Fred and Barney were two German Shepherds owned by Gerald Anthony Grice.
Biography[]
In the summer of 1975, an unemployed Brooklynite named Gerald Anthony Grice kidnapped and murdered a young girl, Blair Roche, whose family Grice believed were wealthy enough for a hefty ransom. Grice not only murdered the girl, but also butchered her body and fed it to his dogs, Fred and Barney.
Having traced Grice to his Brooklyn home, a disused dressmaker's shop called Modern Modes, Rorschach observed Fred and Barney fighting over a "knob of bone" in Grice's back yard, but initially did not think anything of it. Only after searching through the rest of the house did he come to the realization that the bone was a femur of the young girl's. In retaliation, Rorschach killed both dogs with Grice's meat cleaver, splitting each dog's head open. He waited for Grice to return home and threw both carcasses at him through the windows.
While being interviewed by Malcolm Long in Sing Sing, Walter Kovacs was shown an inkblot card which reminded him of one of the dead dogs lying on the ground with its head split open, but instead tells him that he sees 'a pretty butterfly'.[1]
Trivia[]
- The dogs themselves were named for Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble from The Flintstones.
- An image of a German Shepherd's head, alluding to Fred and Barney, can be seen on the front cover of the in-universe album, The Book of Rorschach by Sons of Pale Horse.[2]