Marjorie Knoller has bee resentenced after her long trip through the courts. She was previously released when her original sentence was overturned. Now, she is back in jail for 15 years to life for the 2001 mauling death of Dianne Whipple. That is considerably more than the four-year prison term that she originally received in 2002.
The Knoller case is the California’s first murder conviction connected to a dog mauling.
Knoller and her law partner and husband, Robert Noel, blamed Whipple for the attack. It is the end to both civil and criminal litigation for the couple, who are now in prison with their adopted son, Paul “Cornfed” Schneider. They adopted Cornfed, a white supremist, when he was an adult. Knoller is now looking at roughly 12 years before she will be eligible for parole.
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This case now has a parallel in New York City. An elderly man died of injuries suffered in a vicious attack by a pit bull. People throughout the neighborhood have described the dog as threatening and the owner as indifferent to neighbors’ concerns. The owner has been charged, but I’m not sure with what. We’ll see how New York courts handle this.
It does seem that there was some malice here on the part of Knoller. She didn’t do anything during the attack to stop it, and then tried to blame it on Ms Whipple. It seems to me that there may have been underlying hatred of Whipple by Knoller, who is demonstrably sympathetic to White Supremecy.
From what I can tell Whipple may have been a lesbian, and Knoller, being sympathetic to racist groups, may have wanted to see harm come to her lesbian neighbor.
Whatever her intentions were they were clearly beyond negligent. 10 minutes is an eternity for such an attack to continue, and it to me points to more than just apathy.
I am glad that the court did not let this woman out of jail or just give her slap on the wrist. This couple murdered this woman with the dogs and has never shown any remorse for her actions. The community is better off with her and her husband behind bars. What is up with this adopted son, the White Supremacist? These two adopted him as an adult and alleged that they were his dogs and they were just watching them for the “son”. One more perverted twist in this strange case. At least the “family” can spend some quality time together behind bars.