CADAVER DOGS

Snifferdog wrote: I wonder if the judge has read Dr Amarals book?

PeterMac wrote:

Snifferdog wrote: I wonder if the judge has read Dr Amarals book?

Probably bought a copy at WH Smiths, in English, at Heathrow,
Didn't one of their paid Perjurers witnesses say she had  seen it in English - in a bookshop - in England ?

Truthandjustice wrote: I am guessing that he realises that death in the apartment is now a given to SY (it would be beyond belief if SY ignored these reliable dogs).

mysterion wrote:May have been said before but why didn`t Gerry suggest that a body may have passed through 5A before their arrival? If they knew Madeleine was abducted that would be the obvious response followed by some revulsion at the macabre scenario.

PeterMac wrote:

mysterion wrote:May have been said before but why didn`t Gerry suggest that a body may have passed through 5A before their arrival? If they knew Madeleine was abducted that would be the obvious response followed by some revulsion at the macabre scenario.

An interesting point, but he knew that a quick scan of the previous bookings would be likely to show show that the number leaving
was approximately the same as the number arriving.

Even McStatistics can't get over that one.

PMR wrote:If you scroll down the BBC news website there is a big feature on assistance dogs and what their harness colours mean , included are dogs that can tell when a diabetics blood sugar is dropping , and seizure warning dogs that can predict epileptic fits up to 50 minutes before they occur
If I didn't know better I would suspect the BBC was trying to emphasise how skilled dogs can be !

Mrs Holmes wrote:GM's reasoning is so contradictory. He's keen for OG to catch the guy who broke in/abused the other holiday makers - but (for the purposes of this argument let's assume for a moment that he is innocent) he would discredit the dogs findings, rather than reason that this could be an unknown victim, and let a potential murderer walk free. How does that work?

The truth is it doesn't work, IMO the only other plausible explanation for this scenario is that he is covering his backside - and why would a person need to do that if they were innocent?

XTC wrote:

Mrs Holmes wrote:GM's reasoning is so contradictory. He's keen for OG to catch the guy who broke in/abused the other holiday makers - but (for the purposes of this argument let's assume for a moment that he is innocent) he would discredit the dogs findings, rather than reason that this could be an unknown victim, and let a potential murderer walk free. How does that work?

The truth is it doesn't work, IMO the only other plausible explanation for this scenario is that he is covering his backside - and why would a person need to do that if they were innocent?

I've read that the current lot of PJr 's think that the perpetrator was from the UK and the crime was a one off and lives back in the UK.

This is from a 'source' close to the current investigation so make of it what you will.

If this is a true version of what the PJ privately think - why is SY running round the streets and house in PdL looking for mythical villains with the permission of the Portuguese Authorities?

None of this makes any sense to me at all.

Tony Bennett wrote:

XTC wrote:

Mrs Holmes wrote:GM's reasoning is so contradictory. He's keen for OG to catch the guy who broke in/abused the other holiday makers - but (for the purposes of this argument let's assume for a moment that he is innocent) he would discredit the dogs findings, rather than reason that this could be an unknown victim, and let a potential murderer walk free. How does that work?

The truth is it doesn't work, IMO the only other plausible explanation for this scenario is that he is covering his backside - and why would a person need to do that if they were innocent?

I've read that the current lot of PJr 's think that the perpetrator was from the UK and the crime was a one off and lives back in the UK.

This is from a 'source' close to the current investigation so make of it what you will.

If this is a true version of what the PJ privately think - why is SY running round the streets and house in PdL looking for mythical villains with the permission of the Portuguese Authorities?

None of this makes any sense to me at all.

It makes complete sense if you consider, as I did from the day Rebekah Brooks ordered David Cameron to set up Operation Grange, that the only purpose of Grange was to 'find the abductor'.

This was confirmed many months later when a Freedom of Information request eventually forced the Metropolitan Police to state that their remit was "To review the case as if the abduction had happened in the UK".  

Incidentally in answer to the same FoI Act request the Met refused to say who decided the remit - a very very important question indeed.

