• 2001 – Diane Whipple, a lacrosse coach, is killed in a dog attack in San Francisco. The resulting court case clarified the meaning of implied malice murder.

Death of Diane Whipple


Diane Whipple, picture from San Francisco Chronicle coverage of her case

Born: Diane Alexis Whipple; January 31, 1967; Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.
Died: January 26, 2001 (aged 33); San Francisco, California, U.S.
Cause of death: Fatal dog attack

Diane Alexis Whipple (January 31, 1967 – January 26, 2001) was an American lacrosse player and college coach. She was killed in a dog attack in San Francisco on January 26, 2001. The dogs involved were two Presa Canarios. Paul Schneider, the dogs' owner, is a high-ranking member of the Aryan Brotherhood and is serving three life sentences in state prison. The dogs were looked after by Schneider's attorneys, Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller, a husband and wife who lived in the same apartment building as Whipple. After the fatal attack, the state brought criminal charges against the attorneys. Noel, who was not present during the attack, was convicted of manslaughter. Knoller, who was present, was charged with implied-malice second-degree murder and convicted by the jury. Knoller's murder conviction, an unusual result for an unintended dog attack, was rejected by the trial judge but ultimately upheld. The case clarified the meaning of implied malice murder.

Early life

Whipple was born in Princeton, New Jersey. She grew up and attended high school in Manhasset, New York, on Long Island. She was raised primarily by her grandparents, and was a gifted athlete from a young age. She became a two-time All-American lacrosse player in high school, and later at Penn State. She was twice a member of the U.S. Women's Lacrosse World Cup team.

Whipple later moved to San Francisco, and came within seconds of qualifying for the U.S. 1996 Olympics team in track and field, for the 800 meters. However, she did not compete at the 1996 Olympic Team Trials. Instead, she became the lacrosse coach at Saint Mary's College of California in Moraga, California.

At the time of her death, Whipple lived in San Francisco's Pacific Heights with her domestic partner of six years, Sharon Smith.

Perpetrators

Attorneys Marjorie Fran Knoller (born June 20, 1955) and Robert Edward Noel (June 22, 1941 – June 22, 2018) were caregivers to the dogs that killed Whipple. After a trial that attracted international attention, they were sent to prison for involuntary manslaughter. However, on August 22, 2008, San Francisco Judge Charlotte Woolard reinstated Knoller's second degree murder conviction.

After attending Brooklyn College, Knoller received her J.D. degree from McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, California.[9] Noel graduated from the University of Baltimore Law School in 1967.

Noel and Knoller married in 1989. Starting in the mid-1990s, they ran their law office out of a converted closet in their Pacific Heights apartment in San Francisco.

In 2000, Knoller and Noel obtained their two Presa Canarios, named Bane and Hera, through their relationship with a pair of Pelican Bay State Prison inmates, Paul 'Cornfed' Schneider (whom they had legally adopted as their son), and Dale Bretches, both members of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang. Knoller and Noel had first met Schneider at a trial. Bane was male and Hera female; by January 2001, Bane weighed 140 pounds and Hera close to 100 pounds.

Attack

On January 26, 2001, while returning home with bags of groceries, Whipple was attacked by the two dogs in the hallway of her apartment building. Knoller was taking the dogs out of their apartment at the same time Whipple returned. The dogs escaped her control and attacked Whipple.

The dogs' owner, Paul Schneider, was a high-ranking member of the prison gang the Aryan Brotherhood who was serving a life sentence in Pelican Bay State Prison. Schneider and his cellmate Dale Bretches were attempting to start an illegal Presa Canario dog-fighting business from prison. They initially asked acquaintances Janet Coumbs and Hard Times Kennel owner/breeder James Kolber of Akron, Ohio, to raise the dogs during their incarceration. Against Kolber's advice, Coumbs chained the dogs in a remote corner of the farm, which caused them to become even more aggressive. After Coumbs fell out of favor with Schneider, attorneys Noel and Knoller agreed to take possession of the dogs. They had become acquainted with Schneider while doing legal work for prisoners, and had adopted Schneider (then age 38) as their legal son a few days before the mauling.

Just prior to the attack, Knoller was taking the dogs up to the roof; Bane, and possibly Hera, whose role in the mauling has never been firmly established, attacked Whipple in the hallway. Whipple suffered a total of 77 wounds to every part of her body except her scalp and bottoms of her feet. Another neighbor called 911 after hearing Whipple's screams. Whipple died hours later at San Francisco General Hospital from "loss of blood from multiple traumatic injuries (dog bite wounds)".

Bane was euthanized immediately after the attack; Hera was seized and later euthanized in January 2002.

Whipple's memorial service at St. Mary's College, held on February 1, 2001, was attended by more than 400 people.

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See also

• Fatal dog attacks in the United States
• Kimberly Guilfoyle, prosecutor (along with James Hammer) in first trial

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