The Brockport Murder Dog Trial: An Interview With Author Laurie Fortune Verbridge Part 2

[00:52:37.130] - Benjamin

Welcome back to Crime Cap. Thank you so much for joining us this week. And to continue this incredible saga of your family's adventures with canine law.

[00:52:54.710] - Laurie

Thank you very much for having me. It's an honor.

BEN

Where we left off. You had described for us the overwhelming amount of emotion that surrounded this particular trial in Brockport. And yet one element that is really remarkable to consider, even with the benefit of hindsight, is the fact that you had a film crew show up to capture nearly everything that was about to happen. And not just any film crew, a Paramount film crew, and the expense associated with this must have been enormous. But they really came in and tried to understand what was happening. And you couldn't have written your book without this film, could you?

[00:55:22.550] - Laurie

No. That certainly was the topping on the cake when Bill's son was able to procure that. And then he's an editor, so he was able to edit the film because it was in such bad shape when he got it. He had to edit all of it. And it was an amazing thing. I was so excited to see my father as he was going through this. To see the emotion in that courtroom is an amazing experience, especially for his family members. To hear Mrs. Breathe her voice and the pain. It supported everything I'd always heard, but it made it real. Bill always was amazed at the young people that were interviewed talking about the dog. He thought that they captured the sentiment that should have been there, which was, even if Idaho did it, he was just a puppy. He didn't mean it. And there were comments of that nature on there. But the pain was real for both sides. Whether you were on the side of Maxwell Breeze's family who had lost a child or whether you were on the side of the family who believed their dog was innocent, Idaho's family.

[00:57:03.350] - Benjamin

It is remarkable because this film you have incredible stills from the film in your book and just the images that you were able to sort of lift with permission, of course, really bring it to life for modern day readers. But from a research perspective, this film was critical because you didn't have the court transcript. You actually had the proceedings captured on estate that you could work from.

[00:57:38.310] - Laurie

It's not the entire trial. There were a couple of comments. One was my dad. And then there were pictures of the courtroom itself. So you actually had a flavor of what you thought you saw when you were imagining it. And then it showed third bridge on the Erie Canal. And then it had youngsters speaking, and then it had the judge when he sentence the dog. So those conversations and seeing all of the people that are involved in it, I can't remember, it seems like Mary Fauvester was on there and was talking about the dog and that he was not a dangerous dog.

[00:58:31.010] - Benjamin

Right. She had continued to serve in her sort of advocacy role.

[00:58:34.940] - Laurie

Yes.

[00:58:36.410] - Benjamin

Over those weeks. Now outline for us the strategy of the defense and then the strategy of the prosecution.

[00:58:52.290] - Laurie

I believe the defense was Harry was going to get that dog off.

[00:59:08.970] - Benjamin

That was his mission. All right.

[00:59:11.020] - Laurie

He had a mission and he was going to take that all the way. And he did research beyond research in order to accomplish his mission. And for the local I mean, he had an alibi dog. That was the second dog that was involved. And his name was Rex. And Rex lived around the corner from our family. And Rex actually attended the trial. Nobody said it wasn't Rex. He was the one that identified him and had played with the dog and said Idaho was innocent on stand. And so you have that on there on the Paramount film.

[01:00:07.810] - Benjamin

Also right there's, this interesting wrinkle for listeners who didn't catch our first segment. You write in the book that the judge, Benedict could have ended the trial simply by taking the recommendation of a veterinarian on the record and saying this dog is not a vicious animal. The dog that is accused of these attacks, so to speak, is not a vicious animal. And that would have been enough under New York state law in order to exonerate the dog or equip the dog. But what's interesting is that there's actually a burden of proof, which is not a jury trial. The burden of proof is really on the defense to prove that Idaho was not vicious. And that's the only bar they have to clear under the wall. There's just nothing else. And so Harry's strategy here really is to induce some reasonable doubt into the judge. I mean, it's really not to anybody else and not into the court of public opinion. He just has to convince Judge Benedict this dog is not an attacker, so to speak.