Absolutely everything Redwood has said and done since, including his pompous and robotic sounding phrases (drawing everything back to zero, a revelation moment, not following with our thinking etc.) and his extravagant use of possibly £250,000 or even double that on his helicopters-and pickaxe act in PdL, reinforces my view that he is still on a focussed mission to 'find the abductor'.

And for this purpose he dredged up the dubious 'Smithman' sighting

Woofer wrote:

But why don't the PJ just tell them: 'look here matey - don't come here with your preposterous angle on this case, we all know who did it - now p*** off if you're not going to help us with an honest investigation`.

Tony Bennett wrote:

Woofer wrote:

But why don't the PJ just tell them: 'look here matey - don't come here with your preposterous angle on this case, we all know who did it - now p*** off if you're not going to help us with an honest investigation`.

I've given a likely answer to this many times in recent weeks, Woofer.

You must have missed them.    

They have done it under media pressure. They are IMO simply going through the motions in order to appease the British establishment, media and police. They are doing it to avoid the charge being levelled against them that they refused to co-operate. They are IMO not investigating anything at all, having long ago given up the prospect of bringing anyone to trial.

Plus, as has been noted, Grange has agreed to foot the bill for everything the Met have required of the Portuguese: Hire of Alouette Mark III helicopters, personnel to ask the rogatory questions, translators, security officers, blokes with pickaxes etc.

Someone on high has probably decreed: "Let the stupid British police come here and make utter fools of themselves, unearthing a few rabbit bones on waste ground - but rook them for every euro we can screw out of them".

EVRD and CSI Dogs
“ The tasking for this operation was as per my normal Standard Operating
Procedures. The dogs are deployed as search assets to secure evidence and
locate human remains or Human blood.”
….. Martin Grimes

The canine team were not brought in by the British & Portuguese authorities to look for an abducted child, they were deployed to look for evidence of accidental or non accidental death.

At the time of biological death the individual scent emitted by someone undergoes a transformation. This change though not immediately detectable by humans, does affect the composition of the scent detected by dogs. The body goes through five stages of decomposition before it is skeletonised and the dogs are trained to react to the scent picture through the complete spectrum.

There are no laboratory detection processes or equipment as sensitive as the canine’s olfactory system. The dog’s natural hunting instinct and their ability to detect scents cannot be defeated.

Unlike humans who would only smell the pleasing scent of a freshly baked cake, a dog is capable of distinguishing the scent of every individual ingredient used in the recipe simply by smelling the cake. They can locate a scent no matter how much it is intermingled with other odours .

When a person dies decomposition begins immediately protein synthesis in the body stops. With nothing to maintain the protective lining in the gut digestive enzymes eat the body from the inside out creating amino acids. While this is happening bacteria feed on those amino acids. According to a study in 2008 from the Journal of Forensic Science the process of decomposition produces 478 different scent signatures.

A dead human body is called a cadaver and dogs that are specifically trained to find bodies or remains of a body including the chemical residue left behind when a body has been moved, are classified as ‘Cadaver Dogs’ and or Human Remains Detection Dogs. These dogs are capable of finding the scent of a cadaver where there is no physically retrievable evidence.

When someone dies the scent from the cadaver, the smell of human decomposition gasses in addition to skin rafts emanates into the air. By definition scent is the bacterial, cellular and vaporous debris enshrouding the individual

Tests have proven that residual scent from a cadaver will last in a building with minimum environmental influences or human disturbance for at least 1 Year, even after the objects where the scent source originated had been removed.

All British police dogs, irrespective of the discipline they are trained in, must be licensed to work operationally. To obtain the license they have to pass a test at the completion of their training, and then again every year until they retire. The standards required to become operational are laid down by the (ACPO) sub-committee on police dogs and are reviewed on a regular basis to ensure that training and licensing reflects the most appropriate methods and standards.

All training and operational work is recorded, these records may be discoverable in court proceedings and may become evidence of the canine team’s reliability, the type and amount of training that the team has experienced before and after certification and confirmed operational outcomes can be used as a factor in determining their capability.

