Texas slaying puts spotlight on world of illegal dogfights

CLEVELAND, Texas — In the dead of night, amid the thick woods of Southeast Texas, at least two gunmen broke into a house full of sleeping dogs, rifled through the place looking for a stash of cash, then shot the homeowner in the leg as dozens of angry pit bulls rattled their cages and strained their chains.

Investigators believe the intruders did not intend to kill Thomas Weigner early Aug 1. Instead, they were trying to torture him into revealing where he had hidden $100,000 in cash wagered in a single, high-stakes dogfight two weeks earlier south of Houston.

But Weigner, 27, described by police as a well-known breeder of fighting pit bulls, quickly bled to death, causing his attackers to flee, presumably without finding the loot.

Authorities who have been searching for his killers say they have stumbled across a startling trail of information on the organized, widespread and dangerous underground world of wagered dogfighting, stretching as far away as Puerto Rico and Ecuador.

Players and participants include the rich and poor, pitting one snarling dog against another in urban ghettos and rural woods. The winning prize can range from a few dollars to more than $100,000, money that law-enforcement officers say is more often stashed in homes rather than banks.

"Where's the money!" the intruders reportedly kept screaming at Weigner as one of them shot and killed a pit bull that had broken free from its restraints.

Weigner's wife, Julie Laban, and her 7-year-old son witnessed the shooting of her husband, investigators were told, while Laban's two other small children and her parents lay bound in other parts of the house, about five miles from the small town of Cleveland, 45 miles northeast of Houston.

Investigators are concerned that Weigner's attackers — thought to be two men inside his house, another standing outside as a lookout and a fourth in a getaway car — will be killed, before they are arrested, by those who are angry that police now are bearing down on their illegal network.

"This dogfighting deal is right under our noses. It's a big deal ... probably as big as the underworld drug business. It's everywhere," said Detective Sgt. Kenny Dagle, the Liberty County sheriff's investigator who is leading the homicide investigation, with assistance from the FBI, the Texas Rangers, the U.S. Postal Service and animal-control officers in Houston.

In telephone and e-mail interviews, John Goodwin, deputy manager of animal-fighting issues for the Humane Society of the United States, agreed that organized dogfighting, a felony offense in Texas, is reaching epidemic proportions nationwide.

"Texas has historically been a hub of organized dogfighting," Goodwin said. "I would estimate there are tens of thousands of dogfighters in the United States."

Weigner started his work in western Pennsylvania, naming his operation Westpenn Kennels, and quickly became known as one of the "top dogfighters" in the country, Goodwin said. He was believed to have been associated with a pit-bull breeding operation in Ecuador that produced the "Mayday bloodline," which Goodwin said was a "very popular line of fighting dogs."

Investigators say they have been told that about two weeks before his death, Weigner bet $50,000 that one of his fighting dogs would beat another dog during a bout in the shadowy woods south of Houston. He won, they said, and possibly took his money, and the loser's $50,000, back to his home.

"I feel that someone associated with the killing was at that dogfight," said Capt. Chip Fairchild, head of the criminal-investigations division of the Liberty County Sheriff's Department.

At the time of his death, Weigner had about 300 pit-bull terriers on his 22-acre property, with 30 caged or chained inside the house and garage.

Investigators also found heavily muscled but otherwise unhealthy dogs tethered to stakes or placed in small pens, pacing and panting on littered ground marked by ringed pits where some of the fight training took place.

As people-friendly pets, the animals were worth virtually nothing, investigators said. But as vicious fighting dogs — trained on a makeshift treadmill and forced to swim to exhaustion in an open tank of water — they could bring as much as $1 million on the black market that trades in the animals, officials said. Some dogs, they said, could have been worth as much as $25,000 each.

Animal-control officers took custody of 285 pit bulls from Weigner's property, and a judge has ordered all but those 6 months and younger put to sleep.

Courtney Frank, spokeswoman for the Houston Humane Society, said most have been euthanized, while a "few dozen" pups are being treated at the Humane Society's shelter in far south Houston.

A full-time police guard remains at the shelter, Frank said, after several people tried to "bully their way in" to get to the pit bulls, and one man actually got through the fence and came "pretty close to the dogs."

Authorities also are investigating death threats against the Houston Humane Society and Sgt. Mark Timmers, an animal-cruelty officer for a Harris County constable who worked to seize the pit bulls from Weigner's property.

Rep. Mark Green, R-Wis., has introduced legislation that would make it a federal felony, rather than the existing misdemeanor, to transport animals over state lines for the purpose of a wagered fight. The Senate already has passed such a proposal, and Green said he is confident his bill will pass the House.

Dogfights are "extremely cruel and distasteful," said Green, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee. "But what really caught my attention," he said, "was the evidence that a lot of organized crimes and violent crimes are linked to the underworld of bird- and dogfighting."

Organizers of such events consider existing federal laws to be little more than "a slap on the wrist," the congressman said.

Weigner's slaying has sparked a flurry of Internet talk about a band of violent robbers traveling the U.S., targeting dogfight winners and breeders who are putting their large cash prizes in drawers and shoe boxes rather than in banks.

"It seems the home invaders are part of a traveling professional squad that has now done the same in Detroit, GA and SC. They target those with the dogs, come in hard and will shoot anything that gets in their way," said one Web site, Boxdogs.com, which calls itself an online newspaper "dedicated to the coverage of all news about the American Pit Bull Terriers and other Game Dogs."

The Web site said the group of four robbers has a "list of the top dog men in the country and are traveling around to find them."