The Wolf‘s Last Stand

Dec. 21, 2005

John Patrick Sutherland called himself “Wolf” and friends said that wolf blood ran through his veins. He slept in a large, tan-colored tent among his 17 wolves and he considered them family. He is dead now, shot by deputies after a four-hour stand-off in late September.
Manistee County Prosecutor Ford Stone ruled recently that it was a justifiable homicide. His report said that a deputy had tried to end the confrontation by shooting Sutherland several times with a non-lethal bean-bag from a 12-gauge shotgun. Sutherland fell down and then shot back at the deputy and wounded him. Members of the region’s Emergency Response Team (a SWAT team) then shot Sutherland multiple times, according to the report.
But Diana Weir, his fiance who was at the scene, believes that the first shot wasn’t a beanbag, but a bullet to the head from an assault weapon.
“John was murdered, “ she said. “And it was premeditated.”

The facts we know
This is what we do know about John Sutherland.
He was 57 years old at the time of his death, divorced three times and father of five children, all of them estranged. He owned more than a dozen pure wolves and a few wolfdogs and identified strongly with the Native American culture. Diana Weir, who has lived with John for more than a year, said John rescued the hybrids from other owners — he didn’t believe in breeding dogs with wolves. He also owned a neutered coyote and a black fox. He admired the intelligence of wolves. One puppy, for example, was too small to get on the bed, so he pushed shoes and clothes together to use as a step stool, Weir said.
It is true that Sutherland used to sell wolves on the Internet, but Weir said he stopped after a new state law banned the sale of wolves and wolf hybrids in 2000.
Sutherland lived on several acres that bordered the property of the Dam Site Inn just outside the village limits of Brethren. He sometimes let strangers pet his wolves.
One man, Kenneth Riopelle, visiting from downstate, was having a drink at the Dam Site Inn. His friend took him to meet Sutherland and his wolves. Sutherland seemed like a “friendly and real intelligent guy.” But the second time he visited, Sutherland wasn’t so nice, yelling, “What the hell are you doing on my property.” Riopelle said, “Wolf? I met you last year and this time I brought my son with me.”
Sutherland softened and let Riopelle and his son pet his wolves. He told them that he had confrontations over the wolves and feared they would be taken away.
“I just thought his death was really sad. He was a difficult man with the wolves and everything, but it’s still the United States,” Riopelle said.
Sutherland was a packrat and had a ton of stuff in his house and his RV. Prior to moving to Brethren, he worked as a police officer in the Toledo area, and later drove semi-trucks, Diana said. He hurt his back about 18 years ago driving a truck. He got out of the truck and slipped on discarded fast-food grease.
Sutherland bought the property in Brethren from the back injury settlement about seven years ago. He was soon engaged in a terrible war with his neighbor, George Bosley, a man whose temper reportedly equaled his own. Bosley feared for his horses and hated having wolves for neighbors. Sutherland always carried a gun in his back pocket to protect his dogs, and sometimes waved it during the yelling matches. He accused Bosley of killing 29 of his wolves by hanging, poisoning, and shooting them.
Sutherland served jail time after a wolf had escaped the pen. Weir contends that Bosley cut the fencing of the wolves’ pens, but police wouldn’t believe Sutherland and refused to search Bosley’s house for wire cutters. Sutherland put up video cameras along the fence line.
Bosley did not return a phone call for this article. For years, county deputies and the animal control officer were called to settle disputes, a sort of Hatfield and McCoys of the north.
Bosley wasn’t his only problem. Another neighbor, Brenda Wiggins, whose own family used to bitterly fight with Bosley, ultimately joined up with him. She initially liked Sutherland and the wolves, but Wiggins said they sometimes escaped and she feared they might harm her young children and dogs. (During the seven years, Sutherland’s wolves never attacked anyone, but a wolf did pin down one of Wiggins’ dogs by the throat. Sutherland immediately removed the wolf with Wiggins’ help).
Sutherland wanted to move his wolves out in the country, but a realtor had told people in town there was a problem with underground storage tanks on the property, making the land impossible to sell, Weir said. She added it wasn’t true. She said the ongoing war and money problems really stressed out Sutherland, and he took several different medicines for ADD, depression, and insomnia.
In 2000, a law was passed banning the ownership of wolves and wolf hybrids. Owners had 90 days to comply with the new law or they could lose their animals. The law required special fencing, neutering, and microchips for identification. To sidestep the law, Sutherland licensed his animals as dogs and took them to the vet for regular rabies shots. He also neutered some, but not all, of his wolves (he put some in separate pens), but he couldn’t afford the double fencing.
Weir said the fencing was solid — the wire extended into the cage and was buried — and only one wolf had escaped in the last year. They heard nothing from Department of Agriculture officials until they showed up on September 23 with the search warrant. In fact, she and John had been wrangling with Animal Control Officer J.R. Nelson about satisfying requirements for the dog licenses.
Following are two different viewpoints of that day.