From Martin Grimes Report ;

“The dog will alert to the presence of cadaver scent whether it is at source or some distance away from a deposition site

False' positives are always a possibility; to date Eddie has not so indicated operationally or in training. In six years of operational deployment in over 200 criminal case searches the dog has never alerted to meat based and specifically pork foodstuffs designed for human consumption. Similarly the dog has never alerted to 'road kill', that is any other dead animal.”

The E.R.V.D. has successfully in training and in operational casework located
Human cadavers, whether in the whole or parts thereof, deposited surface or
sub-surface to a depth of approximately 1 metre shortly after death (though
precise times are not determinable) to the advanced stages of decomposition
and putrefaction through the skeletal. This includes incinerated remains even if
large quantities of accelerant have been involved … “

Places and Items where the EVRD and CSI Dogs Signaled

The first alert was given with the dogs head in the air without a positive area
being identified.

Rear bedroom of the apartment in the immediate right hand corner by
the door.

Living room, behind sofa.

Veranda outside parent's bedroom.

Garden area directly under veranda.

Cuddle Cat

Clothing belonging to Kate McCann x 2 - Trousers and a Top

Red Children’s T-Shirt

Hired Car – Renault Scenic
When passing a vehicle I now know to be hired and in the possession of the McCann family,
the dog's behaviour changed substantially. This then produced an alert
indication at the lower part of the driver’s door where the dog was biting and
barking. I recognise this behaviour as the dog indicating scent emitting from
the inside of the vehicle through the seal around the door.

Hired Car – Key Fob

Five apartments were searched using the EVRD.
Ten vehicles were screened in an underground multi storey car park at Portimao.
The dogs only alerted to property and items associated with the McCann family.

Martin Grime, the dogs’ instructor himself [20], mentions in his report:

“Whereas there may be no retrievable evidence for court purposes this may well assist intelligence gathering in Major Crime investigations”; or scientist Dr John Lowe [21] who refers that the FSS has no scientific support about the use of the dogs as a fundament for the collection of biological residues and that normally take the handler’s word for certification, that asserts that the dogs are more sensitive than any chemical technique or other techniques that are normally used by crime scene sector experts"

Mark Harrison

About 4 months after the disappearance the investigation took a new direction after Mark Harrison (Highly respected National Search Adviser NPIA (National Police Improvement Agency) for Missing persons Searches, Homicides and Big scale Natural disasters in the United Kingdom) arrived to Algarve and started working with the Portuguese police, Leicester police and the Scotland Yard members present in the field. After one week Mark Harrison made a report where he stated that there were large possibilities of Madeleine being dead and her body concealed somewhere around the area. It was also him who advised for the need to get help from dogs specialized in finding dead bodies. It is also interesting to know that from the vast experience of Mark Harrison in cases of homicides of under 5 years old victims in the UK since 1960 there were 1528 cases in which 82% of them were committed by the parents and 96% were committed by persons with close relations with the victims. Only 4% were committed by people not known by the victims.

The two English dogs were presented as an indispensable help to the investigation, after their abilities and the manner in which they are trained were explained in detail, as well as the fact that they both react to blood traces and cadaver odours, without a single episode of “false positives” in the investigations.

In a report, Mark Harrison listed cases of success that offered a guarantee of reliability. And he asserted that if the dogs came to signal Maddie’s death, then it would be a fact.

Meredydd Hughes, Chief Constable said:
” Keela’s training gives the force an edge when it comes to forensic investigation, which we should recognise and use more often. Martin has developed this capability through innovation and experience, and we are now considering how best to develop the training further. We know other forces are interested, both here and abroad, and we must see what opportunities we can develop. We know we have an operationally excellent dog section, and our specialist dogs are being developed in a unique way.”

Team McCann counter-attack

Gazeta Digital: “Kate and Gerry McCann's legal team has contacted American lawyers over a case where key sniffer dog evidence was thrown out of court in the hope that it may help them fight any charges that they were involved in the killing of their daughter; according to today's edition of The Thelegraph. Angus McBride and Michael Caplan “consulted the legal team of Eugene Zapata, 68, who is accused of murdering his estranged wife Jeanette in 1976. But a judge ruled last month that the evidence was no more reliable than "the flip of a coin" and could not be put before a jury” writes The Telegraph, quoting the judge's decision. The sniffer dogs brought to Praia da Luz by a South Yorkshire police special team, Eddie and Keela, are considered the best and only ones with the capacity to detect the scent of a corpse or blood even months after incidents happened.

