Witness describes delivering dogs

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Posted 9:02AM on Thursday, March 7, 2002

LOS ANGELES - A witness in the San Francisco dog mauling trial said he dropped off one of the huge dogs with a vanload of others in the dead of night and a group of men, including some with prison tattoos, emerged to claim them. The testimony from James O'Brien, the owner of a transport service, was unexpected, coming in the midst of a defense effort to depict the defendants' huge presa canario dogs as gentle giants that were welcomed at fine restaurants and shops around San Francisco. After hours of testimony about the calm demeanor of Bane and Hera, the dogs that mauled Diane Whipple to death, the courtroom mood changed abruptly. O'Brien, under cross-examination, talked about transporting Bane and five other dogs to the Los Angeles area, where he said a group of men awaited. O'Brien, who had been called by the defense to say how placid the dogs were during transportation, said he was hired by defendant Marjorie Knoller to haul the dogs. Knoller and her husband, Robert Noel, are facing charges in the fatal attack on their 33-year-old neighbor by their two dogs on Jan. 26, 2001. The trial was moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles because of pretrial publicity. O'Brien said he was hesitant about the job at first because he had never heard of the breed, and when he looked it up in a book and on a Web site he found that the dogs were ``bred for fighting." Asked by Assistant District Attorney Jim Hammer whether he meant dog fighting, he said, ``It could be any kind of fighting, even bull fighting.'' O'Brien said he told Knoller that ``if they were aggressive we wouldn't transport them.'' When he arrived to pick up the dogs at a Northern California farm, he said, they were on chains and were lunging. But the moment they were removed from the chains they became ``submissive,'' he said, and he agreed to do the job. He said when he dropped off the dogs, ``Several people came out of the dark because they were expecting them.'' He said the group included two men with tattoos on their necks. ``It's what I would refer to as prison tattoos,'' O'Brien said. Earlier in the trial, when the prosecution was presenting evidence, witnesses spoke of the defendants' ties to two members of the Aryan Brotherhood, a prison gang, and a plan by the prisoners to raise presa canario dogs for sale. Knoller is charged with second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and having a mischievous dog that killed a person. Her husband faces the latter two charges. Earlier Wednesday, proprietors of upscale San Francisco restaurants recalled well-behaved, quiet dogs that sat at their owners' feet, under tables or tied to parking meters. The proprietor of a restaurant called Left at Albuquerque said he remembered the couple and their dogs. ``They were regulars,'' said Michael Beachnau. ``The dogs would sit under the table. ... I've seen many dogs. There was no difference.'' Superior Court Judge James Warren said the case is likely to be submitted to the jury on March 19.