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

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ABOUT A WEEK AFTER Jim Knorr’s team had dug up and documented the eight dead dogs at 1915 Moonlight Road, Mike Gill received a call from a woman named Melinda Merck. A forensic veterinarian for the ASPCA, Merck was the person who could examine crime scenes and recovered evidence and determine critical details about what had happened. She was, basically, CSI for animals, a field she had to a large degree invented.

When she was about nine years old, someone found a beagle that had been hit by a car on the side of the road in the small Ohio town where she lived. Most of the neighborhood gathered around, but no one knew whose dog it was or what to do to help it. So they left it.

Merck was shocked that none of the adults would do anything for the dog. She didn’t know what to do either, but she would not abandon the creature. Instead, she sat by its side, comforting it and keeping the flies off its face until it died. The experience fed what was already a deep love for animals, and she vowed that from then on she would always help. If there was need, and there was something that could be done, she would do it.

After graduating from Michigan State ’s veterinary school in 1988, she opened the Cat Clinic of Roswell in Roswell, Georgia. Her private practice was doing well, but she rescued almost as many animals as she treated. She has eight cats and two dogs, but at one point she lived on a spacious farm with five dogs, twenty-seven cats, two horses, one goat, one cow, and one fawn.

In her work Merck encountered many troubling cases: abuse, neglect, hoarding. In 2000, Georgia passed a law making animal cruelty a felony, and a collection of law enforcement officers, lawyers, veterinarians, and animal welfare enthusiasts set up a group to figure out how to pursue such cases. Merck joined and was asked to compile all the known information about animal forensics and give a presentation to the others. Merck set off to do the research only to find that none existed. She would have to create it herself.

She attended workshops on crime scene investigation, human forensics, gunshot recognition, and bite mark analysis and began reading every book she could find on the topic. She also began sitting in with medical examiners at Fulton County Medical Center and the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, figuring that if she could learn the basics of human forensics, she might be able to apply some of those techniques to animals and maybe even develop a few new ones. It was a gruesome business. Every time there was a murder that involved some sort of physical trauma, Merck’s phone would ring. She would drag herself down to the morgue and stand sentinel while human bodies were poked, prodded, cut open, pulled apart, and examined.

In the process, she realized the job was more than medical; there was a legal side. It was one thing to know what sort of evidence could be obtained and how to collect it, but it was just as important to know what prosecutors needed to build a case and how evidence could be challenged or compromised.

She developed and implemented intricate systems of documentation and security. She photographed and videotaped her subjects. When working a case she collected, labeled, and locked away samples of everything from fur to feces, because she never knew what she would need down the line. She built a database of resources, noting that the lab at the University of California at Berkeley excelled at DNA and blood testing while Michigan State could do bone marrow tests that could show if an animal had suffered starvation.

Along the way, she caught the attention of Randy Lockwood, a dogfighting and animal cruelty expert for the Humane Society, and the two co-authored a book on animal forensics. Two years later Lockwood moved to the ASPCA and started using Merck as a consultant. The next year she was given a full-time job as the organization’s first forensic veterinarian.

As part of her job, Merck worked on animal abuse and cruelty cases all over the country. On the day of the original raid at Vick’s house, Merck was on-site with the DEA and the USDA at a dogfighting bust in southern Mississippi. Late in the afternoon a flurry of buzzes and rings had almost everyone reaching for their BlackBerrys simultaneously. Together they read about the Vick bust.

At that time, Merck called Gerald Poindexter, introduced herself, and offered her services. Poindexter seemed interested in what she had to say, but it was an odd conversation, highlighted by his asking if she “thought Vick was guilty.”

Within days she received a call from an animal control officer who had been brought in to help with the case, and that officer put her in touch with Bill Brinkman. The calls with Brinkman had a mysterious quality of their own. Sometimes the calls did not come directly from him or she’d get a call saying Brinkman was going to call or that he was going to call and ask her about a number of things they’d already discussed. She got the sense that Brinkman was either jumping through a lot of hoops or going around them or both. Still, it became clear to her that Brinkman was trustworthy and committed. He was about the case and the dogs and little else.

It was the middle of June before Brinkman put her in touch with Mike Gill. She once again explained what she could do if the investigators were able to recover the bodies of the dead dogs. There were no guarantees, especially since the bodies had been dug up once already, but she could usually determine how the animals were killed, how long they’d been in the ground, and some aspects of how they had been treated.