[01:01:16.230] - Laurie

Yes. One of the questions that Harry had answered that he took from Mr. Turf June, who was a dog activist, I guess, specialist at the time, and he wrote several books. Mr. Turkey said a dog could not be malicious or could not have a preconceived idea to murder someone. He would not have had time to think about it. If the dog could not have claws like a cat, he would have paw prints, but he would not leave scratches. And Maxwell didn't have scratches on his body, and that was part of the evidence that he was able to get from that expert. So he had experts that he had relied on for part of his defense.

Even as Sessions is introducing reasonable doubt into Judge Benettecht, there's still another legal wrinkle here, isn't there? Which is that the question of whether the Breeze drowning was even admissible with respect to the Hamlin charges, that question is wide open. I mean, you're right. That because officially, based on the summons that your father was being brought in on charges of possibly harboring a vicious animal, with respect to the two attacks that Hamlin had sort of described, it is an open question under the law whether the dog had any priors and whether those priors could possibly be even established or referenced here. And yet nobody seemed to pick up on that fact, not even the judge.

[01:30:27.130] - Laurie

No, that's absolutely true. First of all, Maxwell Breeze should have come into it at that point. They should have been about the attack on Paul Hamlin. And there was very little talked about as far as Paul Hamlin went. It was all about Maxwell Breeze. And it wasn't a murder trial. It was a trial on the vicious dog. And it was not really a trial. It was a summons. But as soon as Paul Hamlin made the allegations, Maxwell Breeze was brought up, and it became, through the media, a murder trial and sensational headlines, and it took on a life of its own.

[01:31:20.170] - Benjamin

And it just makes me wonder how things would have played out differently had Sessions stuck to the strictest sort of line regarding what his client was being brought in for and not played to the crowd, not had all these elements of sort of showmanship and the 30 witnesses. How would this story have been different?

[01:31:44.350] - Laurie

I think it would have been very different. I think that they would have. If Sessions had defended against Paul Hamlin, he would have had the prior to fall back on, and I believe the dog would have been put down. I think Harry Sessions knew exactly what he was doing.

[01:02:36.350] - Benjamin

We have had a number of cases over the last several months in which a legal defense has basically been organized for somebody accused of murder. Say a legal defense has been organized around the Sodi principle. I'm sure you've heard of the Sodi defense, which is some other dude did it. It occurred to me as I was reading your book, Laurie, the D, the middle D in Saudi could also be rendered for some other dog did it right. For the L. Sodi defense works for dogs. Yeah, exactly. Very convenient, these things.

[01:03:18.130] - Laurie

Yeah.

[01:03:20.090] - Benjamin

So the prosecution then, as you write the prosecution, it wasn't exactly sort of ramshackled. It was just that the lines were a little less clear. That was the Constable who is sort of acting as part of the prosecution legally in that region or under state law, that he had the authority to bring the charges. There was no DA, so to speak.

[01:03:48.060] - Laurie

Yes. And it doesn't tell much of what the response from the Constable was in any of the newspaper articles or that sort of thing. So it almost looked like it was a one way defense. It didn't really seem to be balanced, but they did have some people that said, yes, that was the dog, but they had as many that said he would never do it or it wasn't him.

[01:04:17.750] - Benjamin

Tell us about the witnesses. Who were the witnesses that were called to the stand?

[01:04:23.210] - Laurie

My grandfather was on the stand. My dad, Mr. Snoves, my Uncle Norm was on there. Uncle Jack was 13, and I hadn't really thought about his age when I was younger writing this until I was writing it again with Bill and his age of a 13 year old boy put a different perspective on his outlook of all of this, too. And then there were like 30 witnesses. The veterinarian that they hired came in and he had observed the dog for two weeks. And then, of course, Mary Fobaster testified that he was not a dangerous dog. My grandfather's testimony was based on the fact that he had been home all day and that his fur wasn't wet. And those questions were asked by the defense.

[01:05:39.950] - Benjamin

If I were a prosecuting attorney and I were cross examining your grandfather, I might ask, were there any moments in which you and the dog were not in the same room or you were not together, that the dog could have slipped away from your front porch and gone down to the canal where it was possible to swim on a hot summer's day? And the dog had known this canal because he'd been swimming there before sort of introduce an element of reasonable doubt there to say, well, all right, grandpa, are you sure that the dog was not able to just get away for a few minutes? Like, how certain can you be? I mean, it seems plausible that the grandfather is not sitting on his porch for twelve straight hours in a day, right?

