by Jim Gorant
Individually and together, they’d been dreaming of these days since they were kids: when NFL money would provide the life of comfort and security and maybe even decadence that they could never approach growing up. Besides what he achieved on the gridiron, Vick planned to become a force off the field as well, taking care of numerous family members and old friends, including Q, who would be his right hand in as-yet-unforeseen business ventures.
One such venture walked into their lives on a cold winter morning in Newport News. The pair stopped at a local barbershop where they ran into Tony Taylor, who was six years older than Vick and Phillips. It was known around the neighborhood that Taylor was into dogfighting. Vick had bought a pit bull, a house pet named Champagne, when he went to college, and she was a sweet dog that Vick doted on. But he knew what pit bulls could be trained to do. He was seven the first time he saw dogs fight, an unorganized street clash, and it was the first of many such battles he witnessed in the courtyard next to his home and in an open lot across the street. It was just one of the many things that went on in the open spaces around his home, as common and unquestioned as selling drugs or playing baseball.
Vick was drawn to the fights, and by the time he was twelve or thirteen, he was an active participant. He’d missed the action while he was away at school, so when he saw Taylor he asked about getting back in. Taylor explained that he’d met a guy with a big piece of property up in Surry County who ran a real dogfighting ring and this man had shown Taylor the ropes—how to keep dogs, buy them, breed them, train them. That guy’s name was Benny Butts. With Taylor’s knowledge and Vick’s money there were great possibilities. What the three men discussed that day was one part business opportunity, one part gangsta adventure—a shadow world of underground networks, secret locations, and big-money prizefights.
The metaphorical leap that seduces so many into the world of dogfighting was a short one for guys like Vick, Phillips, and Taylor. They saw themselves in the dogs. In the exterior toughness and bravado, to a degree, but even more in the animals’ willingness to take on any challenge, to endure pain and injury, to never give up despite long odds and great difficulty. Viewed in such light, the dogs are noble and heroic, and that is how these men view their own struggle against the disadvantages they’ve had to contend with. Even more, there is a certain godlike feeling that comes with knowing that these creatures of superior toughness and strength and will are a product of their own making. The dog men have bred and selected and trained these animals, perfect symbols of their own triumph.
By the time they left the barbershop, Vick, Phillips, and Taylor were business partners.
The plan was that Vick would be the money man and Phillips would oversee the operation while Taylor took care of the dogs. Later, Taylor’s cousin Purnell Peace, a veteran dog man, would join the group. To provide a front for the dogfighting ring, they would obtain a kennel license, house other people’s dogs, and build a Web site promoting their breeding business.
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 19921 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.
6
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.
Inside the house investigators uncovered some damning paraphernalia: a small amount of marijuana, a bong, a rolling-paper machine, a semi-automatic .45 caliber pistol, a .24 caliber pistol and assorted ammo, and several stun guns.
Outside, the officers encountered an older man. As Brinkman arrived to question him, dogs barked from the back of the property. Brinkman asked the man what was going on. His name was Brownie2 and he was paid to take care of the yard. He was a dog lover and he hated to see what was going on. In 2004 or 2005 he’d reported what the Bad Newz crew was doing to the Virginia Beach Police and then the Virginia State Police, but for reasons he didn’t know those complaints never led to an investigation. Still, he’d told Vick and the others more than once that “someday they would pay for what they did to the dogs.” This was his chance to make those words reality and he was going to take it. He led the officers through the black fence and into the trees, revealing the secrets of 1915 Moonlight Road.
The officers stood in the middle of the compound and took in the scene: the black sheds behind them, kennels off to the right, pens on the left. The dogs were riled and barking, jumping up against the fencing as though it was feeding time. There were maybe thirty-five dogs spread through the compound and probably twenty of those were pit bulls. The remainder included a pack of purebred hunting beagles, a handful of Rottweilers and a few presa canarios, massive hunting and farming dogs that derive from the Canary Islands and have been used for dogfighting over the years. Many of the pit bulls bore scars, but they were generally healthy. They were skinny, but not starving, which is typical of fighting dogs because it is easier to bulk a dog up to get to fight weight than it is to slim one down.
The sheds were locked, but Brownie had a key and he let the officers inside. It looked like a dogfighting operation, and Brinkman sent Officer Smith back to the magistrate’s office to get a second warrant authorizing a search for dogfighting evidence. As Smith set off, Brownie spoke up. There were more. He led the officers down a path to a clearing. They stopped when they saw the dogs chained to the axles, barking and lunging forward so that their collars pulled at their necks. Brownie continued down the path and through the trees. Another clearing, more dogs.
