TERROR AT MILE 103: A deranged wife-beater slipped through the cracks until the unthinkable happened

Last year at the end of April, Orrin Pinard wrote to a judge in Palmer requesting a four-month extension on his deadline for completing a court-ordered class for convicted batterers.

Pinard pled indigence, writing that “transportation and financial issues” prevented him from completing the class on time. The classes he would have attended were held in Wasilla, more than 60 miles from the one-room cabin on Pinard’s mother’s property on the Parks Highway where Pinard lived and terrorized his wife. The form he signed is filled out in careful, neat handwriting.

“I found a ride for my family violence intervention program and appreciate the extension,” he wrote.

Within 48 hours, before anyone could approve or deny his request, Orrin Pinard was back at his cabin beating his wife. She would escape with help from her mother-in-law, who had been babysitting the young couple’s toddler inside the main house on the property. The wife showed up in Seward and met with Alaska State Troopers three days after the assault. She still had bruises, including marks on her face where she’d been gagged and choked. She told troopers someone needed to check on the Parks Highway property. She feared Talkeetna-based troopers would respond too slowly if her mother-in-law were calling for help. She also told a terrifying story about being held captive for hours inside her one-room home.

Before she was choked, the wife told troopers, Pinard had coerced her into sexual acts with a dog, insisting it was a fetish she should satisfy. Afterward she was allowed to go to sleep, but awoke to a commotion. It was the sound of her husband raping the dog. She confronted him and he became enraged. The ensuing beating culminated with Pinard choking his wife with a wet T-shirt until she passed out.

“I was sure I would not survive,” she would later tell a judge at her husband’s sentencing.

Troopers were sent to the Pinard place on the Parks Highway and found the dead body of a medium-sized mixed-breed dog in the driveway. Pinard would admit to beating the dog to death, confirm his wife’s story and be arrested. He admitted to restraining his wife by tying a long-sleeved T-shirt over her face like a gag, according to an AST affidavit filed in Pinard’s most recent assault case. The trooper’s affidavit says Pinard admitted to having sex with the dog, saying he was bitten twice during the act.

“Orrin [Pinard] stated that he became angry for being bitten and ‘because the dog was causing problems in his marriage,’” investigator David Bower wrote, “so he bludgeoned the dog with a baseball bat, killing the dog.”

Pinard was in court Jan. 14 for sentencing. Throughout the 40-minute hearing there was a palpable air of avoidance as the prosecutor, defense attorney and judge all spoke about Pinard and his crimes. All three avoided talking about the rape of the dog. Also cloaked, but for legal reasons and not some sense of moral sensitivity, were documents describing Pinard’s psychiatric history, which the judge and attorneys talked about, but are not included in the public portion of the court files.

History of illness

Orrin Pinard, 23, has a history of mental illness. That much was brought to light at his sentencing hearing at the Palmer Courthouse. Assistant District Attorney Rachel Gernat told the court a psychologist had described Pinard as having schizoaffective and bipolar disorders. The report from that examination was shown to Superior Court Judge Eric Smith for sentencing purposes, but kept under seal.

Smith sentenced Pinard to serve at least four years in prison after being found guilty of one felony for assault and one misdemeanor for animal cruelty. The total sentence is nine years, with five suspended. The assault conviction is Pinard’s first felony. Once released, Pinard will have an additional seven years of probation, during which time he will have a court-approved mental health provider in addition to a probation officer.

The Alaska Legislature passed new cruelty to animals laws in 2010 that did not become effective until September 2010. Pinard could have faced three additional felony charges had the new law been in effect at the time he committed his crimes.

Judge Smith called Pinard’s case unusual and applied special stipulations to his seven years of probation. The defendant will be under the watchful eye of the state for the next 16 years, first in jail and afterward on probation. Pinard’s mental health provider will weigh in on whether Pinard is ever allowed to visit his child. (The child is a toddler, and was with his grandmother the night of the last assault.) Alaska law does not allow Judge Smith to require Pinard to register as a sex offender, but during probation Pinard will be required to disclose his mental health diagnosis in some situations.