[01:06:30.030] - Laurie

Yes. And it's possible that it was a swinging door back then because you didn't have anything that automatically shut. On the same token, my cousin has been very adamant, and she knew him best because she's about ten years older than I am, that he would never lie and he wouldn't even split a hair on the truth. So he really believed that dog was in the house all day long? No. But could he have? I think he could have.

[01:07:10.510] - Benjamin

Who knows? We're in 1936. It's the summer time. Maybe he wants to go in and get a cold drink from the ice box because that's what we used back in 1936. It only takes five minutes.

[01:07:22.570] - Laurie

It doesn't take that long. All you got to do is go in the door dog is off, right? Yeah, right.

[01:07:31.810] - Benjamin

Come to the scratches because the scratches are kind of an interesting piece of potential evidence. You had the account from the coroner that said there were no scratches on Max's back where you would have expected to see them. And yet there was a reporter who went swimming with Idaho later in order to sort of test this theory, who I think did come away with a couple of scratches. Is that not correct?

[01:07:59.800] - Laurie

Yeah, but the scratches would not be the same as a cat claw. That was what they were saying. Mastle didn't have any bruises or scratches because it's believed his swimming skills were so poor that he probably panicked and subsequently went under before the dog would have really scratched him, whereas the swimmers swam quite a while with a dog. But yes, the dog. Idaho got right on his back. And my dad talked about the dog swimming and getting on his back. But my father was a strong swimmer. Idaho or Maxwell Breeze would not have been. It was very clear that his swimming skills were poor, right?

[01:08:49.190] - Benjamin

No, that's an important distinction to make. So in the closing statements at trial, you have this kind of interesting contrast to what maybe you would have expected to see. The prosecution turns around and basically says, don't kill the dog. Then you have Harry Sessions turning around and saying, this dog isn't worth $5.

[01:09:23.490] - Laurie

Right.

[01:09:24.420] - Benjamin

Therefore, don't kill the dog. And I was really struck by this kind of, you know, what are they playing at here? Because if Sessions is going to sort of falsely demean his own client by saying that the dog isn't worth execution, what kind of roundabout logic is that for exoneration here? I couldn't wrap my head around that.

[01:09:52.400] - Laurie

Well, when he went on to say, though, that it was man's best friend in his summary, he actually said, my client.

[01:10:04.780] - Benjamin

If you want to read the passage for us, that'd be great. Yeah.

[01:10:07.810] - Laurie

My client, your Honor, is only a mongrel dog who isn't worth $5. But people get attached to a dog in some way. I don't for a minute contend the dog life matches a boys. I have the most respect for the feelings of the parents in this case, and I want no one to misunderstand my point of view. But dogs are dogs. You wouldn't grow up without a dog, just an ordinary pup dog. And I haven't heard a soul in the courtroom recommend that the dog be killed, because if this dog is dangerous and every dog of the same age and breed ought to be killed, the best friend in this world that a man has may turn against him, but the one absolutely unselfish friend that a man can't have in this selfish world is his dog. It kind of gives you a glow around the heart. And Benedict, he actually goes on and he says, I know just how you feel. I have a dog myself blurted out, Justice Benedict.

[01:11:07.750] - Benjamin

Oh, goodness. I think something like that might be called into the appeal in this day and age, but at the time. Yeah. Good Lord. So what happens? I mean, the trial does not last very long, even though there are that many witnesses. It's over in really a very short amount of time, 5 hours.

[01:11:34.270] - Laurie

My dad always said that was the longest 5 hours of his life. And the courtroom was extremely crowded with over 500 people in there and flashbaults going off. And it was a circus, but for that many people, it was a quiet circus. But he said you would hear them say, oh, he said it was a very difficult day.

[01:12:08.710] - Benjamin

you did write that there was something else which was unexpected in the proceedings, which is that the trial of one dog became actually a trial in which there were five dogs kind of present or invoked or referred to. Who were these other four dogs apart from Idaho?

