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

by Jim Gorant

  One of the men comes toward the dogs. He grabs the one that had been in the rectangle with the red dog and fastens the old nylon leash around her neck. He picks her up and carries her over to two trees that stand next to the two-story shed. The other man ties the leash to a two-by-four that has been nailed between the trees. Once the leash is secure, the first man boosts the dog a little further up and lets go.

  For a moment, the dog lifts upward, her back arching and her legs paddling the air. Her head spins as she looks for the ground. Then her upward momentum peters out and she begins downward. Forty pounds of muscle and bone accelerate toward the earth. The rope pulls. The dog’s head jolts to the side and with a single yelp, she is dead.

  The other dogs in the yard spring to their feet: the ones that had been brought up from the clearing that morning, the ones that lived in the kennel, the ones inside the shed. They bark and howl and run back and forth, pulling at their leashes or bouncing off the walls of their enclosures.

  Even as they do, the other man approaches a second dog, one that had been injured and that now lies meekly on the ground. He carries him to the bucket and then holds his back legs in the air. One of the other men takes the dog by the scruff of the neck and plunges his head into the water. The dog shakes and flails, splashing water out of the bucket, but he is unable to shake free and within a few minutes his body goes limp. He’s tossed into a wheelbarrow.

  In all, four dogs get the bucket and four the leash, although not all of them are as lucky as the first dog. Some of them swing from the rope, gasping and shaking, eyes bulging, blood trickling from the corners of their mouths as they slowly strangle. Even when they are finally cut down, they are not quite dead, so they too have their heads stuck into the bucket.

  Still, this is not the worst of it. This is not what happened to the red dog.

  4

  A BLACK DOG WITH brown specks runs free. Her name is BJ and she’s a border collie-golden retriever mix. As she moves across the grass, her ears flop and jangle. When she catches up to the bounding tennis ball she’s chasing, she knocks it down with her paws and then clamps her jaws onto it. She prances back across this suburban Maryland yard and drops the ball at the feet of the man who threw it, Jim Knorr.

  Knorr is a big man, with wide shoulders and a broad chest. His handshakes are nearly full-body affairs, as he almost lunges into them. As he does, his strong chin juts forward and his mouth creases into an easy smile. His receding hairline adds to the sense of openness about his face, as if he’s all right up front-forward and forthright.

  It’s an odd countenance for someone who’s spent his life lying, or as they call it in law enforcement, working undercover. Knorr is a senior special agent with the USDA’s Office of the Inspector General, a position he has held longer than anyone else-ever. That’s because he’s never put in for a promotion and whenever one has been offered he’s turned it down. He never wanted to give up “the greatest job in the world,” being a field agent. “There’s no better feeling,” he says, “than catching the bad guys.”

  It’s far from what Knorr imagined for himself growing up in Prince George’s County, Maryland, the son of a Navy engineer and a nurse. At the University of Maryland he studied agronomy and golf course management, and after school he landed an internship at Columbia Country Club in Chevy Chase.

  At the course, Knorr had two basic responsibilities. The first was to drive the grounds at dawn, rounding up and burying all the birds that had died overnight from eating pesticide-infected worms. After that he would check each hole and make sure there was nothing in the cup, a chore made necessary after a prominent female member had reached into the first hole to retrieve her ball and pulled out a used condom that had been deposited there overnight. For this he had to wake up at 5:00 A.M. He understood the concept of paying his dues, but still.

  One day he told his older brother, Michael, about his professional frustration. Michael, a Secret Service agent, suggested he look into the Department of Agriculture. Not many people realized it but the USDA had its own investigative unit, and Jim, with his agronomy background, might be perfect for it. Jim made a few calls and finally spoke to the man who ran the department. Knorr was told he’d need to get a criminology degree. So he returned to the University of Maryland and one year later he had a second diploma. He then pestered that USDA official so relentlessly, “the guy hired me just to get me to stop calling.”

  In the early days he ran sting operations designed to catch people using USDA-issued food stamps to buy drugs and launder drug money, and he threw himself into the work. Although he was a typical suburban dad who lived in a tidy house with his first wife, Debbie, and their two kids, he let his hair and beard grow and set off to work in the morning in an old green army jacket.

