PETA Trial Day 5:
Deception and Tears

January 26, 2007 | Shortly after 4:00 on Day 5, District Attorney Valerie Asbell told the team of defense lawyers arrayed against her that just four more prosecution witnesses will testify against People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) employees Adria Hinkle and Andrew Cook.

At this point, two things are certain: The defense will begin its case Monday afternoon. And Reesie Ray is one cool lady. More about her later.

(Fair warning: It was a busy day in court, so this is a long update. Bear with us. It's worth it.)

Book 'em, Danno

Five law enforcement officers testified today about their roles in the investigation and arrest of Hinkle and Cook. First was Bertie County Sergeant Ed Pittman, who recounted how Animal Control Officer Barry Anderson described the relationship between his animal shelter and PETA:

"He [Anderson] informed me that the PETA employees would come into our county on either Wednesdays or Thursdays, and pick up animals and carry them back to their place of business in Norfolk ... And the ones that were able to be adopted would be put up for adoption. I then asked him: Did the same employees come each week? And he said that no, different employees came on different weeks."

Defense attorneys have appeared reluctant to argue that PETA employees other than Adria Hinkle regularly did exactly what got her arrested. On the one hand, they don't want to promote the idea that she made a weekly habit of personally dispatching a few dozen Lassies to doggie heaven. On the other hand, they want to help PETA contain the institutional damage from this self-inflicted black eye.

But regardless of how defense attorneys Jack Warmack, Blair Brown, and Lisa Stevenson spin this when it's their turn to put on a case, it's only natural to wonder: Just how many PETA employees are involved in the group's animal-killing program? In 2005, PETA reported to the State of Virginia that it killed 1,946 pets. That's more than three dozen per week. And as Raleigh's News & Observer reported for the first time on Monday, PETA's property in Norfolk includes an animal crematorium.

Bertie County Detective Tommy Northcott testified about his role in the surveillance of PETA's van. Warmack engaged in some theatrical hair-splitting over whether or not Northcott saw Hinkle or Cook enter the Ahoskie Animal Hospital with a cat carrier. But jurors are more likely to remember Northcott's description of "some loud 'thud' noises" that he heard as the defendants tossed dead animals into a trash dumpster.

Defense lawyers also seem to be looking for ways to hint that the police investigation was part of a two-county conspiracy against PETA. Kooky? Yes. Paranoid? Definitely. But it's their job to sow seeds of doubt among the jurors, so you can hardly blame them for grasping at any available straws. Northcott delivered a body blow to this theory, though, when he testified that he had no idea the van Hinkle was driving belonged to PETA until he "ran the license plates"— after Hinkle and Cook had already picked up a cat and two kittens in Ahoskie.

Long-time police veterans sometimes deliver courtroom testimony with a deadpan so dry that it approaches comedy. Bertie County Detective Frank Timberlake first stopped PETA's van after Hinkle and Cook made their June 15, 2005 dumpster pilgrimage. Here's how he related his conversation with Hinkle:

"She asked me why I had stopped the van, and I explained to her that detectives—Ahoskie detectives—believed that they'd just dumped dead dogs in the dumpster behind the Piggly Wiggly, located there at the Ahoskie Newmarket Shopping Center. Miss Hinkle replied to me that she didn't know that there was anything wrong with that."

In his cross-examination, Warmack asked Timberlake if he remembers one of the arresting officers yelling "We got PETA! We got PETA! Somebody call the news!" (Yep. There's that nutty conspiracy routine again…) Not surprisingly, Timberlake said he didn't remember anything like that.

It emerged that one member of the press did show up— Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald editor Cal Bryant. Warmack pressed Timberlake on the time-line, insisting that "within 15 to 20 minutes of the van being stopped, the media was on the scene, correct?" Again, Timberlake didn't bite. Outside the courtroom, Mr. Bryant told the locals that he actually didn't arrive until at least two hours after the arrests. And there were no TV cameras until the following day.

Adding to Timberlake's recollection of Hinkle's comments at the scene of her arrest, Ahoskie Police Sergeant Ty Metzler testified that she told officers "You can't search my vehicle"—before being assured that yes, in fact, they could. (All those dead dogs, you know.) Speaking to D.A. Asbell, Metzler also recalled a brief conversation initiated by Hinkle, which comes off as downright creepy when you consider that she had killed 31 animals that day:

Metzler: "She did say something to me. I don't know why she said it. She asked me if I had any animals. And I said yes, I had a dog. And she said 'Where do you keep him?' And I said I keep the dog in my house. And she said 'Well, that's good.'"

Asbell: "And that's all she said?"

Metzler: [nodding] "Mm-Hmm."

We heard from two scientific witnesses on Friday. One was Jennifer Holzhauser, a chemist with North Carolina 's State Bureau of Investigation. She testified that the drug vials seized from PETA's tackle-box "death kit" contained ketamine (a sedative) and sodium pentobarbital (a controlled-substance barbiturate for which, a Drug Enforcement Agency investigator testified yesterday, PETA had no North Carolina license).

A more controversial expert was veterinary pathologist Steven Rushton, from the North Carolina Dept of Agriculture's Rollins Lab. Rushton received one of the dead dogs for analysis after the others were buried. The dog, we learned yesterday, was chosen arbitrarily—it was the only one wearing a collar.

Rushton testified that until tissue samples tested positive for sodium pentobarbital, he was unable to conclusively determine the animal's cause of death:

Asbell: "Would it be your opinion that the dog was healthy?