Diana Weir’s Story
Sutherland — or Wolf as Diana Weir called him — shook her awake at 10:10 a.m. “There’s something going on outside … somebody’s on the property.” Diana’s dog, Lily, a blue healer, was barking.
Diana stepped outside, dressed in her pajamas and slippers, and saw JR Nelson, and a deputy — approaching one of the wolf fences by the motor home directly to the west of the tent. Sutherland looked outside of the tent.
“Goddamn it JR, I told you to stay off my property,” he yelled and called his friend, Kenny Thompson, on the cell phone (they stayed on the phone with each other until minutes before his death).
JR came around the side of his tent, his gun in his hand, wearing his customary muscle shirt. John came out of the tent and yelled that everyone there would be “fined $5,000 for f*cking trespassing.” He went back in the tent and came out again with a handgun, sliding the action back with the safety still on,
said Diana.
The two pointed their guns at each other, standing about three feet apart. JR told him he had a warrant to search the property. An officer was approaching from behind, and Sutherland told him to back off. Then JR handed Sutherland the warrant.
Sutherland went back in the tent to read the warrant. The warrant gave authority for the state Department of Agriculture official (who stood well away) to tranquilize and microchip the animals. It also said that the facilities were in violation of the law and the violator had 30 days to correct it. Sutherland handed the search warrant to Weir, pacing while she read it.
Weir looked at JR and said, “Whatever happens today, I’m holding you personally responsible for.”
(Weir said deputies had JR leave the scene early on because he was so antagonistic.) Sutherland tucked the gun in the back pocket of his shorts where it stayed for the rest of the day. Dozens of officers arrived on the property fifteen minutes later.
For the next several hours, Sutherland talked with various officers near the tent and picnic table. Sheriff Dale Kowalkowski talked with Sutherland about the warrant and getting the situation resolved. Sutherland asked the sheriff for immunity for pulling the gun out in the first place, saying he didn’t mean to do it, but it “was more a less a reaction from getting woke up from a dead sleep with a gun pointing in his face,” Weir said. The sheriff said he didn’t have the authority to grant him immunity. Their conversation was calm and friendly.
Another officer talked to Sutherland about getting better fencing. Sutherland told him that he had already spent $13,000 on the large pen and couldn’t afford to double fence and pour concrete. Sutherland lived on an $800 disability check. He also said his fencing was already effective, but Bosley kept cutting it for the purpose of getting him in trouble with the law.
At one point, Weir went back in the tent, put on her son’s Michigan jacket, grabbed some goldfish crackers to eat and sat on the milk carton near the fire pit outside of the tent. Sutherland, she said, ate nothing that day, but smoked cigarettes and drank coffee. She believes he only took his Effexor (an anti-depressant) around noon. An officer gave her a Diet Pepsi.
A deputy also asked if she had been taken hostage — “No,” she said, and explained she wanted to interpret for Sutherland because he was deaf in one ear.
At one point, Kenny Thompson asked to talk to the sheriff on the cell phone. He requested to come onto the property because Sutherland wanted to relinquish his gun to him, but the sheriff said no because he feared that Thompson would be taken hostage.
For most of the day, there was a lot of chitchat between Sutherland and various officers.
Sutherland never pointed the gun or threatened anyone after the initial confrontation with JR. He repeatedly said he wouldn’t hurt anybody and was once a police officer himself. Thompson later told Weir that he had urged Sutherland to unload his gun.
Just before 2 pm, an officer told Sutherland that he was going to put a phone on the hood of the Bronco so he could talk to a negotiator. She said a “GI Joe,” dressed in a Desert Storm kind of outfit with a hard hat and shield delivered the phone with a cord on it. Weir asked him to bring it back to the picnic table and was told, “We can’t do that.”
Thompson, on the phone, begged Sutherland not to approach the Bronco. Weir asked him to give her his gun before going to the Bronco, but he told her, “Baby, I don’t want you getting hurt.” I said, “Yes, but I can just give it to ‘em. He said, ‘It’s not gonna go that way.’ I said, ‘Well, then go talk to them if that’s what you need to do.’”
Weir said that John kissed her on the forehead and went into Shilo’s pen, a dog he had bottle fed as a puppy, and gave all the dogs hugs, grabbed his cigarettes and coffee and walked toward the front of the Bronco. He knew he was going to have to serve jail time, and was saying good-bye, she said.
Weir saw a “GI Joe” walking down the road on the property line, west of the Bronco. “I said to Wolf, ‘You got GI Joe over here too.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, they’re in the trees and all over.’”
Weir was sitting down when John picked up the phone. She heard a shot come from the road behind her. She saw Sutherland’s head snap to the left and he turned around and faced the northwest where the shot came from. He had his hands in the air, and said, ‘You didn’t need to do that.’”
He then fell face forward and the “GI Joes,” about five to seven, “rushed to the Bronco on both sides and opened fire, bam, bam, bam bam. There were so many bams I couldn’t even tell them. They were right on top of him shooting… they were right there,” she said, choking up.
Because a small tent blocked her vision, she couldn’t see Sutherland after he fell. “Oh my god they shot him,” she yelled to Thompson on the phone. She jumped on top of her dog to protect her.
Right after the gunfire, Manistee County Deputy Falk yelled to Weir to get over to him, and put his hand up toward the road and said, “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot at her.” She crawled with her dog over to Falk.
“I owe Deputy Falk my life, and I’m thankful to him,” she said.
Weir didn’t know Sutherland was dead and immediately asked about the deputy. She was taken to the sheriff’s department and was interviewed six hours later. She was finally allowed to go home near 10 p.m.