[01:12:30.890] - Laurie

Well, there was Rex, who was the Alibi dog, and the Alibi dog looked just about like Idaho, so it could have been a misidentification. And then Kentucky boy comes in and he gives a donation to the dog and talks about how he saved a lot of lives and he was recognized. I think it was Chicago, but I'm not positive. And then there was another dog named Pathy, who was also a famous dog for having and he wrote a letter in support of Idaho, and then the other dog, which he was in Idaho. And someone tried to say that the dog belonged to them and it was taken from Idaho, but the allegation was the dog was nine years old, and this one was just around nine months old. So it was instantly cured, but they had to pursue it and make sure that it wasn't. My father couldn't get over the fact that somebody would try to claim the dog as theirs. Yeah.

[01:13:52.810] - Benjamin

I do like how we can very naturally and breezily say that Patsy the dog out in Chicago or wherever, wrote a letter on behalf of Idaho and Rockport, New York. And it's just fine. We just get it. It's okay.

[01:14:08.710] - Laurie

It is pretty funny. As I said earlier in my book, I can laugh about it now, but I can tell you my grandparents didn't laugh about much of any of this, but there are some hysterical things that happen. What's the chance that President Taps bodyguard with Guard Idaho? I mean, that's just bizarre. There were so many things like that.

[01:14:42.650] - Benjamin

It really is almost too good to be true.

[01:14:46.390] - Laurie

Yes.

[01:14:46.920] - Benjamin

Now at the verdict, 5 hours, your father's longest 5 hours of his life. What did Judge Benedict ultimately rule?

[01:15:00.810] - Laurie

He actually ruled that the dog was dangerous in the water based on information that he had. I think I got the ruling right here.

[01:15:15.690] - Benjamin

Yeah. Please. We'd love to hear it.

[01:15:25.170] - Laurie

After considering the evidence in this case, I've decided that the actions of the dog Idaho while in the water are dangerous. And that sudden subject, Victor Fortune, is hereby ordered to securely confine said dog from this date until October 1, 1938. And if said dog is not securely confined, any police officer or designated representative of the Commission of Farms and Markets is hereby ordered to kill said dog either on or off the premises. And there's a picture of him signing the judgment.

[01:16:12.350] - Benjamin

How does that judgment stand in comparison to the other trials, the long history of animal trials that you and Bill discuss in the book? I'm thinking of the medieval pigs and the mosquitoes and the goats and so forth. Those usually ended a little differently, didn't they?

[01:16:33.620] - Laurie

Yeah, they usually ended up where the dog or the animal was killed. And I think that had it not been for Harry Sessions and Mary Fobaster, this probably would have happened to Idaho. I think that the community would have demanded it, and it certainly wasn't a vicious dog, but it was a tragic situation.

[01:17:08.250] - Benjamin

It did strike me as I was reading Laurie. This sounded like a very good application or illustration is maybe the better way to put it of jurisprudence, not taking one extreme or the other, but trying to find that kind of middle graph. Yeah. And I read at one point in your account you write that there's a common outcome in cases like this where dogs that have been deemed to be volatile in certain contexts, rather than put the dog down, they are often just removed from the context or getting new lives elsewhere. And that often it doesn't solve necessarily the problem, so to speak, but it sort of threads the needle of approaches.

[01:18:07.650] - Laurie

Giving them the second chance or if they're not. I don't think you would do that with a dangerous dog, but it was clearly evident that this dog was not dangerous. He was just a puppy, an enthusiastic puppy. And could he have done it? Sure.

[01:18:35.590] - Laurie

I think Sessions did a good job of finding the middle ground for everyone in the community. There were people afterwards that still felt that way, and they worried about the dog being in danger and actually took him out of town. Mary took him right after the trial to Canada for a couple of weeks to let things calm down. And that was probably a good idea. The dog did ride home, however, in the police car with the sirens going. And my father's.

[01:19:10.010] - Benjamin

I swear, he just gets almost the Royal treatment, doesn't he?

[01:19:13.460] - Laurie

He did.

