Thugs torture dog, cell phone company charges owner to help
By Gina Spadafori
November 30, 2007
When someone sends us a link with the subject line, “I’m beyond words,” I gotta admit: I dread clicking on the link. This time is no different, except maybe we can do something about it. Stu Bykofsky in the Philadelphia Daily News follows up on the story of Edna, a dog kidnapped, held for ransom and tortured to death while her owner listened on a cell phone:
[S]he was so gentle that Whiting took her to hospitals, where patients cheered up as they petted her. Edna had pointed bunny ears, warm brown eyes and was Whiting’s “constant companion” since he adopted her a decade ago. She had never known anything but kindness from human hands. … Whiting heard the jingling over his Verizon phone as Edna screamed in pain. Terrorized, he couldn’t imagine what the savages were doing to his little brown dog. … He just wanted it to stop – and when he wanted help from Verizon, it came very slowly and at a steep price.
[...]
Whiting tried to find the phone number the extortionists had used. He called his service provider, Verizon, to tell them to release his phone records to police, but it wasn’t that simple.
“I made about five calls and kept getting people who were good at passing the hot potato,” Whiting says. He was told police know the procedure.
The detective working the case, who asked me not to use his name, says he got a search warrant and faxed it to Verizon on Nov. 16, but it took 12 days before he got a list of calls made to Whiting. The city was charged $150 for the search.
Verizon charged police $150?
If I had a Verizon account, I’d be changing right now. Here’s the rest of the story.
Utterly disgusting, vile and evil. And if this proves true, be sure the people who killed this little dog will do it again, and may very well have done it before too. They will also likely move onto people at some point as well.
The delay in being able to get the info, either due to the police heel dragging and/or Verizon stonewalling is outrageous. I had heard something about this sort of problem a year or year and a half ago? I would have thought that some federal lawmaker would have stepped up by now to streamline the process so that the police could get this info as quickly as possible. Apparently it’s just not a sexy or hotbutton issue. Maybe now someone will move their keister, but my vision of the future is some debate, empty promises, hearings on privacy blah, blah.
As for Verizon charging for this, tacky. Cell providers should not be charging for information needed in the case of violent crimes!
I will likely switch cell providers. And send a letter as to why! Verizon has lousy service here anyway, but are any of them any better? Or is this status quo for the whole industry???
Comment by Jennifer J — November 30, 2007 @ 4:10 pm
If you were to read where Gina notes in red, “the rest of the story”, in the reader’s posts at the end of article, the delay was the fault of the police, not Verizon, according to the timeline. Verizon can’t and won’t release private telephone numbers without proper authorization, a procedure that any phone company must follow according to very strict federal privacy laws.
I see this sick nightmare as an excellent reason to micro-chip pets. It’s always AFTER the burglary that we get insurance, so in order for that not to be the case at our house, I’m signing off now and going to the phone to make an appointment for our beloved dog and precious cat each to be micro-chipped.
Comment by Nadine L. — November 30, 2007 @ 5:00 pm
“Later that morning, Whiting tried to find the phone number the extortionists had used. He called his service provider, Verizon, to tell them to release his phone records to police, but it wasn’t that simple.
“I made about five calls and kept getting people who were good at passing the hot potato,” Whiting says. He was told police know the procedure.
The detective working the case, who asked me not to use his name, says he got a search warrant and faxed it to Verizon on Nov. 16, but it took 12 days before he got a list of calls made to Whiting. The city was charged $150 for the search.”
I don’t see why Verizon and the police couldn’t have jumped on this together at first before the 16th, and gotten it worked out. But from what I read there the 12 days AFTER the 16th were all Verizon.
(Also, how would micro-chipping have helped here? I don’t think the perpetrators would have been interested in scanning for it.)
Comment by Michaelk — November 30, 2007 @ 6:44 pm
I microchip all my pets. Unfortunately, I doubt that a microchip would have helped out in this case. It certainly sounds as though the people involved wanted the thrill of torturing and killing this dog more than they wanted the money. Getting to torture the owner was clearly just a fringe benefit for them.
As for who’s at fault etc, I did read the whole article and I am still baffled why there are not emergency procedures in place to help track calls much more quickly, as in immediately. In October a woman in Washington crashed her car. Although she had a cell phone, it took days for the police to get the information from the cell provider. By a miracle she survived a staggering 7-8 days trapped and injured in her car. As with this story there were delays with law enforcement but also 48-72 hours worth of delays by the cell provider. She is still recovering and her husband is vowing to push for reforms to cut through the red tape and delays so that others need not suffer and die in these circumstances due to delays
If a call comes into 911 on a land line and it is cut off, it can be traced and tracked immediately. I am sure that present technology should/could permit such a thing to be done on cell phones.
Comment by Jennifer J — November 30, 2007 @ 6:48 pm
Among all the distressing things about this story, what I findv most upsetting is that the two who had the dog were so young …one a child. These two are psychopaths, and they MUST be caught because they surely will act again.Remember: Violence against animals is a key predictor of future violence against people as well.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — November 30, 2007 @ 7:42 pm
Well, people, the reason they didn’t jump on it was because they were “just dogs.” I’m sure since no human lives were at stake, no action was taken.
Comment by Nadine L. — November 30, 2007 @ 7:47 pm
No timely action was taken in the case of the deputy sheriff’s very human wife who went off the road in Washington either. The woman was pinned in her car for a week! The cell phone had GPS and had been active but in spite of her husband screaming bloody murder, it was shrugged off as “she probably just took off” etc… Terrifying. If a member of law enforcement couldn’t get through all the procedural red tape and BS, what would happen to any of us or our loved ones, human, canine or otherwise in an emergency where cell phones are the crucial link?
