News
Criminal
Feb. 22, 2002
Couple Allegedly Has Ties With Aryan Brotherhood
LOS ANGELES - Marjorie Knoller and Robert Noel were associates of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang who located gang rivals and aided members in an illegal dog-breeding scheme, a prosecution witness in the dog-mauling murder trial testified Thursday.
Daily Journal Staff Writer
Devan Hawkes, a state corrections department investigator, said attorneys Knoller and Noel, the San Francisco couple whose two huge dogs killed their neighbor last year, exchanged letters with inmates that demonstrated their involvement in prison gang activity.
"An 'associate' is someone who participates in Aryan Brotherhood activities but is not considered a member and does not have voting rights," Hawkes told the jury.
The defendants not only educated themselves about aggressive guard dogs, Hawkes said, but searched for dogs that might be used for the inmates' "Dog O' War" breeding business.
The investigator's comments came during the second full day of testimony in the Los Angeles trial of Noel and Knoller, who are charged in the Jan. 26, 2001, death of their San Francisco neighbor, Diane Whipple, a college lacrosse coach. Knoller was walking the couple's two presa canario dogs in their apartment building when one of the dogs, Bane, attacked Whipple.
Prosecutors charged Noel and Knoller with involuntary manslaughter in the killing. In addition, they charged Knoller with second-degree murder. Judge James Warren moved the trial to Los Angeles because of the pretrial publicity the case generated in Northern California.
On cross-examination Thursday, defense attorneys Nedra Ruiz, who represents Knoller, and Bruce Hotchkiss, Noel's lawyer, attempted to undermine the relevance of the couple's relationship with inmates.
The judge grew frustrated with Ruiz and repeatedly overruled her objections that Hawkes' testimony was not relevant.
Hawkes said correspondence confiscated from the Pelican Bay state prison cells of Aryan Brotherhood members Paul "Cornfed" Schneider and Dale Bretches showed that Noel had told Bretches where two federally protected witness-inmates were housed.
One of the two, Kenny Costa, was a former Aryan Brotherhood member. He had stabbed Schneider in prison on an earlier occasion. Hawkes said that, under the prison gang code, the penalty for members who quit and become government witnesses is death.
"It's very significant," Hawkes said. "He is identifying the location of a witness, and the potential is that bodily harm could come to this witness."
Letters in which Noel told Schneider he would aid Schneider if he tried to escape also confirmed that Noel and Knoller were involved with the gang, Hawkes said.
Prosecutor Jim Hammer projected magnified excerpts of the letters that, when sent, had been sealed in envelopes designated as "confidential legal mail."
"If you went for the door and your route of travel was through the spot where I was standing, I would get my a - - out of the way so you had a clear shot at the door or window," Noel wrote in December 2000.
From another letter, Hammer quoted Noel's comments about Schneider's alleged stabbing of a lawyer with a jailhouse shank he had smuggled into court.
If Schneider did stab the lawyer, the letter read, "he must have had a damn good reason and the schmuck must have deserved it."
No mention was made by either side of Noel and Knoller's adoption of Schneider six days after Whipple's death.
Noel's attorney, Hotchkiss, got Hawkes to admit that civilians have relationships with inmates without participating in prison gang activity.
"It's not uncommon for people in prison to develop relationships with people on the outside to get something done on the outside, and that sometimes they even get married, isn't that right?" Hotchkiss asked.
"Yes," Hawkes replied.
"And sometimes inmates take advantage of people on the outside, correct?" replied Hotchkiss.
"Sometimes, yes," Hawkes said.
The afternoon session included testimony from neighbors and others who had come into contact with the dogs.
A former occupant of the apartment building where Noel, Knoller and Whipple lived was the first of a string of neighbors to testify that they had had menacing encounters with the dogs.
David Moser testified that, in June 2000, Hera, the smaller of the two dogs, bit him on the buttocks as he was taking boxes from his apartment to his car in the garage while preparing to move from the building.
When the elevator opened on one of his trips to the garage, he said, Noel, Knoller and Hera were crowding the entrance, forcing him to sidle out with his back turned toward them.
Demonstrating to jurors how he slid past the threesome, Moser said the dog bit him on the right buttock. Moser said he walked away to assess the damage.
Hammer asked Moser to describe the couple's reaction.
"Mr. Noel walked over and he just looked and he said, 'Hmmm, interesting,' and walked away," Moser said.
Moser said the bite left a welt that turned into a bruise. He said he was more disturbed about the couple's reaction to the bite than by the bite itself.
"It was almost like they expected it to happen," Moser said, prompting objections from defense attorneys.
Warren ordered jurors to disregard his comment.
Asked why he did not immediately report the incident, Moser said he and his wife were leaving the building and wanted nothing more to do with Noel and Knoller.
He did report the incident after Whipple was killed, he said.
Moser denied, when Ruiz cross-examined him, that he was injured when bumping into the elevator door as opposed to getting a dog bite.
Staff writer Anne LaJeunesse contributed to this report.
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Robert Selna
Daily Journal Staff Writer
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