Smell in the Hired Vehicle

Michael Wright (friend who went out to Portugal several times) : "I noted some disagreeable smells on a number of occasions which I judged to have come from the twins' nappies. Discarded nappies were collected in rubbish bags and held until thrown into the [rubbish] bins, [thereby] provoking smell. I have no knowledge of anything spilling from any article nor of any cleaning of the car after such a hypothetical spill."

Alexander Cameron (Gerry's brother-in-law) : "On one occasion, I believe it was on July of 2007, I took Patricia to the supermarket. We carried bags in the boot (trunk) of the Renault Scenic; bought various items including fresh fish, shrimp and beef. When we unloaded the shopping bags, we noticed that blood has run out of the bottom of the plastic bag. After this shopping trip and still in the month of July 2007, I began to notice a strange odour in the car. I did not give it much importance and assumed it was likely due to the leakage from the rubbish bags or from the blood which had escaped from the shopping bags. As a result, we removed the carpet from the boot (trunk) in order to clean it. I tossed (beat) the boot carpet to remove any particles and cleaned it with a wet cloth and left it to air out."

The witness who lived near the McCanns’ second home, in Aldeia da Luz, who says she witnessed an uncommon fact about the McCanns’ hire car, where the dogs detected cadaver odour and remains that may belong to Maddie, was not heard, either. This neighbour has signed a document authorising the broadcast of her deposition that identifies her, but fearing threats and pressures, she doesn’t show her face.

This is an interesting matter, when I left the Criminal Investigation Department in Portimão, in October 2007, nothing was known about this vehicle, about this issue of the open car boot. We knew that inside the vehicle cadaver odour and bodily fluids had been found, where Madeleine McCann’s DNA profile was extracted from, with 15 alleles. Months later, there is a jurist, who lives nearby, who came to report that after the McCanns arrived at this villa, they saw the car boot open from then on.

Neighbour: "I drive down this street every day to turn my car around at that end, and every time that I passed the house, and I looked at the car, and the car always had an open boot door, day or night. I often passed at night, and always verified it. It was a fact, I reported it, and that was it."It’s important to report the following: that lady, that jurist, was never heard at the Polícia Judiciária because her deposition was not considered to be relevant, which is strange. While she was not heard, while a rogatory letter was sent to England, relatives of Gerald and Kate McCann came out to say that they had transported, inside this car boot, food from the supermarket, namely a meat package that leaked blood.

The great question is how the family heard about the witness, despite the fact that she was not heard by the PJ, and tried to reply to the observed facts.

Gerry McCann: sniffer dogs are not reliable

Sniffer dogs have a high failure rate, according to Gerry McCann. In an interview with the Portuguese weekly Expresso, when asked to comment about Eddie and Keela searches at Praia da Luz, Gerry said that a study made in USA proved that those dogs were not reliable.
Sniffer dogs were tested, according to Gerry McCann, with boxes containing vegetables, bones, garbage and some human remains. For 10 hours, four sets of boxes were left in ten rooms. After the boxes were removed, the dogs were called in and “failed in two thirds of the cases”, said the father of Madeleine McCann.
Eddie and Keela handler, Martin Grimes, in a statement that is in the DVD files of the investigation of Madeleine’s disappearance, says that the dogs have been used in around 200 cases and never gave a “false alert”.
Published: 18 Dec 2007

FURIOUS Gerry McCann believes sniffer dogs used to find Maddie clues in the family's hire car were MANIPULATED by cops.

The animals appeared to detect traces of the four-year-old's DNA in the Renault Scenic - rented 25 days after she vanished.
This lead to Kate and Gerry, both 39, being made suspects in their daughter's disappearance in Praia da Luz, Portugal.
But Gerry, from Rothley, Leics, who was shown a video of the search, told lawyers the animals' evidence was unreliable.
A source close to the couple said last night: "Gerry says a dog went up to the Scenic, sniffed around and went to head off. He watched the dog being brought back to the vehicle.
"Finally, it reacts around the boot area. Gerry was open-mouthed at that, he feels the dog was manoeuvred into a position where it could react."