Comment by Jennifer J — November 30, 2007 @ 8:35 pm
i’m a bit stunned. that anyone would do this, especially kids. that there is such a problem getting information when a crime has been committed. and there is such a problem getting information when a person is missing! that’s all just insane! the kids NEED to be caught and we NEED to have a better response from phone providers! isn’t this the same info they’ll hand over to the government without a warrant?!
i don’t have verizon, but i can pass this around.
Comment by straybaby — November 30, 2007 @ 10:35 pm
As I understand it, the cell phone providers send you a list of all your calls with your monthly billing (someone who’s had a cell phone for a while - is this the case?). If so, they’ve got the records. Where, then, is the problem?
Comment by The OTHER Pat — November 30, 2007 @ 11:16 pm
Most likley they blocked the number, or he would have been able to dial *69-and been connected. Plus I bet it wasn’t even their phone to begin with.
sigh
what a sad story-
I WAS just going to switch to Verizon and get GPS service built in.
NOT!
Nancy
Comment by nancy freedman-smith — December 1, 2007 @ 5:01 am
Nancy,
For some people it’s not that simple. Verizon is the only game in our state for a lot of towns, and it has just come to light that for years, Verizon has not maintained their landlines and kept up with the technology, choosing to pay fines to the PUC because it’s cheaper than upgrading. #@$%^&* Verizon. And then there was Verizon’s slimy cooperation with Homeland Security, turning over phone records of Maine customers without their knowledge, for which we have to waste our money in a trial in CA in order to find out the truth. Ugh.
Fairpoint has got to be a better option for landline phone service. It certainly can’t be any worse than Verizon.
I am fortunate because I had a choice between a local Maine company and Verizon for my landline and my DSL. Guess which I chose.
As for this story, I am so sickened both by the perpetrators and the behavior of Verizon I don’t know how to respond appropriately.
Comment by Deb — December 1, 2007 @ 5:48 am
This is TERRORISM of the worst sort.
It actually makes me physically sick to know that this is something real people did to another human being and more over to an emotional and living animal.
It’s one thing when it’s fantasy violence in a movie. When it’s real and senseless like this, fear and dread well up inside. Fear that my own animals might suffer at the hands of a sadist like the teens in this story.
Comment by Christopher — December 1, 2007 @ 12:29 pm
Can I hope against all odds that it was a sick joke and they let Edna go? I hope the cops do follow up on this and find and prosecute the heinous, evil psycopaths that did this. Now I’m going to go take my dog for a walk in the newly falling snow.
Comment by kb — December 1, 2007 @ 2:15 pm
Those considering microchipping, please inform yourselves of mounting research linking the implants to cancer:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/82032.php
Comment by ango — December 1, 2007 @ 2:50 pm
I just find the story very strange/suspicious and wonder if they really had his dog. And not some type of cruel joke. Afterall they could have collected $500.00 easily without breaking any laws, since that was the reward.
Comment by Serijna — December 2, 2007 @ 1:09 pm
I’m pretty sure all cell phones now have a GPS chip in them - specifically so that an emergency call can be traced. This is laziness on the part of the cell service providers.
So how come our government can get “private” information from cell phone companies without even going through the minimal trouble of getting a FISA warrent. Bet the cell companies don’t make the Feds wait 12 days for the info.
Comment by 2CatMom — December 3, 2007 @ 11:38 am
This story is dealing with Verizon as a landline company, not the wireless company. I wonder if it would have been easier to get the info had the call been made to the guy’s cell.
“The call came in on Whiting’s land line, which was listed on Edna’s name tag but not on the fliers he had posted everywhere.”
This is a horrible story and I hope Edna’s owner gets justice in the end.
Comment by Jess — December 4, 2007 @ 8:49 am
This story really makes me ill. It is one of only a few kinds of story that can really get me angry, and that I cannot get out of my mind. So, there you go, the only thing in the universe that can make me really angry is the deliberate application of evil. This is why I am not angry at the pet food companies for selling tainted products under the system in place at the time, nor for buying from china; I am angry at them for the delays, the avoidance, and so many other things they did to protect the business over the consumer, and of course at the chinese individuals who did it, but enough there…
Many new cell phones do have GPS chips and many still do not, and GPS does not work well unless your location is under an open sky, but there is another way to locate a cell phone that I have worked on the technology for…
All towers in the vicinity receive the signal and the one with the strongest connection collects the call, and that changes as you are driving around and you are passed along from tower to tower…
Each tower measures the strength of the signals it is ‘seeing’ and CAN (but usually does not now) record that information for each cell phone it ‘sees’. For a 911 call it would be live and the signals would be measured in real-time. In this case the data would have to be stored somewhere for at least long enough to decide if it was needed for any reason…
This signal strength tells you roughly how far the phone was from the towers in the area, draw circles and where they overlap is where you look for the origin of the call… Lots of math for most people, but simple in concept.
The recent case in Seattle where the woman was finally located by her cell signal was delayed 4 days because the police won’t even bother to search for someone unless they believe a crime may be involved, they just assumed she wanted to disappear… It’s damn lucky her cell phone battery was not dead after all the days she was trapped - mine does not last more than a few days. They are considering changing that policy, but concerned about the privacy of people who want to walk away from their lives for whatever the reason. They recognize there was no crime yet someone was is grave danger and their policy failed.
Comment by steve a — December 6, 2007 @ 3:33 pm