that within a few days of the raid, his boss, Sheriff Harold Brown, told him that commonwealth attorney Gerald Poindexter, who represented the state of Virginia in Surry County, was unhappy with him. Soon thereafter, Brinkman was called into a meeting with Poindexter, who once represented Michael Boddie in a DWI case. Brinkman and Poindexter had clashed before. “Every time you met with him, it was a very unsettling, uncomfortable, degrading conversation,” Brinkman said to the
Virginian Pilot
. “Everything’s wrapped around race.”

Afterward, Brinkman claimed that Poindexter, who is black, made it clear that he didn’t like the idea of a young African American who had escaped from an underprivileged background and become something of an icon being dragged down, and he certainly didn’t want to be a part of it. (Brown and Poindexter later denied that any such conversations took place.)

When Poindexter subsequently reminded reporters that all the evidence was circumstantial and that even if dogfighting had taken place, it didn’t mean Vick was responsible, Brinkman took those statements as efforts to sway public opinion away from the idea that all roads led to Vick.

If the state truly wasn’t on board, it could be a significant problem. Virginia considered dogfighting and animal cruelty felonies, which made it an ideal venue to try the case. That was part of the reason Brinkman had reached out to Jim Knorr. He knew that if he could get the feds involved he could get around Poindexter. (A new federal law that would make dogfighting a felony was on the verge of being signed by President George W. Bush, but it would arrive too late for this case.) Brinkman and Knorr hoped there would be some other federal law that applied. They didn’t know all the answers, but they knew how to find out. There, in the dim light of a strip-mall Italian joint in rural Virginia, the two men planned their investigation.

The next day, Brinkman and Knorr found themselves outside 600 E. Main Street in Richmond, Virginia, a twenty-three-story office building highlighted by tan concrete, rows of black windows, and an architectural style that featured intersecting planes. It housed, among other things, the office of Chuck Rosenberg, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Brinkman and Knorr were scheduled to meet with assistant U.S. attorneys Brian Whisler and Mike Gill.

Brinkman had worked some with the feds before, but Knorr was intimate with the machinations of the national government, and this knowledge made him uneasy. After their last get-together Knorr had taken charge of Brownie, putting him up at a low-rent hotel in Virginia Beach. Knorr used some of his own cash to accomplish this, but when he went to his boss for funding, he was told that the agency didn’t want to spend money on “that two-bit dog case.”

After some arm twisting, Knorr got a small budget, but he wasn’t surprised that it was a struggle. As much as he loved working for the USDA and found the street agents as diligent and hardworking as anyone, the agency’s management could get bogged down in small-time thinking and bureaucratic politics. More than once he’d heard a certain deflating phrase uttered around the office: “No cases, no problems; big cases, big problems.” Agents sometimes joked that the department’s emblem should feature an ostrich with its head in the sand instead of an eagle. Such apathy was a sort of disease that infected government work, and it was never clear who had it until that person’s cooperation was required to get something done.

Had it spread to the attorneys for the Eastern District of Virginia? There was at least some chance that they would listen to the facts of Brinkman and Knorr’s case and decide that there wasn’t enough evidence to make it work or that they had bigger problems than some football player and his dogs.

In a nondescript conference room Brinkman and Knorr laid out what they had. Besides the evidence seized, they’d also been tipped that there were dog carcasses buried on the property, and they’d begun seeking a facility that could perform necropsies on the bodies, should they be able to find any.

The assistant attorneys listened attentively, and Mike Gill took the lead role as the conversation unfolded. Brinkman and Knorr were impressed by Gill. A lot of prosecutors talk down to law officers or only want surefire cases, making so many demands that they render it all but impossible for the investigation to succeed. But there was none of that with Gill. He was young, but he exuded confidence and experience. He knew what was needed and how to get it.

Best of all he was a regular guy. A Texan with an open face, black hair, and full curving eyebrows, he was the kind of guy who wore cowboy boots with a suit and guzzled Diet Cokes. Behind the desk in his office a Texas Christian University banner hung on the wall and pictures of his dogs—Toby, a German shepherd, and a beagle named Ginger—sat on one of the shelves. As Knorr said to Brinkman afterward, “He was the kind of guy you’d be happy to end up sitting next to on a plane.”

The way Gill saw it, there was evidence that the Bad Newz crew had crossed state lines to buy dogs, participate in dogfights and gamble illegally, all offenses that fell within the bounds of federal law. The case, in his view, was pretty strong, although some pieces were missing. The bigger problem, though, was that the federal government had no cause to become involved.

Whatever Brinkman’s past dealings with the local officials might have led him to believe about their intentions or abilities, Gill had no reason to think they wouldn’t advance and succeed with the case at the state level. And the state charges were serious, carrying penalties of up to five years in prison and a $2,500 fine. But that didn’t mean Gill was walking away completely. At the end of the meeting he summarized the situation: “We have to give them a chance to do their job,” he said. “And if they don’t, then we will.”

Surry County is a quiet place. In the county seat, Surry, there’s one light, and even that one is a blinker. There are short stretches of houses lined up next to one another, but it’s far more common to drive on Surry’s curving roads without another car in sight, widespread farms moving past like islands seen through a porthole. There are only seven thousand people in the entire county and everyone knows everyone, or at least seems to. There hasn’t been a felony murder case in forty years, and commonwealth attorney is a part-time position.