Rushton: "The dog looked pretty good"

Lawyers spent a half-hour tussling with Rushton over a remote possibility that the dog could have been infected with the Parvo virus, a nasty intestinal contagion that has been known to spread among animal-shelter dogs.

Defense attorney Lisa Stevenson, eager to imply that the Bertie County animal shelter's dirt floors made it a giant Parvo epidemic-in-waiting, pressed Rushton on the odds that the dog he examined wasn't as healthy as it looked. Since symptoms of Parvo can take 7 to 10 days to appear, she argued, wasn't it possible that the dog was infected?

Rushton testified that, short of testing the dog's feces (which he had no reason to do), the best way to identify Parvo would be to visually inspect the intestines as part of what he called "a gross examination" of the body.

On re-direct, D.A. Asbell cleared the air:

Asbell: "Ms. Stevenson asked you a question about diagnosing the Parvo virus, and I believe your answer was that the best way to diagnose it was from a gross examination, which is what you did?"

Rushton: "Yes."

Asbell: "All right. And this particular dog, that dog that you did an examination of, did not have the Parvo virus?"

Rushton: "No."

Case closed. In addition, a veterinarian we know well advises us that Parvo is a disease generally found in puppies , not full-grown dogs. (It has an unusual fondness for attacking a puppy's developing intestines.) Nobody, including Rushton and the officers involved with selecting and transporting this dog, has referred to it as a puppy.

Teresa and Susan

Regardless of the outcome of this trial, we're promising a PetaKillsAnimals.com t-shirt to Ahoskie Animal Hospital receptionist Teresa "Reesie" Ray. (Click here to reserve your own. We have bumper stickers too.)

Reesie is our hero.

A grandmotherly 21-year veteran of the hospital (think Angela Lansbury with a southern accent), she began by fleshing out the relationship between PETA and her employer. While PETA paid for the hospital's Dr. Patrick Proctor to spay and neuter local strays (a good thing), the group had been picking up animals from the hospital for several years (as we now know, not such a good thing):

Asbell: "Ms. Ray, prior to that day [June 15, 2005], had you ever contacted the PETA organization before, to come and get animals from the Ahoskie Animal Hospital?"

Ray: "Yes, I had."

Asbell: "And who actually initiated contact between the Ahoskie Animal Hospital and the PETA organization?"

Ray: "I don't really remember how. It's been going on for, since, well, several years before … We would call, and they would come pick up animals that people couldn't keep, and take them back—we thought—for adoption."

Note that Ray isn't talking about sick, diseased, hopeless animals. This was an animal hospital. Sick animals were treated. Healthy ones that couldn't find homes in this tiny community needed other options. Ray, along with her co-workers, operated under the impression that PETA would treat these healthy animals "ethically." Go figure.

Asbell: "Had anything ever been represented to you by anybody at PETA or this defendant before, that they didn't find homes for animals?"

Ray: "No."

Asbell: "So you were specifically calling the organization to help pick up animals and find homes for them?"

Ray: "Yes."

Asbell: "Was that always your understanding?"

Ray: "Yes."

Asbell: "Each time anybody from PETA came down to pick up animals?"

Ray: "Yes."

Next, she described Adria Hinkle's reaction on June 15, 2005, when a veterinary technician named Tonya gave her a cat and two kittens to take back to Norfolk:

Ray: "Adria took them, and she held the carrier up like this, and she said 'Oh, we shouldn't have any trouble finding homes for them.'"

Asbell: "After she said that, or before she said that, what did you think Ms. Hinkle was going to do when she carried the cat and the two kittens out?"

Ray: "I thought she was going to take them and try to find homes for them."

Asbell: "And—had you thought she was going to do anything otherwise, would you have handed those kittens over to her?"

Ray: "No. I wouldn't have called them [PETA] in the beginning."

Despite aggressive cross-examination by defense lawyer Blair Brown, Ray didn't flinch:

Brown: "You knew that there was no guarantee that PETA was going to find homes for these cats."

Ray: "If I had known they were not going to even try, I would never have called them."

Brown: "There was no guarantee that they were going to find homes for those cats."

Ray: "No there was no guarantee, but I thought they would at least have given them a chance."

One of Reesie's co-workers, a veterinary technician named Susan Dunlow, testified about the moment when Tonya first showed Adria Hinkle the cat and two kittens:

"Tonya held up the carrier to, like, face level. And Adria was looking into the carrier, saying 'Oh! They're so cute!' At that point, Tonya was telling her that we've had them for several weeks, they were very socialized, they were very healthy, and that we hoped they would be able to find homes for them. At that point, Adria said 'We shouldn't have any problems finding homes for these kittens. They're absolutely gorgeous! Do they have names?'"

Later, when Asbell showed her an evidence photo of the dead felines found in the PETA-owned van Hinkle was driving, Dunlow shed the trial's first tears. A bailiff was nearby with tissues, and Dunlow regained her composure, but some jurors appeared moved right along with her.

Under Brown's cross-examination, Dunlow testified she believed that PETA would be able to find homes for the two kittens because Norfolk had more potential pet owners than Ahoskie. Setting aside PETA's 90-percent kill rate during 2005, it sounds like a sensible conclusion.

"I was hoping," Dunlow said, "that in a place as big as the Norfolk, Virginia area they would have a highly more successful rate of adoption than we would."

Brown later asked her if anyone from PETA ever represented the organization as a pet-adoption service:

Dunlow: "Yes, [PETA] employees in the past had told me specifically that they placed these animals in homes."

Brown: "Guaranteed?"

Dunlow: "Well, they were hopeful. Just like I was hopeful. They didn't say that they'd transport the animals and kill them before they crossed the state line."

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