“He would have to tell anyone who he has a significant relationship with,” Smith said during the hearing.

None of Pinard’s family members were in the courtroom during the sentencing. Pinard’s wife, who has filed for divorce, gave a statement over the phone. She told Judge Smith she had been punched, kicked and thrown down by her husband on previous occasions. She knew of his mental health problems.

“I wanted to be the wife who took care of her sick husband,” she told the court. She had tried to reconcile with her husband and get him care.

Early signs

Schizophrenia is characterized by psychotic breaks, an inability to know what is real and what isn’t. It most often surfaces in young adults, people in their late teens or 20s. Orrin Pinard’s court files do not show when he was first diagnosed, but he did have run-ins with the law that foreshadow the man who spun out of control last spring.

He was 19 when troopers arrested him at the Parks Highway property on Dec. 31, 2006, for assaulting a brother. The two were arguing over who would fix a broken stove. Orrin went into a rage and threw his brother into a wall. A trooper would later ask the brother to gauge his pain on a scale of one to 10. The boy said it was a three or four. The trooper asked him to gauge his fear, and the boy rated his fear at seven. To break the fight up, their mother threw water on Orrin “to get his attention” and later told the troopers she was afraid and did not know what might happen next.

About 15 months later, Palmer police were called to a deli in their town because a man, who was dressed only in two towels, was eating a sandwich without paying. Pinard was 20 years old at the time. The police report says Pinard explained to a deli employee that he was hungry and had no money. The deli clerk took the sandwich away and Pinard stayed until police arrived and repeated his explanation. He admitted to taking the sandwich, but again explained he was hungry.

“He said he understood that taking the sandwich and not having any money is the same as stealing,” the police officer wrote in the report.

Pinard had been married about 10 months in August 2009 the first time troopers arrested him for beating his wife. The fight began in the couple’s one-room cabin on Pinard’s mother’s property. At some point, Pinard was locked outside the cabin and broke the door down to get in. He hit the door at the hinges until screws began to pull out of the wall. Pinard’s child was 2 weeks old at the time, and Pinard’s mother fled the property with her grandchild. When troopers arrived, Pinard had his wife cornered in a room inside the main house and would not let her leave. At one point he had covered her mouth with his hand to stop her screaming. She was bleeding from the mouth when troopers arrived, and although Pinard admitted to causing the injury, he told troopers he did not know exactly how.

In love with a memory

Gernat, the prosecutor, described briefly in court the psychiatric history she wanted Judge Smith to review in considering Pinard’s sentence.

“He has been in and out of psychiatric hospitals for most of his life. He knows that he needs to stay medicated to basically act normal, and to act calm, and to not act out in rages,” Gernat said, adding that when he’s not medicated Pinard appears to be a danger to anyone he comes into contact with.

If Orrin Pinard has been slipping through the cracks of a psychological safety net, the most recent instance might be the batterers program he failed to finish, for lack of a ride to Wasilla. The people who run such programs know the difficulties in getting the service to rural and semi-rural places.

“This has been an issue for some time, and it’s about funding,” says Donn Bennice, the CEO of Alaska Family Services, the nonprofit that runs the violence intervention program Pinard was ordered by a judge to attend. “We do not have a batterers intervention program that meets in Talkeetna, and it’s because the resources are scarce in that area.”

Bennice runs a diverse social services nonprofit based in Palmer. AFS’s mission is to serve the entire Matanuska-Susitna Borough, which at more at 24,000 square miles encompasses much of Southcentral Alaska. The borough includes about 50 distinct communities, only a handful of which can be described as towns. Shelters operated by AFS help teen-agers and families in the Palmer-Wasilla area. The nonprofit also offers counseling to families. Bennice describes it as “a holistic approach” to family violence. To describe the program as lacking might be unfair in the context of Alaska, where tiny communities off the road system sometimes don’t even have police to call on when a batterer attacks his family.

