In the end, I think a goodly number of Dave Long’s rural neighbors voted for this landmark reform in the treatment of farm animals. Maybe they didn’t quite share his passion for the cause. But they shared his good instincts. They knew cruelty when they saw it, and like the great majority that day, they wanted no part of it.
CHAPTER FOUR
A Culture of Cruelty: Animal Fighting in America
MICHAEL VICK LOVES ANIMALS. At least, that’s what he told me when we met at Fort Leavenworth Penitentiary. And he said it with a straight face.
It was late May 2009, and the former Pro Bowl quarterback of the Atlanta Falcons was nearing the end of his eighteen-month sentence for dogfighting and related crimes. In a few days he would be out of prison, but Vick knew that his troubles would not be over when his sentence was up.
It was a warm, pleasant Kansas afternoon, at least if you looked straight up and forgot that you were in a prison courtyard. By official classification, Leavenworth is today a “medium-security” facility, but it has retained the feel of the maximum-security prison it was for generations. If anyone has ever escaped from the place, it wasn’t by tunneling out: the high walls also extend forty feet down into the ground.
Because I’d never met inmate Vick before, I had to get a letter of permission from the warden to be here. My escort was Judy Smith, a former White House deputy press secretary and now a crisis-communications specialist. In this work, Judy had been called into action to help U.S. senator Larry Craig of Idaho during his travails, Monica Lewinsky when her name was in the daily news, and other notables whose reputations needed serious repair. Now she had taken on one of her toughest reclamation projects yet.
We had checked in with the guard at the visitor’s desk, and he offered, “Let me guess. You’re the guy from the Humane Society.”
I showed him my identification to confirm his suspicion and we made small talk for a few minutes before Michael Vick appeared in the doorway.
He first embraced his fiancée, Kijafa Frink, who had made the trek from their home in Hampton Roads, Virginia, this one last time before Michael’s release. From here they would drive home to Virginia. Michael wanted to spend his first days of freedom on the open road. Vick then spoke for a few moments with Judy Smith, and eventually turned to me. We exchanged cautious looks and shook hands.
“Good to meet you, Wayne.”
“I’ve been looking forward to meeting you, too,” I replied, a pleasantry that didn’t really convey my mixed feelings about this encounter with a man who for years had been torturing dogs.
He led me outside where we spotted a small metal table bolted to the ground. “Is this good?” he asked.
“Absolutely. This works.”
Throughout the courtyard, other inmates were visiting with friends or family, and nobody seemed to pay us much attention. Since many visitors had been here before, perhaps there was no novelty in seeing the disgraced former NFL star, who two years ago had been the highest-paid, and arguably the most thrilling, player in the league.
For my part, just a couple of years earlier, this was just about the last place I could have expected to be, and the last guy I could have pictured myself chatting with. When Michael Vick became America’s most notorious animal abuser, I became his most determined critic. And I had made it my business to see that he ended up right where he was at this moment.
Bad Newz on Moonlight Road: Dogfighting Comes Out of the Shadows
POLICE HAD RAIDED VICK’S home on April 25, 2007, not long after his first cousin, Davon Boddie, was pulled over in Virginia and authorities found narcotics in his car. Boddie gave his home address as 1915 Moonlight Road in rural Smithfield, Virginia. That was the address of the house Michael Vick purchased in 2001, just after being selected first in the NFL draft and signing with the Atlanta Falcons for the tidy sum of $130 million, making him the league’s highest-paid player even before he suited up.
Police had been tipped off in 2005 about Vick’s potential involvement in dogfighting, but had never bothered to investigate. Boddie’s arrest now gave them grounds for a warrant to search the residence. Kathy Strouse, a veteran animal-control officer, was part of the law enforcement contingent that raided the home. After their authorized entry that uncovered the dogfighting operation, she told a friend, “We got him. We got Michael Vick.”