Gerald Poindexter, one of only two practicing attorneys in Surry, became county attorney in 1972, while his wife, Gammiel, was elected the commonwealth attorney, the person charged with prosecuting cases in the area on behalf of the state. But in 1995, Gammiel was appointed the general district court judge for the Sixth Judicial Circuit in Hopewell. Poindexter rushed into the void left by his wife, winning election as commonwealth attorney, and holding both positions for a number of years before giving up the county job.

When he entered the small conference room in the Surry County municipal building at 10:00 A.M. on May 21, he was wearing a light-colored suit and tie. His wiry gray and black hair was brushed back from a wide, freckled face dominated by a bushy mustache. According to Knorr’s memo recounting the meeting, Pointdexter opened with a question: “Does anyone have evidence that Michael Vick is involved in dogfighting?” he asked in a smooth baritone. Assembled before him to review the investigation were the county administrator, Tyrone Franklin; three representatives of the Virginia State Police; Sheriff Brown; animal control officer Jamie Smith; Brinkman and Knorr; and Poindexter’s assistant, Robin Ely.

Brinkman spoke first, reviewing the details of what they had so far. In addition to the evidence seized, they had Brownie and at least two people in federal prison that could place Vick at dogfights on the property. Poindexter listened but responded by changing the subject. He may not have been in the best of moods, as the day before an animal control officer from another town had called him out in the media for not bringing charges yet. He made it clear he was unhappy about what had been printed and said it angered him when people suggested he would never charge Vick.

And yet, in the next breath, he contended that all the evidence they’d assembled so far was obtained illegally. He didn’t think it was legal to have dogs sniff cars in a public place, thus invalidating the Boddie arrest that led to the search at 1915 Moonlight Road, and he didn’t think it was legal to have the animal control officer along on a drug search, so Officer Smith’s testimony, which led to the warrant to search for dogfighting evidence, was invalid.

The Virginia State Police officers in the room offered that dog sniffing in public places had been challenged and ruled legal and others present testified that having an animal control officer along on a drug bust was standard procedure. Still, Poindexter said he would submit both warrants to the Virginia Attorney General’s office for review.

When Knorr finally got a chance to speak, he quickly established his identity and explained that he would be able to assist Brinkman with the witness interviews and have the blood analyzed, although he’d been told that any such analysis would be better if the lab could have a piece of the actual stained wood instead of only the swabs.

He went on to explain that according to Brownie, two days before the initial raid, Vick, Peace, Phillips, and Oscar Allen, another member of the crew, had been testing dogs in the big shed. When they were done they identified about eight or nine dogs that did not pass muster. The Bad Newz crew killed the dogs. Afterward, Vick paid Brownie $100 to dig two holes and bury the dogs. Brownie dug the holes but he refused to do the burials. Phillips and Peace did it instead.

They literally knew where the bodies were buried, Knorr argued. Through Brownie they also had very specific details about how the dogs were killed. If they could obtain another search warrant, then go back and find the carcasses, it would provide them with more evidence against Vick’s operation and establish Brownie as a credible witness, especially if the dogs showed injuries that matched the ways in which he said they were killed.

Based on all of this, Knorr proposed a second search of the property. Combined with the physical evidence they’d already collected—the paperwork, treadmills, food, supplements, bloodstained carpets, and the dogs themselves—it could be enough to seal the case. Dogfighting convictions had been won in Virginia recently with far less backup. Just not in Surry County, where the biggest dogfighting case they’d ever brought—the Benny Butts case—ended in disaster because of an illegal search.

Poindexter considered the information, and there was general consensus that a second search should proceed, but the conversation moved on without a firm decision. Poindexter wondered aloud if a press release should be issued following the meeting, and one was drafted so that everyone could approve it. It had been two hours since the meeting started, and everyone began to gather their belongings and prepare to leave. Knorr wasn’t satisfied.

“Excuse me,” he said, “does everyone agree we should go forward with the second search?” Brinkman said yes. The Virginia State Police said yes. Everyone looked to Poindexter.

“What do you think, Sheriff?” Poindexter responded.

“I agree with the others,” Brown said.

“Okay,” said Poindexter, “you’re the investigators.”

JIM KNORR STOOD NEAR
a boat launch at the Hog Island Wildlife Management Area. He strapped on his bulletproof vest and checked his weapon. It was a Wednesday afternoon, two days after the meeting in which he had convinced Poindexter that a second search was needed to dig up the bodies of the recently killed dogs.

Straight out Route 650 on the James River, this state park was the local police’s favorite staging area, and it was where Brinkman had assembled before the initial raid. The appeal of this spot was its seclusion, and as Knorr stood there he could see only blacktop, reeds, and water. That, and twenty or thirty other law enforcement officials gathered to prep for the second raid on 1915 Moonlight Road. The group included Bill Brinkman and Virginia State Police officers, including a SWAT team and a forensics team. The plan was the same as last time: SWAT would go in first to secure the property, then everyone else would move in to finish the business at hand.