[01:19:16.730] - Benjamin

Good heavens. Let's talk about aftermaths, because aftermaths are important to this particular story, and there are quite a lot of them. I mean, we have your family, we have the Breeze family, we have Idaho himself. Let's start with your family after this verdict was rendered, your father did have to keep Idaho restrained for the next several years.What did they have to live with after this trial was over?

[01:20:06.290] - Laurie

My grandparents. My grandmother was chastised for quite a while. It got to the point where people walk on the opposite side of the street. If they saw her at Church, there were things. She didn't even want to go to Church for a while. Over time, it got better, but it took a long time for that to happen. For Idaho, his life was changed forever, too, because he was used to being able to go to the Brock Fort canal and swim. And he could no longer do that. He can't take a dog swimming on a leash. So if dad was going to take them, he would have to take them out of the county to do that, to swim. He was tied. He no longer went hunting with my uncle or anything like that. And so for two and a half years, well, just a little over two years, he was tied every day. And my grandmother would bring him in the house with her during the day, too. He wasn't just on the chain because she wasn't that kind of a person. And so he spent a lot of time with her.

[01:21:18.910] - Benjamin

It really struck me, your father's moral Compass with respect to what had happened and the way in which you're right that they really had to spend a lot of money on legal bills and sort of just consultants, and they were out of pocket badly. And during the Depression, during the midst of the Great Depression, and yet given the offer from Paramount to kind of turn the dog into a celebrity show dog and pay him all this money and that sort of thing, your dad actually took a very different line, didn't he?

[01:21:52.610] - Laurie

Yes, he did. He could not bring himself to make money off of the tragedy of Maxwell Breeze's death. And so he did a little bit of it to pay the bills. And when I say a little bit of it, it was pretty much around Rochester Buffalo area. He would take the dog on stage, talk about him, have Idaho do a few tricks, and then he would get paid because he wanted to pay Harry Sessions and he made enough money to donate to the Humane Society. He clearly never made a Penny. At one point for legal defense, they were selling his doggy paw prints for $100 a set, and they actually sold like four sets of them. And he says, I wish I had those now. He says, but I didn't have the $100 to get them.

[01:22:49.630] - Benjamin

That's incredible.

[01:22:52.330] - Laurie

He said that was kind of at that time, $100 was a ton of money.

[01:22:59.710] - Benjamin

Absolutely.

[01:23:00.850] - Laurie

Yeah. When he was in the CCC, he was making $25 a week to send home and $5 a week for himself. So $100 to him was very dear. But he had offers from Paramount. He had offers from several places, and he turned them down because he could not. And Harry brought him into the office and said, look, you've got some opportunities here. And my dad was very clear, I cannot make any money off of this. I want just the money to pay my bills, and then I'm done. And that's what he did.

[01:23:45.670] - Benjamin

That really is remarkable. Yeah. Good gesture. And what a Noble heart your dad had. Tell us about the Breezes, though. What happened to the Breezes after this?

[01:24:04.550] - Laurie

His mom never recovered, really. She was very sad. The dad continued to work. Mrs. Breeze, Annabra passed away. It was less than two years after he died, and her heart was literally broken, is what I'm told. Mr. Breeze moved out of Brockport. He remarried. And I'm not sure after that where he ended up, but I know he passed away in I think it was 59. And I remember my dad feeling very sad about that, but I didn't know what it was because I didn't know about this at that time. But I do remember him. I remember my grandmother telling him when we visited her that he had passed away. And my dad just saying, oh, it was a friend of mine, but I didn't connect it for years later.

[01:25:19.910] - Benjamin

And Idaho himself had kind of a sad ending to his life, didn't he? This was a twist that I did not expect. Seeing this coming in the last pages of your book. I had to read it twice, Laurie. I thought, no, surely that's not the case. And then I read it again, and I realized exactly what you were saying, and it was really moving.