Vick and a few of his childhood friends had been using the Moonlight Road property as a staging ground for their dogfights. Vick paid one of his friends, Tony Taylor, to locate the property, equip it, and run the operation. With two other boyhood friends, Purnell Peace and Quanis Phillips, they ran a dogfighting enterprise and named it Bad Newz Kennels—adapting the nickname that locals had given the sometimes troubled city of Newport News.
According to papers later released by the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, the complex included “sheds and kennels associated with housing fighting dogs and hosting dog fights; approximately 54 American Pit Bull Terriers, some of which had scars and injuries appearing to be related to dog fighting; a ‘rape stand,’ a device in which a female dog who is too aggressive to submit to males for breeding is strapped down with her head held in place by a restraint; a ‘break’ or ‘parting’ stick used to pry open fighting dogs’ mouths during fights; treadmills and ‘slat mills’ used to condition fighting dogs; and other items.”
Just two days after the raid, Vick denied any knowledge of dog-fighting on the property, claiming that he had rarely visited this home and that the people he allowed to stay there had taken advantage of his generosity. “It’s unfortunate I have to take the heat,” he told reporters in New York City on April 27, a day before the NFL draft. “Lesson learned for me.” It would be several months before Vick would recant that lie and the many others he told following the raid.
Once Kathy Strouse of animal control described for us what she had seen at Vick’s property, we knew that law enforcement had uncovered a major dogfighting complex, and in Vick had found one of America’s worst offenders. It was then just a question of whether prosecutors had sufficient evidence and resolve to pursue the case and make it stick.
In hindsight, it might seem that prosecution of Vick and the others was a certainty. But in the weeks following the warrant and raid, it remained an open question. Animal-fighting prosecutions are typically handled by local prosecutors, and in this jurisdiction Gerald Poindexter, the Surry County Commonwealth’s attorney, seemed to want nothing to do with the case. Poindexter’s investigation was lackluster, and as time passed he was nowhere close to announcing an indictment. He acknowledged to the press that dog-fighting had occurred on the Vick property, but claimed that too many people were passing through the home and that sorting out the facts would be nearly impossible. He told the press that he did not know Vick, but that he had heard the young football star was a really nice guy. Poindexter was an elected prosecutor presented with a potential case against a very famous athlete. Clearly, the last thing he wanted was to be the man who put the hometown hero behind bars.
Sensing that Poindexter didn’t have his heart in it, we at HSUS began to pivot toward a backup plan: a federal prosecution. A few years before, we had fought hard in Congress for an upgraded federal law banning interstate transport of fighting animals. And we were just completing another lobbying effort in Congress to strengthen that law and to make animal fighting a federal felony. In testimony before a congressional committee in February 2007, I had pointed out that the federal government had pursued only a very few animal-fighting cases, largely because the offense was a misdemeanor and always gave way to other priorities. Police and sheriffs’ departments would see it differently, and feel that their investment of time and energy was rewarded, if animal-fighting offenses carried felony-level penalties. Why go to all the trouble of investigating and raiding animal-fighting operations when the most severe penalty is a very modest fine, and little chance of any jail time?
In the weeks before the raid on Vick’s home, both the Ho
use and Senate approved the legislation to make interstate transport of fighting animals a felony. Coincidentally, on the day of the raid, the bill was sitting on the desk of President George W. Bush, awaiting his signature. It would have reached the president some weeks sooner, and therefore applied to the Vick case, but for the obstructionist tactics of Oklahoma senator Tom Coburn and one other, anonymous senator who placed “holds” on the legislation.
We had been passing along intelligence on animal-fighting crimes to federal authorities for some time in hope of getting them involved in at least the most serious cases. We had started to win them over by showing how animal fighting is often tied in with other criminal conduct, such as narcotics trafficking, assault, and murder. In the Vick case, there were other compelling circumstances to draw their interest. For one thing, you had the drumbeat of public pressure and intense media interest. Here, too, was a high-profile suspect whose prosecution would send a signal to dogfighters across the country. Then there was the local prosecutor sidestepping his duty, the prior reports of Vick’s involvement in dogfighting, and ample evidence that this was a major dogfighting syndicate with enough activity across state lines to justify a federal prosecution.
