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UPDATE: Only 2 days left to sign the Petition! Phone service provider sends a "busy" signal when owner seeks his dog's killers

November 30, 2007, 1:33PM MT

By Jeannine Lanigan

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Click here to sign the petition. Over 3,000 signatures are still needed before the petition closes on December 31, 2007.

The reward for information is now up to $10,000 (PETA just offered to add $5000 to the PSPCA's $5000 reward). Click here to view PETA's full press release.

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Verizon Disconnects 2 Lives
Phone company's foot-dragging stymies police, owner in search for dog's torturers

by Stu Bykofsky, Philadelphia Daily News

THE LAST TIME Bill Whiting heard his little brown dog, she was
screaming in pain as two miserable bastards tortured her. Whiting heard this over the phone as the two monsters demanded money to
return the Beagle mix.

Her name was Edna, and she 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 made sure that Edna always wore her collar. Attached to her collar were her vaccination tags, showing she was a healthy dog, and her name tag with Whiting's information, showing she was a loved dog. When Edna walked, her tags jingled.

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.

Edna disappeared on Halloween night. A Center City resident, Whiting was visiting a friend in the Italian Market area, and he brought Edna along, because Edna went everywhere with him.

That evening, with the doorbell being rung every few minutes by trick-or-treaters, Edna somehow slipped out, maybe to follow some children, because she was a friendly and trusting dog.

When Whiting noticed she was missing, he frantically ran up and down the narrow South Philly streets, whistling and calling her name. The next morning he put up fliers with her picture, his cell-phone number and the promise of a $500 reward for her return. Whiting hoped anyone finding her would call, either out of the goodness of his heart or desire for the reward.

He waited vainly for 10 days, heart-sick and physically sick over Edna. Then, late at night on Nov. 10, the phone rang and he could hardly believe what he heard.

He heard two voices that sounded male and young. The first said he was 16, his brother was 9 and they had his dog. He wanted Whiting, 57, who works for the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, to talk with his brother.

At first, Whiting says he could barely understand the younger boy, speaking in what he described as "American ghetto slang." Whiting slowly realized the boy wanted $600 to ransom Edna.

"I was to bring cash, by myself," at midnight to a location Whiting could not decipher.

Whiting agreed to pay the money but not to a midnight meeting. "They said they wanted the money now, and told me they'd kill the dog, repeating, 'You don't believe me, Mister, let me hurt it so you can hear.' "

Whiting heard Edna yelp in pain. When he heard the jingling of her tags, Whiting knew they had his beloved little brown dog.

"I couldn't believe how evil he was," says Whiting. "He said, 'You know, Mister, I want to kill your dog.' "

Whiting pleaded with them not to hurt Edna, offering to give them even more than $600 if they would keep Edna safe until the morning.

The line went dead.

Whiting immediately called 911 and Philadelphia police took the complaint seriously, entering it as extortion.

A few hours later, at 3 a.m., Whiting got a second call from one of the monsters. "I've killed your dog, it's dead," he said. 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.

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.

Verizon charged police $150?

In most cases, says Verizon spokesman Lee Gierczynski, "the company charges no fee or a nominal one," but in a "very small percentage of cases, Verizon will charge reimbursement fees for gathering information it does not routinely maintain."

The fee covers some of Verizon's costs and it makes no profit, he says. In a wired world, I find both the slow service and the high cost hard to swallow.

A crime has been committed. Another police source tells me the service is no better for other crimes, such as kidnapping, when time is crucial.

In Edna's case, the detective says, he must now get another search warrant to connect the phone numbers he has to subscribers. He couldn't say what the charge would be or how long it would take.

More delay and more expense.

Bill Whiting believes Edna was heartlessly killed by the savages who called him. (You see her picture. If you recall seeing someone with the dog, call police detectives at 215-686-3093 or -3094.)

Whiting will live for a long time, maybe forever, with the pain of hearing his little brown dog tortured. But he doesn't want Edna to have died in vain. As her legacy, he wants the phone companies to act faster and cheaper. He thinks telecommunications companies should provide free assistance to police "as a public service. It's not like they have a narrow profit margin."

He's right. Who'll get the ball rolling?

Another story on Edna was also posted on the South Philly Review website.

A video of Bill speaking about the situation was posted on
ksn.com

How You Can Help
Did you see Edna? Any information connected to her disappearance should be communicated to the detectives assigned to the case (see article and contact information, below).

Contact the police detectives at 215-686-3093 or 215-686-3094.

To help Bill's case write letters, send e-mails, and make phone calls to all contacts listed below.