Gill liked what he heard. When it came to the events of April 23, when the eight or so Bad Newz dogs were killed, all they had was Brownie’s testimony and the buried bodies. Those two pieces of evidence strengthened each other, but anything that would further establish the time and cause of death would be a huge help. He told Merck he’d be back in touch, then called Jim Knorr. “How would you like to go back to Vick’s house and dig up the dogs again?”

There was silence.

Gill explained that this time it would be different. This time they would take the dogs and ship them back to Merck’s lab for a full analysis. It was the type of information that could solidify Brownie beyond question and build an insurmountable stockpile of evidence.

Knorr immediately set to planning. The case was picking up steam, and the U.S. attorney’s office was abuzz with activity. Knorr and Brinkman were regular visitors as they prepped for the next search. Merck was in on two or three conference calls per week. Every person had a role and how it would be carried out was specifically defined. Time-lines were created, maps were drawn, supply lists filled out. Everything was planned down to the slightest detail. Then the details were parsed to root out any flaws. Contingencies were drawn up.

The long days often ended at the Capital Ale House, a dark-wood paneled pub directly across the street from the district attorney’s office that’s known for two things: its long bar with a trough of ice running down the middle so patrons can keep their beer cold while they chat, and its beer menu-forty-six selections on tap plus more than 250 bottled varieties and two cask-conditioned ales.

In the office and at the bar Brinkman, Knorr, Gill, and a few of their colleagues talked through the possibilities. Despite the variety of beer available, Brinkman never ordered anything but Miller Lite, which Knorr noticed was always served in a mug. This, he suspected, was because the proprietors were embarrassed to have someone drinking low-cal domestic at their bar.

Even as the team plotted another return to 1915 Moonlight Road, they continued to make progress on other fronts. They’d gone out in search of Tony Taylor, Vick’s former neighborhood associate who had been the driving force behind Bad Newz Kennels. Despite his central roll in the operation, Taylor had been kicked out of the group in 2004.

Taylor and Phillips often butted heads and Phillips would complain to Vick about the situation. Things got worse when Taylor proposed that he and Peace powerwash the house at 1915 Moonlight Road. He asked Vick for $14,000 to do the job. Vick suspected that Taylor intended to pay someone else much less and then split the leftover between himself and Peace.

Shortly afterward, Taylor, Peace, and Phillips were in a nightclub with a mutual acquaintance. Taylor had let this friend wear a gold chain valued at $10,000 to $15,000 that belonged to Vick. At the end of the night Phillips tried to recover the chain, but the acquaintance resisted and the chain broke. Taylor and Phillips got into an argument about the incident that almost turned physical.

Later, Phillips again complained to Vick, his best friend since grammar school, and when Phillips and Peace suggested tossing Taylor from the crew, Vick gave the okay. The next day Taylor returned to the house to find a pick-up truck parked outside the gate at the end of the driveway. Almost all his stuff was piled in the truck, although many of his clothes had been torn and close to thirty pairs of Nike sneakers, gifts from Vick, were missing.

When Taylor heard the police were looking for him, he tried to reach out to his former partners, but none would take his call. He feared he was being set up to take the fall. He called the authorities and agreed to meet with them. The Bad Newz group had done more than simply cut Taylor off from his dogs, his residence, and his source of income. They’d humiliated him, and now the investigators were trying to use any lingering ill will to their advantage.

The police also had the force of logic on their side. There’s an old legal adage: The first to surrender gets the best deal. Taylor, who already had a criminal record, stood to gain quite a bit by cooperating. Brinkman, Knorr, and Gill had been sure to make all these points clear to Taylor and he had started to talk-about who was involved, how the operation worked, and about specific dogs and fights.

How to use the information he provided was one of the topics that arose at the bar, but other questions floated up, too. What about the dogs themselves? Wouldn’t it be great if some of them could be saved? Thousands of letters, e-mails, and a seemingly unending barrage of phone calls had poured into the U.S. attorney’s office encouraging the team to do just that-save the dogs.

Everyone wanted to help, but what could they do? Technically the dogs were still the property of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and lawyers didn’t see any legal way for the federal government to take possession. Even if they did assume control of the dogs, who would pay for them? The care and upkeep of fifty dogs is an expensive proposition. Jim Knorr thought there was a provision of the Animal Welfare Act that would be useful, and one of the attorneys promised to look into it, but no one was hopeful.

Still, things were better than they had been. They were now in control of the case and moving forward on three fronts: getting what they could from Tony Taylor, forensic examination of the dead bodies, and seizing the dogs. In the purple-blue glow of the Capitol Ale House’s accent lights, a plan was beginning to coalesce.