  He developed two cover stories to explain how he got the food stamps. Sometimes he would claim that he worked for the printer who produced them, and other times he told drug dealers that his girlfriend worked at social services, and she swiped them. Working undercover, he once bought a kilo of heroin for $100,000 in food stamps, then busted the dealer and tracked the stamps to see where they were being reimbursed and by whom. In his biggest case he helped take down Melvin Stanford, who at the time was one of the most prolific heroin dealers in Baltimore.

  There were also government theft cases, busts of illegal slaughter operations that were putting downer cows into the food supply, fraud investigations involving a farm loan program, recoveries of rare stolen books and a handful of overseas trips as part of the secretary of agriculture’s security detail. Those trips amounted to working holidays, since, as Knorr and his fellow agents used to joke, not many people even knew who the secretary of agriculture was. Fewer still meant him any harm.

  The boondoggles were payback for the hazardous duty Knorr had put in. More than once criminals received tips that he might be a cop. Knorr never had to fire his weapon, but he did draw it on several occasions. During one operation he worked with a drug dealer known as Chinese Billy. Eventually, Knorr busted Billy and flipped him, getting him to provide information to the government. During a conversation one day Billy admitted that he had once almost pulled a gun on Knorr. “Why didn’t you?” Knorr asked.

  “I figured if you were a cop,” Billy reasoned, “your buddies would charge in and shoot me. And if you weren’t a cop, you would never do business with me again. So I let it go.”

  The USDA was perfect for Knorr because it was a small operation. Unlike bigger agencies, such as the FBI, where personnel are closely managed and slaves to procedure, USDA agents have a lot of freedom. They’re encouraged to work on their own, cultivating contacts with local law enforcement to arrange joint investigations. Knorr excelled at this part of the job.

  Working for the USDA also meant that he had the opportunity to defend animals, and he’d had a few chances to do that, most notably by working a few cockfighting busts. Still, somehow he’d never gotten a dogfighting case.

  Knorr grew up with dogs, a Lab named Penny and a Chesapeake Bay retriever, Chester. He is the kind of animal appreciator who reads Dog Fancy, but of all the dogs he’d known, none had meant as much to him as BJ. He’d never had a dog that had been so in tune with his internal state. If he was down, the dog would try to pick him up. If he was mellow, the dog would relax with him. When he wanted to blow off some steam with a run or romp in the yard, BJ was always ready. When they went to the beach for two weeks every summer, BJ would lie on the sand next to Jim’s chair, staring out at the ocean. “She’s truly like a best friend,” he would say.

  As he stood in the yard tossing the ball to BJ, he chatted with his second wife, also named Debbie. A short woman with curly black hair and soft eyes, she had been a gene therapy researcher but eventually left that field to become the director of science education at the National Institutes of Health. The pair had been together for fifteen years, and as they watched BJ run to retrieve the ball, Jim reflected on his fast-approaching fifty-sixth birthday.

/>   It was a significant milestone because USDA guidelines mandated that all special agents retire at fifty-seven. Jim’s time at the job he loved was winding down. “I can’t believe I never got a dogfighting case,” he said.

  “I know,” Deb replied.

  “I can’t imagine how someone could do those things to a dog,” he said. He was silent a moment, and then he added, “I’m okay with retiring, but I’d love to get just one of those cases before I go.”

  “Well,” Debbie said, “I’ll say a prayer for you.”

  It was late 2006 when Jim Knorr received the first call from a deputy sheriff in rural Virginia, a guy named Bill Brinkman, and although Knorr didn’t know it yet, the two of them were a lot alike. Brinkman, too, was a bit of a loner who enjoyed doing his own thing, making his own cases. Personable and intelligent, he had a jowly face, with puffy eyes that made him look as if he had never quite gotten enough sleep. It might have been true. Colleagues in the Surry County sheriff’s office called him Wild Bill, because his light brown hair took on a life of its own when he let it grow for undercover work.

  He’d grown up in Yorktown, Virginia, about twenty miles east of Surry and spent four years in the air force after high school. From there he went to work at the York County Sherriff’s Department, but eventually gave up police work to go into construction. When that business slowed he became a correctional officer before moving to his current job in Surry County. A former Eagle Scout and a son of the South, Brinkman has been known to attest in his deep drawl that in everything he undertakes he’s guided by the words of his “grand-daddy,” who taught him: “If you’re going to do something, do it all the way or don’t do it at all.” During his nine years in Surry, he received two commendations from U.S. attorneys.

