Jim Gorant - The Lost Dogs - Michael Vick's Dogs and Their Tale of Rescue and Redemption

Part of the problem seems to have been a simple lack of clarity. At times the prosecutor appeared to be saying what he believed based on what he’d seen and been told. At other moments he apparently addressed what he could prove based on the evidence he had in hand. At one point he told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “I don’t to date have one investigative report. I have nothing on my desk. But I’m in touch with people who assure me they can provide me the stuff.” In other words, what he knew and what he could use in court were two different things.

Taken individually and carefully parsed in this way, most of Poindexter’s statements did make sense within a particular frame of reference, but in their totality, they appeared conflicting to some. As the investigation moved into its second month without any charges filed and no sign that any would be coming soon, reporters, animal rights groups, and even some other people in law enforcement were beginning to question Poindexter.

“He [Poindexter] was at the home and saw the equipment that we seized,” Kathy Strouse, an animal control officer who had been on-site for the initial search told Yahoo! on May 15. “When we were there, he said he had enough right there to issue an indictment. He didn’t say who he would indict, but he said he had enough. Now, with what he has said, it makes you think, ‘What in the world is going on in Surry County?’ This certainly doesn’t make me feel warm and fuzzy about the Surry County attorney.”

Mark Kumpf, a former animal control officer in Norfolk and Newport News who had moved on to become a dogfighting specialist, told The Virginian-Pilot, “There is more evidence [in the Vick case] than has been used to convict several other people in Virginia.”

“The overwhelming majority of dogfighting cases are based on circumstantial evidence. Most often, they could probably get a conviction off much less than [Poindexter’s] already got,” Ethan Eddy, an attorney at the Humane Society told the New York Daily News. “It is fair to say that this process has taken longer than usual.” Poindexter did nothing to ease the anxiety when he peppered his interviews with statements like “If people on that property committed a crime, and I believe they did, it will be a crime tomorrow, it will be a crime in six months, it was a crime yesterday,” and “I have several cases with greater priority.”

In defending his reasons for not executing the warrant, Poindexter said he’d been told there was already a wealth of forensic evidence, so he felt no reason to rush back for more. He also contended that if there was something wrong with the new warrant-if the wording wasn’t right as he had said-that there could have been something wrong with the previous ones as well. This seemed especially odd to Knorr since as far as he was concerned those questions had been raised and answered during the May 21 meeting.

Throughout it all, Poindexter invoked the failed Benny Butts prosecution as a reason for his caution. He didn’t want to rush into something that would jeopardize the case down the road and consistently pointed out that the goal was success, not speed. “We would like to bring the strongest case possible, rather than react to knee-jerk pressures,” he told USA Today. And “You’ve got to nail things down before you accuse people of felonies.”

Behind the scenes, Knorr bristled. Personally, he found Poindexter profane and vulgar, often punctuating his speech with curses. None of that bothered him much-he’d dealt with tougher characters. But he was troubled by all the talk because he felt public statements hurt investigations: Comments about who was or was not a suspect, what sort of evidence had been collected or was sought, and in which direction the investigation was moving, gave suspects an advantage.

Now, the media had gotten its hands on the unexecuted warrant and the investigation was dealing with a new reality: The entire world was suddenly aware that one of the objects of a proposed search at 1915 Moonlight Road was to exhume as many as thirty dog carcasses. Like Knorr, Mike Gill worried that the suspects would use this latest intelligence to go back and remove evidence. Digging up the dogs and burning down the sheds were serious measures, but they were easy to execute, especially since Brownie had said the graves were fairly shallow. Even more, the main suspect had plenty of motivation-there were literally hundreds of millions of dollars in earnings at stake.

The U.S. attorney’s office of the Eastern District of Virginia may well have been motivated by current events, too. The Duke lacrosse scandal was rattling to a close in the headlines and taking a little of the honor and integrity of government prosecutors with it. That case exploded into the national consciousness in March 2006, when a dancer hired to perform at a party hosted by the Duke team later claimed that she was raped by three of the team members. The Durham, North Carolina, district attorney, Michael Nifong, bungled the case by violating numerous procedural rules, presuming the guilt of the accused by saying in public that Durham would not become known for “a bunch of lacrosse players from Duke raping a black girl,” and calling the team “a bunch of hooligans.” Just over a year later, in April 2007, the North Carolina attorney general dismissed all the charges, and Nifong was disbarred for “dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation” and convicted on contempt of court charges.

The case was a black eye for government lawyers, and Durham was only 166 miles from Surry County. The lawyers of the Eastern District of Virginia surely didn’t want to see history repeat itself. They wanted to prove that the job could be done right-fairly, quickly, efficiently and without a media circus trailing behind.

Poindexter may very well have filed charges the following week and successfully prosecuted the Bad Newz crew, but those possibilities would forever remain unexplored because when the information about the search for the dead dogs hit the news, Mike Gill made a decision. The U.S. attorney’s office of the Eastern District of Virginia was officially taking on the case.

This good news came at a price for Brinkman, Knorr, and Gill. The failure or success of the operation would now fall squarely on them. They were aware of the outcry and how closely the case was being watched by both the public at large and the animal rescue community. The pressure was real and the longer the case went without any visible progress, the more it grew. They needed these jailhouse interviews to go well, and they needed to get back on that property. Soon.

THE SURRY COUNTY ANIMAL SHELTER sits just outside the center of town at the end of a gravel access road that leads to something of a vehicle depot-a lot filled with old semi containers, a car trailer painted in camouflage, and a stable of garbage trucks. The back of the lot is taken up by an appliance dump, stacked with old stoves, leaking refrigerators, rusted-out water heaters, and broken-down washers and dryers. Off to the side lies a low, drab building-the shelter.

Inside, there are fourteen four-foot-by-six-foot chain-link pens broken into two rows of seven, and at the end of April 2007 all but one of those pens were occupied by dogs from 1915 Moonlight Road. Within a few days of arriving the dogs felt as if they knew every inch of the place-the dull beige walls, the ceiling with its exposed beams, and the fans turning slowly. Eight small windows spread around the room let the daylight in, reminding them of where they were not.

They weren’t made for this. Over centuries their bodies and minds and dispositions had been honed for activity, and their muscles longed for something to do. They had energy and power. They wanted to run and play. They needed things to occupy their minds. Things to chase, to watch, to chew on and figure out.