Fred and Barney

Fred and Barney were the names of the two German Shepards owned by Gerald Anthony Grice, an unemployed Brooklynite who, in the summer of 1975, 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.

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, realizing that the bone belonged to the young girl only after searching the rest of the house. In retaliation, Rorschach killed both dogs with Grice's large cleaver, splitting each dog's head open. Rorschach waited for Grice to return home and threw both carcasses through the windows of Grice's house, one of which landed on Grice himself.

While being interviewed by Dr. Malcolm Long in prison, Walter Kovacs was shown a inkblot card which reminded him of one of the dead dogs lying on the ground with its head split open.

The dogs themselves were named for Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble, popular cartoon characters from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon The Flintstones.