  Brinkman focused his energies on illegal narcotics. If someone was using or selling drugs in Surry County, they were, he would contend, “in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Six years earlier, on August 31, 2000, Brinkman had been involved in the arrest of a local drug dealer named Benny Butts. When police arrived at Butts’s five-and-a-half-acre spread, they found not only drugs but evidence of dogfighting-more than thirty pit bulls, treadmills, videos, medical supplies, and paperwork relating to dogfights. Brinkman headed back to court to get an additional warrant that would allow him to search for and act on the dogfighting evidence. But while he was processing the paperwork, Butts walked in and said it was all right if Brinkman did the search.

  A week later Butts was charged with drug possession, dogfighting, and multiple counts of animal cruelty. On the same day he gave Brinkman a written confession:

  I, Ben Butts, give this statement to Deputy W. Brinkman at the Surry County Sheriff Department concerning dog charges. Mainly the 33 dogs located at my resident (sic) which were either involved in dogfighting or being raised for dogfighting. Not all these dogs belong to myself, I do bored (sic) pitbull for other people, I do have knowledge of other people, places, and activity.

  When the case went to trial the following February, all the charges were dropped. The judge declared Brinkman’s return to the site without the second warrant, something known as a consent search, illegal. Although consent searches are common, they are legally questionable and the commonwealth attorney, Gerald Poindexter, who represented Virginia in the case, accepted the judge’s ruling. Brinkman was flabbergasted. Butts was sent home-with most of his dogs and training equipment.

  Butts stayed out of trouble for a while, but Brinkman kept an eye on him. Before long there were rumors that Butts was back into dealing and dogfighting. On December 16, 2006, Butts was arrested again, this time with a stash of marijuana and hashish. He was released on bail, but Brinkman was closing in.

  He had an informant who could get inside Butts’s operation, and he was looking to put together a case that would finally land Butts in jail, but he didn’t want to take any chances with the local authorities. He was looking for something bigger. He had heard from Virginia State Police officers and an FBI agent that he had worked with that there was a USDA agent who was always eager to help, especially when it came to animal abuse cases. The guy’s name was Jim Knorr.

  The two men hit it off immediately and began working on an investigation. They had gathered a lot of information through the informant, and as winter progressed they were approaching a critical mass of incriminating material. They held out for one last bit of evidence, a coup de grâce; the informant would videotape a dogfight on Butts’s property.

  But something happened that brought the investigation to an immediate close. On February 16, 2007, Butts was found dead of a drug overdose.

  Just like that, their case was over, but Brinkman and Knorr had recognized a bit of themselves in each other. A bond formed. They stayed in touch, but they had no idea how soon they’d be working together again.

  5

  A DOG WALKS THROUGH a parking lot searching for something. He’s a three-year-old Dutch shepherd named Troy. The night is cool and dark, and Troy makes his way through the rows of cars, sniffing the early spring air. The light of a nearby Walmart catches his black and sand-speckled coat. The lot itself belongs to Royal Suite, a two-story dance club on Cunningham Drive in Hampton, Virginia.

  Troy stops next to a Dodge Intrepid. His ears perk up and he sniffs more intently. He begins to bark at the trunk. The police officers who accompany him step forward and begin to search the car. Within minutes they have found three ounces of marijuana. When the owner comes out to claim his ride, he too is searched and arrested and charged with possession with intent to sell. His name is Davon Boddie.

  Boddie had accomplished little of note during his previous twenty-six years. He had but one claim to fame. His first cousin was Michael Vick. Davon and Michael had always been close. They were the same age and had grown up in close proximity to each other. They played high school football together. Boddie sometimes hung out with Michael and his best friend, Quanis Phillips, another neighborhood kid whom Vick had befriended in sixth grade.

  Phillips, who was known as Q, grew up playing sports with Vick and was also on that same high school team. When Vick first went off to college, Q went along to help Vick settle in. After a few months, Phillips moved back to Newport News, but the two remained as close as ever.

  In the ensuing years Phillips worked at odd jobs to make money and had run into some trouble, getting convicted of possession of stolen property in 1997 and pleading guilty to misdemeanor possession of marijuana with intent to distribute in 1999. In 2000 he was convicted of violating drug control laws and contempt of court, and in 2001 he was again convicted of possession of marijuana with intent to distribute. But whatever struggles he went through, they were eased by the pleasure of watching his best buddy become a national football hero. By January 2001, just three years after he left, Vick was back in Newport News to await the NFL draft. He was on the verge of becoming a millionaire, and Q was once again by his side.

  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 space
s 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.