The extraordinary public reactions of Doctors Kate and Gerry McCann when they were told that the cadaver dog and the blood-hound had detected the ‘smell of death’ and blood in Apartment 5A, in the Renault Scenic, and on the clothes of Dr Kate McCann and Madeleine;

The evidence from the cadaver dog and the blood-hound were convincing enough on their own. But the McCanns then went on to strongly reinforce the evidence that Madeleine had died in Apartment 5A by their extraordinary reactions when that evidence was first reported.

To most people - if their child really had been abducted - the news that the ‘smell of death’ had been found in their holiday apartment, and in their car, would have prompted an outpouring of grief and concern for their child. It would have prompted reactions such as: Who hired the car before us?, or - Is anyone else known to have died in our apartment or in the hire car?

But this was not how the McCanns reacted. Instead, speaking through a variety of sources, including their £75,000-a-year spokesman, Clarence Mitchell, ‘friends of the family’ and ‘sources close to the McCanns’ legal team’, the McCanns came up with the following five explanations for why human cadaverine - the ‘smell of death’ - and blood, had been found in their apartment and in the car they hired:

(a) First, Dr Kate McCann claimed (at first indirectly via her mother, not directly) that the ‘smell of death’ may have been found on her clothes because she was said to have been in close proximity with no fewer than six corpses in her last two weeks at work. So far as this excuse for the presence of the ‘smell of death’ is concerned, there is doubt as to whether she did actually visit six corpses. That has never been verified by the McCanns. Further, those Doctors who have to certify the cause of death do not always handle the body nor handle it long enough or closely enough for the smell of death to be transferred to clothes. It also seems unlikely that a person who really had worked in such close proximity with corpses would take the same clothes on holiday with them that they used in working close to corpses.

(b) Second, Dr Kate McCann claimed that the ‘smell of death’ was found on the pink soft toy ‘Cuddle Cat’ because she ‘sometimes took Cuddle Cat to work’. The presence of the smell of death on Cuddle Cat was particularly difficult for the McCanns to explain. As a newspaper report based on police sources put it: “Kate didn’t contradict the fact that her two pieces of clothes and the stuffed animal [Cuddle Cat] had been signaled by the English dogs trained to find cadaver odor. She justified it by her profession. Kate McCann’s mother alleged that as a doctor at the Leicester health centre, she was directly present at six deaths before she came to Portugal on holiday, giving the same excuse for Madeleine’s stuffed animal, that was with her in the months after her daughter disappeared”.

Dr Kate McCann once again claimed that the ‘smell of death’ must have been transferred on to Cuddle Cat by her working on the corpses during the two weeks before going on holiday to work. Quite apart from it being unlikely that a mother would take a child’s favorite stuffed animal to work, never mind having it with her when she was close to corpses, it appears that experts say that it is not usually possible for the ‘smell of death’ to be transferred in this way. Even if the smell of death could be transferred in such a way - which the experts rule out - the McCanns would still have to account for the presence of the ‘smell of death’ in their apartment, and on the car they hired three weeks after Madeleine went missing.

(c) Third, the McCanns claimed that if DNA, thought to be Madeleine’s, was found in the boot of their car, then it could have come from the children’s dirty nappies, which they carried in the boot. First, it is unlikely, though certainly possible, that anyone would carry dirty nappies around in this way. Second, it must be remembered that the blood-hound, Keela, found the smell of blood in the hired car, not just ‘body fluids’. The ‘dirty nappy’ excuse therefore also doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

(d) Fourth, the McCanns claimed that the ‘smell of death’ could have come from rotting meat that Dr Gerry McCann was taking to the local rubbish dump from time to time. This is also impossible, as the scent from dead animals does not produce the same ‘cadaverine’ as human cadaver scent. The cadaver dogs are trained to detect only human cadaverine. Probably Dr Gerry McCann didn’t realise this when he made his comment.

