Independent on Sunday, October 1992

You can hear the dogs from afar, yapping, shrieking, scratching at the walls, not their usual noise at all. Twelve big poodles in torment: a terrifying squeal, high and frantic, hanging in the dry Las Vegas air, hanging on the heat at two in the morning.

The dogs are in a trailer seven miles north of the city, high enough to see the neon of the Strip. A huge luxury trailer, half for them, half for their master, a 55-year-old man called Gerard Soules.

Thanks to Soules, these dogs were stars. They were ‘Les Poodles de Paris’, a worldwide attraction, one of the most successful circus acts ever. His act was called unique: a dozen creatures on their hind legs, camped up in feather boas and hats and little sequinned costumes, parading round the big tops dressed as Carmen Miranda or Mae West or Marilyn Monroe. Sometimes they would appear on ice. ‘Once seen, never forgotten!’ the ringmaster barked, with some authority.

But now, in the early hours of 4 June, the act has reached a grisly climax. The dogs have just seen their master clubbed and stabbed to death. A hundred knife wounds. Blood seeping from his half of the trailer into theirs.
The dogs realise what this means: no master, no Masterpiece of Canine Capers. The people from the Vegas dog pound will be coming later in the day, and they won’t much want another dozen mouths to feed. So the squealing and scratching never stops – that nasty, fevered howl; well, they don’t look much like Marilyn Monroe or Carmen Miranda now.

‘It was like in the fairy-tales. When he was five he packed a bag and told his mother he was off to join the circus. He was back home within two hours.’
Colleen Anderson, two years Gerard Soules’s junior, remembers him as ‘the best brother anyone could ever hope to have’. His younger siblings, two sisters and a brother, are tearful on the phone; he was a beautiful person – loyal, generous, talented. ‘He never forgot us, or where he came from.

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