The intervention program Orrin Pinard was meant to attend meets in Wasilla and is run by AFS. The courts can refer people to the program as part of a pre-sentencing agreement in misdemeanor assault cases. It’s a jail diversion program. In that aspect, it’s not unlike the alcohol safety programs people with DUI convictions can opt-in to as part of their sentence. (AFS runs some of those, too.) A probation period can go smoother for convicts who attend such classes.

Gernat also told Judge Smith about an assisted living program Pinard had been accepted to, but apparently declined to enter, in 2005. The program was referenced in a psych evaluation written to determine if Pinard should be allowed to live with his child after being jailed in 2009. Gernat said she called the report “instructive” and said it was the most recent psychological evaluation available to the judge.

The Pinards saw the family violence intervention class as a step toward reconciliation after the fight in 2009. Orrin Pinard was jailed that time on Aug. 1, and by the end of September a plea deal had been struck. He entered a guilty plea to one misdemeanor for domestic violence. He’d be released after serving 90 days and agree to follow a mental health plan, according to a clerk’s notes in the court file.

In her telephone testimony at the sentencing hearing, Pinard’s wife, now a survivor of domestic violence, recalled being hopeful in 2009 when her husband came out of jail.

“I worked with the state to try and reunite our family after he was jailed for domestic violence. That is when we started going to classes,” she told Judge Smith. “After that reunification things started to go downhill. I was punched hard enough to draw blood several times. I was also kicked, thrown down, choked and restrained, and insulted often. By that time I found out I was in love with a memory, and that the man standing before me was no longer the man I fell in love with.”

Sentencing

Orrin Pinard was calm and quiet during his last courtroom appearance. His face was blank. Ruddy cheeks were the only color on his pale, white skin. He is balding and barrel-chested with brown hair and a bushy reddish beard. As a teenager, he set a school record in the bench press at Susitna Valley High School by lifting 315 pounds. Prosecutor Gernat told Judge Smith that size and strength matter when it comes to deciding whether Pinard is a threat to society.

“He can’t help his size, but the court cannot ignore that,” Gernat said. She told the judge that Pinard is aware of his psychiatric problems, and yet he has told investigators that his wife caused all the problems in their relationship. Gernat said Pinard has assaulted jailers and workers in psychiatric hospitals, attacking people who intended to help him.

If Pinard felt remorse, he didn’t describe the emotion very well in court.

“I wish that I did not have a mental disorder that made me go psychotic and do these things that I can’t ever take back,” Pinard told the judge. “I’m glad that I am in jail now because I have gotten on a medication that has no side effects, and that was the reason I had turned down medications in the past.”

Pinard claimed that under previous drug therapies, he had lost his will to live. He said he is now on Haldol. That’s a powerful anti-psychotic also known as Haloperidol. It’s prescribed to suppress delusional thinking. It also dampens emotions, and is given to many patients who have uncontrollable mood swings. Pinard said in court he only had to take a shot once every three weeks. Haldol was good, Pinard said, because he could not forget his daily dose.

Gernat told the judge Pinard’s actions were not typical of domestic violence cases in which the perpetrator is focused on battering one romantic partner.

“Looking at Mr. Pinard’s history, the state can feel confident in saying that he appears to be a danger to anybody who he comes into contact with, because of his deep-seated psychiatric problems,” she said.

If it’s true Orrin Pinard’s problems and certain details of his crimes are atypical of batterers, it’s also true he has much in common with most of the men — and they are mostly men — who terrorize their own families. Gernat addressed those commonalities, too.

“He would use something or someone smaller and weaker than him, that was not able to resist, so he was able to use it both for the power and control we so often see in this situation,” Gernat told the judge. “… So we have an individual who is treating living animals and human beings as objects to him, that he can use and discard as is necessary to him. And he beat the dog to death. This isn’t a euthanizing procedure. He beat the dog with a metal baseball bat that was later recovered by the troopers.”