These dogs, left to the elements far more than the others, were scrappier and possessed an almost feral air. They too were skinny but not malnourished. When the officers approached, the dogs rushed toward them, barking and wagging as if they wanted to be petted, but when the people got close, the dogs tucked their tails and retreated. Some of the cops who were more comfortable with animals went up and put their hands on the dogs. None snapped or growled or showed signs of aggression, but a few, when they saw hands coming at them, ducked their heads and crouched low, as if they were expecting to be struck.
The job of removing the dogs had just doubled, as the total count pushed to sixty-six. Additional animal control units were called in from neighboring precincts, and when Smith returned with the warrant, well after 9:00 P.M., Brinkman and some of the others began their search. In the house they found a black three-ring binder full of contracts and paperwork pertaining to dog breeding and lineage.
The officers also began to figure out what to do with the dogs. Surry County’s shelter couldn’t take more than fourteen, so the team would have to find space at other local shelters for the rest of the dogs, figure out transportation, gather enough portable crates to accommodate them all for the trip, and make sure each facility had enough staff and food to take on a sudden influx of dogs that they could only assume to be hostile.
Who would pay for all the food and care the dogs would require was another question altogether. It was possible that the expense would be too great and that the dogs would be quickly catalogued as evidence and then put down. Some of the animal control officers began seeing to the arrangements and the dogs. A few had open wounds and all needed to be fed.
Out in the clearing, the brown dog did not know what to make of all that was happening. She didn’t know if it was good or bad but it was different. These people looked different, smelled different, spoke differently and much more than the ones she knew. She paced back and forth, watching the men come and go. They walked out through the trees and past the kennels. Past the sheds, too. Places that she’d had only an inkling of back in the clearing but that she somehow knew. They walked out beyond the house and the trucks with their flashing lights, into a world she knew nothing of but was soon to meet.
Even as the dogs were being seen to, Brinkman and the others approached the sheds. Although Brinkman had already taken an initial tour through them earlier in the day, it was time for a thorough search.
They opened the first shed, a small one on the left. The door creaked back and light rushed in. An array of training equipment filled the space—weight-pull harnesses, a treadmill, three slat mills and a Jenny wheel, a sort of pole and tether that’s used for exercising. Brinkman looked a little closer. He recognized some of the equipment: It was the same stuff he had confiscated from Benny Butts seven years earlier.
The next shed was immaculate inside, as close to sterile as you could get for a makeshift backwoods infirmary. A long counter covered with syringes and medical supplies stretched along one wall, and stainless steel pens sat on the ground. Assorted medicines and painkillers, bandages, and splints were among the items. The third shed was something of a recovery room, a place with lined stalls where dogs could stay while they were healing after a fight or recuperating from giving birth. A female who had recently borne a litter lay in one stall, panting, but there were no pu
ppies anywhere.
They moved on to the biggest shed, the two-story one, and stepped inside. Bags and bags of Black Gold Premium Dog Food lay stacked against the wall. The sheer amount of it was disturbing—the crew bought it eighty bags at a time from Sam’s Club—but the two words below the name stood out, Performance Blend. Buckets of protein powder, hemoglobin, and other performance-enhancing materials stood nearby as well. A scale hung from one of the beams, and there were break sticks, used to pry open a dog’s mouth, and a rape stand, a device used to hold unwilling females in place during breeding. Outside one officer had found a partially burned carpet in a fifty-gallon drum, and inside the shed more carpet remnants stood rolled up and waiting.
Brownie pointed them toward a rope that hung down from the ceiling. They pulled it and a staircase descended. They started to climb. The steps were much too steep for a dog to walk up, but one could be carried. At the top, they emerged into an open room. One officer found a light switch and flipped it. Light filled in every corner. As their eyes adjusted they felt as though they had stepped into a different world, a surreal sensation that unnerved them slightly and manifested itself in an eerie silence.
Along one wall stood stacks of milk crates and another corner held a pile of empty shipping palettes. There was an air conditioner in one window, a radio, and a few chairs. The walls of the pit, they would later learn, were portable, and the crew would remove them and store them off the property between fights in order to give them plausible deniability if they were ever questioned. Where those walls went when they were in use was easy to see. The outline of a roughly sixteen-by-sixteen-foot square was visible on the floor. Seemingly everywhere—the floor, the walls—dark stains and little discolored parabolas spread across the black paint. They didn’t need lab results to tell them what they knew in their guts. The stains were made by blood.