The county sheriff’s office had asked for assistance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s law enforcement division on the day after the raid, so the federal government already had an important tie into the case. As Poindexter hedged, the feds’ interest seemed to grow. We knew they were serious when federal authorities seized control of the dogs rescued from Bad Newz Kennels, removing them from state to federal custody. Then, working with FBI agents and staff from the U.S. attorney’s office, USDA agent Jim Knorr and other law enforcement personnel obtained their warrant to search the property. District Attorney Poindexter objected and scuttled that intervention in late May, and the warrant was not executed. But this would be only a temporary delay. The federal agents obtained a fresh warrant just a couple of weeks later, entered the property, exhumed dead dogs, and launched a major forensic operation at the crime scene.
At the same time, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Michael Gillan and Brian Whisler began lining up cooperating witnesses. These individuals gave firsthand accounts of what occurred at Bad Newz Kennels, implicating Vick, Taylor, Peace, and Phillips in an operation extending from New York to North Carolina to Texas. Gill and the other federal attorneys announced indictments of the four men on July 17, nearly three months after the initial raid. The quarterback who had made a career of scrambling out of tough situations had nowhere to run.
The brick house on Moonlight Road was painted white, with a white door, and a white fence in front. But behind the house, on fifteen acres of land, were five smaller structures—all painted jet black. These were the Bad Newz Kennels buildings where dogfights were staged and the dogs and dogfighting paraphernalia held. One cooperating witness told federal authorities that the fights often occurred after 2:00 A.M., and the black buildings helped make the whole scene hard to detect. Tony Taylor had designed the complex to obscure the group’s criminal activities from any inquiring eyes.
Investigators reported bloodstains on the walls and carpets of the fighting pits (the carpets are used to give dogs better traction). The Bad Newz gang had also “baited” animals, throwing in smaller dogs and other animals for the pit bulls to kill to make them more aggressive. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Bad Newz had also featured another revolting feature of dogfighting: the game testing of dogs.
It’s a common practice for dogfighters to spar the animals before they wagered on them. Dogs who don’t perform well are typically killed. One cooperating witness said he was with Vick and Peace in February 2002 and watched them “roll” or “test” some of their dogs at a Virginia Beach location. Peace shot one of the weak dogs with a .22-caliber pistol. But death by shooting was merciful compared with the other means employed at Bad Newz Kennels. Just a couple of weeks before the raid, Peace, Phillips, and Vick “executed approximately 8 dogs that did not perform well…by various methods, including hanging, drowning, and slamming at least one dog’s body to the ground.” Investigators exhumed some of these victims, and as the media publicized new details of the cruelties, Vick’s public support all but vanished.
When federal authorities put all the evidence together, it clearly showed that the defendants were buying and selling fighting dogs, killing poor-performing dogs in malicious ways, staging fights after midnight and charging admission, traveling to fights across Virginia and other states, and wagering thousands of dollars on the outcomes. What made it all the more disturbing was that the multi-millionaire Vick wasn’t doing it for the money, but because this was his idea of fun.
After a grand jury had indicted them, Vick’s accomplices began accepting plea agreements—never a good sign for a big-name defendant. First, Taylor pleaded, presumably fingering the others in exchange for leniency. Then Peace and Phillips confessed. By then it was clear that Vick would be forced to plead as well, and there was nothing that his attorney Billy Martin or the rest of his high-priced legal team could do but ask for the court’s mercy.
In August 2007, Vick pleaded guilty, and soon afterward began serving time as he awaited his formal sentencing in November. Vick not only admitted that he had lied to federal prosecutors, but also to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and to Atlanta Falcons’ owner Arthur Blank. Blank had no choice but to drop Vick from the team, and then Goodell, who was earning a reputation as a law-and-order commissioner, indefinitely suspended him from the NFL. In the meantime, our membership was demanding that Nike and other corporations terminate their marketing and licensing agreements with Vick. In so many words, we told Nike and the rest to “just do it,” which they finally did after some hesitation.
