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

Taylor and Peace may not have been the best guys for Vick to go into business with. Taylor had been busted for drug trafficking in New York City in 1992 [1]and had spent seven months in a New York State prison. He followed that up with a cocaine possession arrest in 1996 that was dismissed after he completed a substance abuse program and one year of good behavior.

Although Vick was already a national celebrity and about to become the face of some NFL franchise, he was undeterred by the association with Taylor. He authorized Taylor to start looking for a piece of property to house the operation, and Taylor began scouting for land in Surry County, a rural territory across the James River from Jamestown, the first permanent European settlement in North America. Located roughly halfway between Richmond and Norfolk, a Navy town that is also the world headquarters of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the area had come to be known for its peanut farms, hams, and Christmas trees-the Virginia pine.

By the middle of spring, Taylor had identified a 15.7-acre tree-filled tract that seemed perfect for the group’s purpose. In June, slightly more than a month after he officially signed his first NFL contract, Vick bought 1915 Moonlight Road for about $34,000.

In 2001 the place was nothing but trees. But Taylor had the area closest to the road cleared. He had a trailer put in the yard, where he lived while taking care of the dogs. He had brought eight pit bulls that he already owned and in 2002 the group went on a buying spree. They purchased four dogs in North Carolina; six more along with six puppies in Richmond; a male named Tiny in New York City, and a female named Jane from a guy in Williamsburg. That same year Taylor came up with the name, Bad Newz Kennels, a nod to the crew’s hometown. He printed up T-shirts and headbands with the name emblazoned on them.

As the operation grew, Taylor had the sheds built and painted black. He added a high-end kennel with twenty numbered stalls, concrete floors, chain-link walls, molded concrete water bowls, a drain that fed into a septic tank and a corrugated aluminum roof. He also altered one of the sheds. At first they were all one-story structures, but a second floor was added to the largest one. It was accessible only by a pull-down attic staircase. Taylor hoped that its limited accessibility would help keep the Bad Newz pit a secret.

In 2004, the trailer was removed and a large white brick house was built. Vick stayed over on many occasions but never actually lived in the house. Several different people had, with Vick’s permission, made it their home. One of them was Davon Boddie. In the early days of Vick’s career, Boddie would visit Atlanta to hang out with his cousin, and as with Phillips, Vick had done all that he could to help Boddie, but it had not amounted to much.

Boddie had worked for a bit as a cook and now harbored dreams of some sort of career as an entertainer, but he had been busted for marijuana possession once before in Newport News and seemed most interested in hanging around his cousin’s house, living the good life. The night he was arrested for the second time, outside Royal Suite in Hampton, the night a dog had sniffed out marijuana in the back of his car, he gave his address as 1915 Moonlight Road.

THE BROWN DOG WITH the floppy ear lay down in the clearing to give her neck a rest from holding up the heavy chain. A few days earlier the men had taken some of the dogs away, including the little red dog that had been chained up next to the brown dog. None of those dogs had come back. Her bent ear hung in its state of eternal questioning, the brown dog lifted her head and sniffed the air. She picked up no trace of the little red dog or the others. The sun was not yet directly overhead and already it was hot. The dog panted and yawned.

A few miles away, Bill Brinkman was fighting the heat as well. As temperatures pushed into the high eighties with 86-percent humidity, Brinkman sweltered in long pants and a bulletproof vest. This type of weather was normal for Surry County in the summer, but it was a record high for April 25, nine days after Davon Boddie’s drug arrest in Hampton and only two days after the latest Bad Newz testing session ended in brutality and death.

Brinkman didn’t have any particular desire to bust Michael Vick. But there had been local rumors and even tips from informants tying Vick to drugs for years, and although the department kept a file, they had never accumulated enough material to act. Vick didn’t do much to relieve the suspicions with the company he kept. Besides his friendships with Taylor, Peace, and Phillips-at least two of whom had drug-related criminal records-Vick also hung around with C. J. Reamon, the nephew of his old high school coach, who had been convicted three times on illegal weapons charges. Vick’s younger brother, Marcus, had been convicted on three counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and pled guilty to reckless driving and no contest to marijuana possession in 2004. In 2006 he pled guilty to disorderly conduct, and between 2002 and 2006 he was ticketed for seven traffic violations, including two instances of driving with a revoked or suspended license. In 2008 he settled a lawsuit in which he was charged with sexual battery of a minor and willful and wanton conduct, and later that year he pled guilty to drunken driving, eluding a police officer, and driving on the wrong side of the road. He was given probation but violated the terms by testing positive for marijuana, among other things, and was sentenced to thirty days in jail.

Beyond this inner circle there was a situation in 2004 in which two men arrested in Virginia for marijuana distribution were driving a truck registered to Michael Vick. Vick himself had been detained in 2007 after security at Miami International Airport confiscated a water bottle he was carrying that smelled of marijuana and had a secret compartment. Vick maintained that he used the compartment to hide jewelry and he was cleared after no drugs were found.

Still, an aura of lawlessness surrounded Vick and his crew. Brinkman was a member of the Virginia Drug Task Force, and the other officers in the group were aware of the suspicion surrounding Vick, so when the star quarterback’s address popped up on a drug-related arrest, Brinkman’s drug-enforcement counterparts in Hampton made sure to let him know. Combined with the previous information he’d acquired, Brinkman now had probable cause to obtain a warrant and conduct a search.

Since Vick’s place was situated outside the city of Hampton, where the Boddie arrest was made, a multijurisdictional force was assembled. It included a state SWAT unit, Virginia State Police officers, Hampton Police, and the Surry County Sheriff’s Department, which was represented by Brinkman, and in accordance with standard procedure, animal control officer James Smith.

Brinkman must have been happy to have Smith along. From his investigation of Benny Butts, Brinkman knew that Butts was tied up in the local drug scene as well as the dogfighting underground. He’d been told that Butts had worked for Vick-possibly as a trainer for Vick’s own dogs. Brinkman was there for the drugs, but if there was evidence of dogfighting, it was his duty to explore what he found.

The SWAT team entered first, knocking the pristine white door right off its hinges. Brinkman and the others set up around the perimeter, to provide support and cut off any runners. When the SWAT team gave the thumbs-up, signaling that the house was clear, Brinkman and the others entered. The place was nice, but nothing extravagant. In most upscale suburbs around the country it probably would have registered as nothing more than another overly large home that sprang up during the housing boom. And it was not kept terribly well. The carpets were dirty and worn. The largest wall in the master bedroom contained not artwork but a large Atlanta Falcons poster, which hung crooked.