Manistee Prosecutor Ford Stone’s Account
On November 30th, Prosecutor Stone issued his report. Officers legally arrived at Sutherland’s property around 10 a.m. with a valid search warrant. Because they knew Sutherland carried a gun and could be confrontational, officials from the state Department of Agriculture waited off the property. The search warrant authorized tranquilizing the animals for identity purposes and placing microchips in the animals.
Sutherland exited the tent unarmed, but came out again with a semi-automatic pistol, which he pointed at the officers.
Michigan law allows any person confronted with deadly force to respond with deadly force. At that point, Sutherland had committed a felonious assault upon the police officers. Officers could have responded with deadly force, but did not do so, Stone wrote.
After Sutherland brandished his gun, deputies asked for additional assistance and the Manistee County sheriff took command and an Emergency Response Team (a SWAT team) came to the scene. During this time, Sutherland refused to give up and remained armed. He was on the cell phone during the four-hour stand-off with a man who seemed to be “egging him on,” deputies told a Michigan State Police investigator.
Just before 2 p.m., the sheriff authorized a beanbag round to subdue Sutherland and emphasized that Sutherland be taken alive. (See related story on beanbags.)
Deputy Kempf communicated this information to Officer Andrew Grubb of the Traverse City Police Department and a member of the Emergency Response Team.
A trained negotiator arrived and a hard-wired phone was taken to the driver’s side of the Ford Bronco. Sutherland walked to the Bronco and picked up the phone, his gun still in his back pocket.
Just as Sutherland began speaking on the phone, Grubb fired a beanbag round and yelled “Beanbag!” It did not knock down or disable Sutherland, so he fired a second shot and Sutherland disappeared from view between the animal pen and the Bronco. He fired more beanbags, and the rest of the SWAT Team moved toward the Bronco and yelled to Sutherland to put his gun down and give up. Sutherland did not.
At this point, Sutherland was lying down in front of the Bronco aiming his drawn pistol toward the police officers. Grubb fired another beanbag. As he fired, Sutherland fired his weapon in response and hit Grubb. A shout went out, “Officer down!” The other officers immediately returned fire.
The autopsy report shows that the beanbag shots hit his abdomen, back and arm. There was a gunshot to his right cheek, along with four bullet entries in his stomach and chest.
The bullet that hit the hip of Grubb went clean through so there was no bullet to examine. Michigan State Police Sgt. Walter Armstrong said that proof that the bullet came from Sutherland’s gun will come from a ballistics report, but it has been long delayed because Sutherland’s gun was damaged and must be rebuilt.
The prosecutor wrote that he did not wait for ballistics results because “the number of eye witnesses made the tool mark and firearm identification findings less important.”
Interviews with deputies said that Sutherland said he would die before he would let his wolves be taken away, and that he mentioned “suicide by cop.”
“…. The shooting of John Sutherland is justified. The officers were faced with deadly force from nearly the beginning of the day. They chose to use a less lethal option, but Mr. Sutherland resorted to deadly force. The officers were entitled to respond to Mr. Sutherland’s deadly force with deadly force of their own.”