Also, the Pennsylvania SPCA is treating this case as a cruelty investigation, as described on their website:
"The PSPCA is offering a $2,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest and prosecution of all parties involved with the disapperance of Edna - a beagle mix that has been missing from her Philadelphia home since October 31, 2007 - should animal cruelty be discovered in this case. An anonymous concerned citizen has offered an additional $3,000 reward. The PSPCA will investigate any and all leads in this case. To contact the PSPCA with a tip, call 215-426-6300."
http://www.pspca.org/services/investigations

Contact Information
Contact Reporter Stu Bykofsky at
stubyko@phillynews.com
or 215-854-5977
http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/11909697.html

Contact the Mayor of Philadelphia to express your concerns about the situation and how the Mayor intends to address it.

Executive Office of the Mayor
Room 215 City Hall
Philadelphia, PA 19107
215-686-2181
E-mail: mayor@phila.gov

Contact the Police Department of Philadelphia to express your concerns about how the Police have handled this case so far.

Sylvester M. Johnson, Police Commissioner
Philadelphia Police Department
One Franklin Square
Philadelphia, PA 19106
215-686-1776
215-686-3053

Managing Director, Loree Jones, 215-686-3480
Barbara Kopecki, Assistant Managing Director 215-686-3482

Contact Verizon to express your concerns about their policies.

Ivan Seidenberg, Chairman & CEO
Verizon Communications
140 West Street
New York, NY 10007
800-621-9900

William B. Petersen, President
Verizon - Pennsylvania
1717 Arch Street
Philadelphia, PA 19103

or

Jim Reed, Director - External Affairs, Southeastern (Counties: Philadelphia)
Verizon-Pennsylvania
215-466-4838
james.a.reed@verizon.com

Reprinted with the permission of Stu Bykofsky,
Philadelphia Daily News
Pictured are Edna with Bill Whiting, prior to Edna's disappearance
Photo provided by Bill Whiting and Philadelphia Daily News
Posted by Jeannine Lanigan, PA Team News Associate

Comments

Posted December 04, 2007, 4:21PM by catmominme

I just signed this petition! Thanks for posting the link steffie92!!!!!

Posted December 01, 2007, 12:56AM by njanmlrsq3

Savages is not a harsh enough word for those 2 little brats who think it is fun to play these "games". What is even scarrier is these 2 boys need to be taken off the streets and given serious help. These are the precursors to Serial Killers. I can't believe Verizon would stoop that low. Ugghh....

Posted December 11, 2007, 9:46PM by sanfox

I have written the Mayor, the Verizon Director, Stu Bykofsky who wrote the article in the phili news, and who was wonderful in responding to me. I also signed the petition and posted it on as many forums as I could to give it more exposure. I will contact the Phily police tomorrow, and I also wrote to the D.A's office urging them to Press Charges against verizon for 1) Obstruction of Justice, 2) Failure to Comply with Search Warrent 3) Accessory to a Crime 4) Impeding an Investigation.
I would also urge Mr Whiting to File a Lawsuit against Verizon, and would consider setting up a fundraising avenue to assist him with this. Also, call for any attorneys reading this to consider this!
To the people that put up this webpage, good work!!
To contact the D.A's office and Urge them to Prosecute Verizon and press charges against them, you can email them here:
DA.WEBMAIL@phila.gov

In addition, I am doing everything in my power to call national attention to Verizon. We can start by CANCELLING our sevice with them. I have submited a report to the Better Business Burea to start!! And I'm also calling on every national news media to expose the criminal practices of Verizon.

Posted December 02, 2007, 12:42AM by sbrsmom

It would be nice to see this one the main Network page, not just the PA Network page since Verizon is a national company. This is so unacceptable that it makes me ill. I can't even fathom how he must feel each day going forward hearing the sounds of his dog's painful torture. Verizon should have done everything in their power to get that number for the owner.

Posted December 02, 2007, 11:40PM by steffie92

Sign this petition to Verizon and the Mayor of Philadelphia to Help Bill and Edna.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/help-a-kidnapped-dog-in-philadelphia

Posted December 01, 2007, 9:2AM by steffie92

If justice is to be served, we ALL need to take the extra steps and contact the above. Please do it for Edna.

Posted December 02, 2007, 11:38AM by cattees

Shame on Verizon to put money over the lives of people and their family members, regardless of race, creed or species. Karma is not happy.

Posted December 13, 2007, 10:10PM by steffie92

sanfox thanks so much for your dedication to help Bill and Edna. We need more petition signers.

Posted January 04, 2008, 6:16PM by cattees

A teen was arrested in connection with Edna's disappearance.

http://tinyurl.com/2gtgco

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