Thank you for watching Scary Animal Attacks!
Today’s episode takes us to the bustling streets of San Francisco.
A temperate town of affluence and beauty, San Francisco is a melting pot of cultures
and lifestyles.
Two very different lifestyles clashed on the day in question in an apartment building,
far from the typical setting of videos featured on this channel.
Shout out to Youtube user StevieDarling for suggesting the topic of today’s video.
On January 26th, of 2001, 33 year old Diane Whipple was returning from the grocery store
and was walking up to the door of her 6th floor apartment.
She was a college LaCrosse coach at St. Maries in Moraga, and fit as a fiddle.
She had so many accolades for her accomplishments in LaCrosse that it would take too long to
mention them.
Her hands were full with the bags of groceries and her purse, as she dug around looking for
her keys, she could hear loud stomping and growling.
As she put the bags on the floor, she glanced up from her purse and saw her neighbor, Marjorie
Knoller being pulled along by a massive dog.
Diane was familiar with this dog as it was the terror of the apartment building and had
been part of several attacks on other dogs and people in the area.
The dog barrelling its way down the hallway toward Diane, was not just any dog.
It was a breed known as the Preso Canario, which is a type of Mastiff.
Preso’s are known to be great guard dogs but the AKC indicates that they have the lowest
rating for tolerance of children and strangers and have a low adaptability, but have the
highest level of protective nature.
This dog breed are cattle dogs primarily and are not made for an apartment building.
Mrs. Knoller had taken the dog up to the roof of the building for a walk, and didn’t bother
putting a muzzle on him as it was a short trip.
Then they began returning to her apartment near Ms. Whipple’s.
That is when her dog, named Bane charged ahead at the site of Diane.
Bane began growling and barking at her and dragged Knoller down the hallway to Diane.
Through the distortion of the peephole in her door, 77 year old neighbor Esther Birkmaier
could see a dark shape over the top of a person's body in the hallway.
She was drawn to her door by loud barking and screaming, then a loud crash against her
door.
She observed part of a person on the floor and groceries scattered around it.
The dark shape on top of the person was not clearly identifiable, but it was clear by
the noise that someone was being attacked by a dog.
As she ran to her kitchen to call police, she could hear Mrs. Knoller yelling “back!
Back!”
as well as “No!
No!” in the hallway.
During the attack, Whipple was knocked to the floor by the 140 pound dog, Bane.
He bit her over 77 times all over her body.
The only parts of her body that were not bitten were her scalp and the souls of her feet.
Bane bit down on her face but focused most of his aggression on her neck, lacerating
it as he crushed her trachea and perforating her larynx.
While Bane was attacking Diane, the other Preso Canario owned by Mrs. Knoller joined
the attack.
While Bane continued to bite Diane, Hera tore at her clothing.
As the dogs attacked Diane, Mrs. Knoller tried to put her body between the dogs and Mrs.
Whipple, but the dogs were too incensed and too focused.
The attack lasted ten minutes and by the time it was over, Diane’s blood covered both
walls in the hallway and drenched the floor.
Animal Control officers and police arrived at the scene.
The animal control officers had a great degree of difficulty getting Bane and Hera under
control, but eventually subdued the enraged dogs and took them into custody.
As police officers comforted a blood covered and naked Diane in the hallway, she began
crawling toward her apartment.
They told her to lay still because the ambulance was on the way and she would be treated soon.
Diane was transported to San Francisco General Hospital for emergency medical treatment.
Mrs. Knoller was treated for a minor cut on her thumb by paramedics who noted that her
clothes were covered in blood and her hair was matted with it as well.
Diane Whipple died from trauma and blood loss from the dog attack a few hours later.
The facts are now established, but if you are like me you may wonder what led up to
all of this.
Bane and Hera initially belonged to a high ranking member of the Aryan Brotherhood, Paul
“cornfed” Schneider.
Cornfed was formerly adopted as a 38 year old, incarcerated prisoner serving a life
sentence at Pelican Bay by married couple, 46 year old Marjorie Knoller and her 60 year
old husband Robert Noel.
The pair had become acquainted with Cornfed as they were offering legal services to prisoners.
It turned out Cornfed and a few of his fellow gang members were trying to raise aggressive
guard dogs to sell to operators of drug labs from inside the prison.
In March of 2001 a grand jury indicted Knoller and Noel.
Both were indicted for Manslaughter and felonious keeping of a mischievous dog.
Knoller received an additional charge of second degree murder.
After a prolonged legal appeals process, Knoller’s second degree murder conviction was upheld
and she remains in prison.
Noel served 3 years and was paroled in 2003 but died of heart failure after living out
of his van due to health complications.
Bane was euthanized immediately following the attack and Hera was euthanized the following
January.
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