[01:25:50.550] - Laurie

Yeah. Idaho was actually released from his confinement a month early or six weeks early, something like that. Barry Fobster continued to try to get him released so that he didn't have to be chained all the time. And my father would not unchain him during that period. He said he was given this, he was going to serve it, and he was just grateful to have him. So my dad, of course, by this time, was working full time. So Idaho's life was a little different there, too, because he couldn't go to work with that anymore or anything. And so that's when he would stay with my grandmother, when he was released from the chain, my dad said, you need Uncle Jack, who was at the time 13. You need to keep him on a leash. Or maybe by this time he was 15. You need to keep him on the leash. He can't be just let go because he doesn't know anything about cars or anything. He may run away or that sort of thing. And prior to that time, Uncle Jack had been taking him and trying to train him to Hunt with him again, because he had started that training before Idaho's confinement started.

Uncle Jack took him out hunting, and he decided that he had trained him enough. And being a kid, let the dog off the leash. Idaho saw a rabbit or a cat and I mean a cat and started chasing the cat through the woods. Cat ran across the road, and the dog followed, and he was hit by a car first. They thought maybe that the dog had been hit on purpose, but my father maintained that it was just one of those accidents. He was pretty heartbroken over it, and he was pretty upset with my uncle for a lot of years, but it was awful. And my grandmother had to go and get Uncle Jack, and she was called, and they buried him in the backyard where he had been staked. Awful. Yeah. My father would tear up when he talked about it for many years.

[01:28:39.110] - Benjamin

What struck me was that just like the event that made Idaho famous, it was all over. Just like that. It happened in a flash.

[01:28:53.890] - Laurie

In a flash.

[01:28:59.370] - Benjamin

[01:32:10.730] - Benjamin

Laurie, I have one last question for you. And here at Crime Cap School, we try to dig deep. We try to really spend as much time as possible with the complexity of the material that is given to us through this research and research like it. We like to ask the questions that really try to just get right to the core of the matter. We like to do the very best we can to bring the essence of the matter to the fore. Okay. From your vantage point as a researcher, with the benefit of hindsight, with all the available evidence before you and before your colleague, Bill Triangulating, your understanding against one another's, understanding declaring your personal bias, and with the two of you applying every verifiable method to this case, I have to ask you, was Idaho a good boy or was he the very best boy?

[01:34:40.670] - Laurie

He was the very best boy. My father adored him. My grandmother really adored him. So he was the best boy. I thought for sure you were going to ask me, do you think he was guilty or not?

[01:35:03.030] - Benjamin

That is irrelevant.

[01:35:08.050] - Laurie

My father, just before he died, he and I had a conversation about this because he said to me, I know you're going to write it someday. Writes. I said, I'm going to ask you a hard question, dad, do you think Idaho did it? Did you ever once think he did it? And he said, I always believed my parents to be telling me the truth. I didn't think he would ever do it on purpose. Do I think that he could have gotten out the back door? It's possible, but he would never have done it on purpose. He was not a vicious dog. He didn't deserve to die.

[01:35:49.450] - Benjamin

Right?

[01:35:49.950] - Laurie

It was a tragic accident. And I got that summed it up just about right.

[01:36:04.550] - Benjamin

He was a good boy. He looks like good a boy. I mean, in the photographs that you reproduce in your book from the film, he just looks like such a champion.

[01:36:15.770] - Laurie

I've got a picture of him that Mary faultmaster had done of sleeping with a rabbit and my grandmother had a rabbit I think his name was petty boy and the picture shows him sleeping with the dog and we didn't get that in the book but it didn't seem to fit a bizarre murder trial but there were a lot of things like that.

[01:36:46.790] - Benjamin

Yeah. Thank you so much for joining us. This has been such a pleasure.

[01:36:52.200] - Laurie

This was a pleasure for me too and thank you for letting me share the story.

[01:37:14.270] - Laurie

Pay a special tribute to Bill Hallfish because without Bill the book wouldn't have come to fruition, especially as a historical document. He was unmerciful about dates, everything and I would come up with them and he'd say you had this, I would go, yeah, I have it but it would take me some time sometimes because I had a massive information. But his creativity, his knowledge, skill and ability actually brought about the document so I couldn't have done it without him and it was an honor and a privilege to work with him.

[01:37:55.370] - Benjamin

Well, the two of you together, he and spirit and you in person has been a total joy. Thank you.

[01:38:00.300] - Laurie

Thank you. Thank you for having.