Diana’s questions
Diana Weir said she has many questions for the law enforcement officers.
Why did they need to put a phone on the hood of the Bronco when they’d been talking to him face to face all along? She believes it was to draw him out so they could shoot him. She said she never heard anyone yell “beanbag!” or “drop your weapon!” before the shots were fired. In fact, she believes the first shot came from an assault rifle from a deputy walking along the road.
She believes someone intentionally damaged Sutherland’s handgun so it couldn’t be proven that Sutherland never shot it, she said.
“It’s a cover-up, it’s a total cover-up,” she said.
Weir said she also has questions about the animal control officer. Why didn’t he tell them that the Department of Agriculture had identified their dogs as wolves and that Sutherland would now have to comply with the law, and perhaps work with him to do that.
Since the previous spring, they had been working with JR Nelson to get dog licenses. Nelson had required reference numbers for the rabbi shot vials. The delay in getting those numbers cost Sutherland $400 in fines.
Why did the search warrant say that the microchipping had to occur that very day, she wonders.
Then there is the question of common sense. When a man calls himself “Wolf” and regularly carries a gun in his back pocket, why confront him with so much firepower — 30 law enforcement officials, including snipers posted on rooftops and trees in camo gear with helmets and shields?
Instead of using a non-lethal beanbag gun to detain him, why not use non-lethal people? Why not use the former animal control officer, the woman who was able to get John’s gun with mere words? Why not Sutherland’s friends who repeatedly offered to mediate and take his gun? The biggest question: why not just leave? Sutherland wasn’t holding anyone hostage and the wolves weren’t running loose. No one was in danger.
She added that if the officers and the sheriff were truly worried about Sutherland using “deadly force,” then why did two officers take cover behind a propane tank?
Sutherland never said he wanted to commit “suicide by cop” or get shot, as deputies claimed. He did not want to die. They were going to get married in the spring, and Weir said that Sutherland had never been happier.

Conclusion
The sheriff and prosecutor did not return my phone calls so there are no immediate answers to Diana’s questions raised in this article.
It does seem that deputies were ready to end the “war” — they had been called to the property over and over again. Sutherland had been breaking the law for years, even if it was a misdemeanor, and there was intense animosity with the animal control officer.
John knew he was cornered, and it wasn’t just by a swarm of officers. He realized that the force of the state was now upon him. He also knew he didn’t have the money to comply and feared he would lose his wolves forever. He said at one point that day, it was “just the government taking one step closer to killing his wolves.”
This reporter’s conclusion: The deputies didn’t commit premeditated murder any more than Sutherland committed “suicide by cops.” This was a tragedy of too much gun power mixed with Sutherland’s terrible fear of losing the only thing that gave his life meaning.
Eileen Liska of the Michigan Humane Society who lobbied for the wolfdog law, said she was saddened by the event. In retrospect, she said it would have been great if the Wolf Dog Association could have stayed active and helped Sutherland early on.
“They were hostile and fought the law tooth and nail. After the law was passed, everyone went their own way, hiding the dogs, pretending they were dogs, going underground. Instead they could have said the law is here, let’s comply and let’s help each other.”
Meanwhile, the wolves were taken to a sanctuary near Muskegon and Diana, who is on a limited income, visits them as often as she can.
“Wolf made me promise that I would always keep them safe. And they are.”