(e) Fifth, the McCanns said that any blood found in the flat (apparently found having oozed underneath the tiles in the living room behind the sofa and where the wall and the floor meet) might have come from Madeleine ‘grazing her leg when she boarded the plane’, or perhaps a nosebleed. These explanations seem highly unlikely, given the amount of blood that would be needed for a small amount to seep through the tiles. The ‘knee incident’ occurred elsewhere, the day their holiday began. Any light bleeding would surely have stopped well before they even got to Praia da Luz. In addition, it is hardly likely that blood from a graze on the knee would be located at the edge of a room where the wall joins the floor. Nosebleeds usually leave only a few spots of blood (if any) on flooring, being largely contained by clothing or a handkerchief or similar over the nose. It’s highly unlikely that Madeleine would have sat still while copious quantities of blood poured from her nose on to the tiled floor, right by the living room wall.

In addition to these excuses for the apparent presence of both the smell of death and Madeleine’s blood, the McCanns and their ever-growing team of PR advisers and lawyers immediately poured scorn on the evidence of the cadaver dog and the blood-hound. They quickly cited, for example, an Irish court case where the judge would not accept the cadaver dog evidence alone, because it was not corroborated. They claimed there were Irish and American lawyers who had been able to cast doubt on cadaver dog evidence, pointing to a U.S. study which allegedly showed that cadaver dogs could be fallible. Yet cadaver dog evidence has played a vital part in securing the conviction of murderers in a number of countries. And we know from Mark Grimes that Eddie and Keela had never once been wrong in over 200 cases where they detected the smell of death or blood.

Let us ask ourselves, also, whether pouring scorn on the evidence of a cadaver dog in another court case would be amongst the first reactions of genuinely loving, grieving parents, on being informed that the smell of death had been found in their apartment and car?

And just to put a bit of spin on it ? ;

McCanns urged use of police sniffer dogs -
Couple became suspects because of the forensic tests they had requested
The couple, worried that inquiries by the Policia Judiciaria were losing momentum, asked detectives last month to re-examine the apartment where their daughter went missing and also for the use of sniffer dogs to seek fresh clues.

mysterion wrote:An analogy would be that you bought a car 4 days ago and you get stopped by the police. They open your boot and send in a cadaver dog. There is a positive response. Do you:

a) explain that you only just bought the car and the news has shocked and sickened you?
b) say nothing?
c) try to discredit the dog?

Black Dahlia case solved? Cadaver dog finds possible death scene 0

By Chris E. Hayner
Feb 04th, 2013

It's been 66 years since Elizabeth Short, also known as "The Black Dahlia," was killed in Los Angeles, Cal. However, her murder remains unsolved. One man thinks he knows who did it, though. Steve Hodel is a former Los Angeles Police Department detective, and author of the book, "Black Dahlia Avenger." He also believes he is the son of the killer.

His father, George Hodel, was a doctor, and the prime suspect in the killing. The doctor first came under scrutiny after he was charged with molesting his 14-year-old daughter. He was later acquitted after a witness recanted their testimony. When being investigated in Short's death, he was put under surveillance by the police. However, before charges could be filed, the elder Hodel abandoned his family and fled the country, relocating to Asia. He eventually died in 1999.

Now, Steve believes he might finally be closing in on the evidence to solve the case once and for all. The SB Sun reports Steve teamed up with another retired police officer, Sgt. Paul Dostie, and a Labrador Retriever named Buster. Buster is cadaver dog, trained to locate the smell of human decomposition.

Hodel, Dostie, and Buster investigated Hodel's childhood home, where he believes the murder took place. Buster "alerted" the retired policemen at several locations in the home's basement. Soil samples were collected and sent off to be tested, so for now Hodel waits for the results.

Could the infamous Black Dahlia case be about to be solved? Cadaver dog discovers death scent at Hollywood home of suspect 66 years after the horrific murder
The severely mutilated body of Elizabeth Short was discovered in 1947
The case remains one of the oldest unsolved murder cases in L.A. history
Steve Hodel believes his father killed the Black Dahlia at the family home and later fled the country
A Cadaver dog has discovered the faint trace of human remains in the basement and soil samples are being tested