Later in the fall, the U.S. attorney indicted a fifth member of Bad Newz Kennels, Oscar Allen, known as “Virginia O.” In November, U.S. District Court Judge Henry Hudson sentenced Vick to a two-year sentence—two months’ time served, eighteen months at Leavenworth, and an additional two months of home confinement—with three years’ probation to follow.
Michael Vick broke the law, tortured dogs, and tried to cover it up. So when his publicist Judy Smith and his lawyer, Billy Martin, approached me some six months before his release—a little more than a year after Vick had entered Leavenworth—and said he wanted to talk to me, I scoffed at the idea. There’d be no discussions. Vick was bad news. He had done wicked things, and I had no interest in dealing with him.
At the same time, I’d begun to see the Vick case as a test, not just of whether prosecutors would pursue a famous man in an animal-cruelty case, but also of whether they would treat animal fighting as a serious offense. If the case did nothing more than finish off Bad Newz Kennels and penalize its owners, it would have been a lost opportunity. Vick and his codefendants were among tens of thousands of men involved in illegal dogfighting. We had to raise awareness about the larger problem of dogfighting, and the Vick case gave an opportunity to do that as never before.
Even in the earliest stages of the case, I spoke about Vick, but also about dogfighting as a grave moral and legal offense. The cruelty was bad enough—that it was done for the gambling and the thrill of the bloodletting made it worse. We shared dogfighting footage with television stations all across the country—giving the public an unobstructed view of a vicious world they hardly knew existed.
Despite the best efforts of HSUS, dogfighting had been a low priority within the humane movement for years. But now the Vick case had given all America a tour of the pit, and a nation of dog lovers had been introduced to the strange new terms of “rape stand” and “game testing.” The public had always seen organized dogfighting as rotten and cruel, but only now realized how widespread and truly loathsome it really was.
By our best estimates, as many as forty thousand people were involved in organized dogfighting, and up to a hundred thousand people involved in the less organized street fighting of dogs. Vick had started off as a street fighter in th
e projects of Newport News, easing into the ranks of professional dogfighting as he became wealthy. That’s why he brought “Virginia O” into Bad Newz Kennels. “O” taught the crew about paying attention to bloodlines and conditioning the animals. Through the facts of this case, we could do some educating about both subcultures—street fighting and organized dogfighting—since Michael Vick was a case study in both worlds.
As the months passed after Judy Smith, Vick’s crisis manager, first approached me, I had the nagging, uncomfortable feeling that there might be some good in putting Vick to work in the public fight against animal cruelty. We had taken the outrage that Vick’s conduct had caused and directed it toward reform. Maybe Vick himself could serve the same cause after getting out of prison. But this could only happen if the man was truly repentant and could speak from the heart about what he did and why cruelty to animals was such a serious offense. I could hardly stand the thought of being in the same room with the guy, much less in the same cause. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that this story didn’t have to end with Vick’s disgrace and punishment. After all, sometimes the best witness is a redeemed sinner, and in the end that would be his choice to make.
At the same time, I also realized that it would be a huge switch for me to work with Vick. It would be especially jarring for our supporters, who had called and written protest letters by the tens of thousands to Nike and to the NFL. We had identified the good guys and the bad guys in this real-life drama, and it would be tough for people to accept that we might work with a man they so thoroughly reviled.
I was still skeptical of Vick and wary of the challenges ahead, but eventually I agreed to a sit-down—with the faint hope that there was more to this story and to him than just Bad Newz Kennels. The case had turned his life upside down, but there’s no question that it had put the anti-dogfighting cause front and center. And now, if he was committed to turning his life around, Vick could speak in a compelling way to kids and young black men about the ills of dog-fighting and animal cruelty and steer clear of this whole enterprise. That was reason to give this a try, so I called Judy Smith and Billy Martin and said I’d fly out to Leavenworth to hear Vick out.
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