Those incredibly 'unreliable' DOGS............again!

The Suzanne Pilley Murder (4 May 2010) and Murder Conviction of David Gilroy (15 March 2012)

Not sure if this case has been raised before? Anyway, thought it might be of interest.

Note, the conviction relied heavily on the positive reaction of the cadaver dogs from South Yorkshire Police - who indicated in a basement and the boot of Gilroy's car. Even more interestingly, the forensic team (unlike in the Madeleine McCann case) found no supporting DNA in the areas indicated by the cadaver dogs (it was suggested that cleansing had been carried out), but the dog evidence still stood. I am not sure whether this is because the case was heard under Scottish Law. The jury found Gilroy guilty and, considering the apparent lack of other evidence, the dog indications would seem to have been the main deciding factor. Suzanne's body has never been found. The conviction has been to appeal, which was rejected.

Despite this case having been under Scottish Law, surely it sets a precedent? Let's not forget that the McCanns jumped on the Eugene Zapata case (US) when the judge threw out the cadaver dog evidence in September 2007. When Zapata pleaded guilty soon after, he admitted that his wife's corpse had been in every location the dogs had indicated (dogs used in 2005/06; murder 1976; therefore, 30 year gap). The McCanns said no more about it. However, if the Mcs were happy to rely on US law then they must also be prepared to accept Scottish law. 'Shooting' and 'foot' are two words which come to mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Suzanne_Pilley

This case involved a boy who went missing in 2012.  His father even went on a TV talk show ( Dr Phil)  to do the whole 'grieving father' act. On TV he tried to deflect blame onto the child's mother.


"Dylan Redwine’s Father Arrested, Charged With Son’s Murder


DURANGO, Colo. (CBS4) – The La Plata County Sheriff’s Office confirmed Saturday that Mark Redwine, the father of Dylan Redwine, was arrested Saturday and charged with his son’s murder.
The arrest comes after a grand jury in Durango issued an indictment for probable cause against Mark Redwine.


Dylan Redwine disappeared in November 2012 during a court-ordered visitation at his father’s home in Durango. Dylan, 13 years old at the time of his murder, was staying at his father’s residence for the Thanksgiving holiday.
Dylan messaged his mother in Colorado Springs when he arrived at his father’s house on Nov. 18. He also texted a friend in Bayfield and made plans for the next morning. He was not heard from again.
Dylan was reported missing by his mother, Elaine Hallm the next day. That day, the first of several searches was conducted.
Searchers found human remains in June of 2013 near Vallecito, about eight miles away from Mark Redwine’s home. DNA testing confirmed the remains to be Dylan’s.
In a copy of the grand jury’s indictment provided to CBS4, details of the case became public.


“Mark Redwine and Dylan Redwine had argued and fought on their previous visit, they had not been getting along leading up to the court ordered visit, and several witnesses stated that Dylan Redwine did not want to visit Mark Redwine. Text messages indicated Dylan Redwine had asked to stay with a friend rather than his father the same night of his arrival, a request that was denied by Mark Redwine. Dylan Redwine.”


The indictment describes how Dylan’s blood was found in Mark Redwine’s living room furniture and floor. A cadaver dog also detected the scent of a corpse at several locations in the home, on the clothing Mark Redwine reported he was wearing that night, and his pickup truck.


In November of 2015, Dylan’s skull was found a mile and a half away from the first recovery site. A wildlife officer told investigators that no animal known to the area would have transported a body through difficult, uphill terrain for that distance. Forensic anthropologists determined the skull had injuries consistent with blunt force trauma and knife marks."
http://denver.cbslocal.com/2017/07/22/colorado-father-dylan-redwine/

The Nose Knows

Can cadaver dogs really sniff out 30-year-old remains?

April 19 2012

Police on Thursday revived their search for Etan Patz, a 6-year-old who disappeared in 1979 en route to a New York City bus stop, after a cadaver-sniffing dog recently detected the odor of human remains in a basement near Patz’s SoHo home. Can dogs really smell 33-year-old remains?
Yes, if you have the right dog. Genetics matter: beagles, bloodhounds, German shepherds, and Labrador retrievers are best, although many breeds are appropriate as long as the dogs prove smart and eager to please. Education is also crucial. At coaching centers for “canine law enforcement officers,” there’s a rigorous training during which the pooch is exposed either to human remains (bits of bone, blood, or nail clippings) or to “pseudoscents” that simulate the death odor. Dogs can only indicate the presence of a smell, not an actual cadaver—but their sensitivity to the olfactory traces of decomposition means they can sometimes tell where a body was even after it’s been removed. Still, sniffer dogs are not always reliable: Sometimes they get waylaid by any decaying organic matter (e.g. a rotten log), and similar chemical signatures make it impossible for them to distinguish between humans and pigs. Thus, handlers are taught always to be on the alert for false positives.
Researchers from the University of Alabama, hoping to zero in on how long the scent of death might linger at a crime scene, designed a test for the state police’s cadaver dogs. A single human vertebra, more than 30 years old, was buried 12 inches deep. The dogs were let loose across a 300-by-150-foot plot, and several succeeded in sniffing out the dry bone fragment. So it’s certainly possible that the canines recruited for Etan Patz’s search could detect parts of a 33-year-old body hidden in the basement on Prince Street. A variety of factors, however, mediate the strength of the death odor and how quickly it dissipates. Temperature, humidity, the softness or hardness of the ground, and the amount of degrading matter all play a role, as does the physiology of the dog. (A heavily panting pooch can’t scent very well.)  
No one knows exactly what dogs are smelling when they indicate the possible presence of remains. Well-trained cadaver dogs will not flag a living person or an animal. Possible scents include two byproducts of decomposition: putrescine and cadaverine. Although these compounds are common to all decaying material, an ace cadaver dog has such fine-tuned senses, it can differentiate human remains from most animals’. Belgian researchers at the Royal Military Academy in Brussels recently isolated a compound, dimethyl sulphide, that trained dogs will detect and respond to. The sulfide itself accompanies putrefaction in many kinds of organic matter, including human.
Explainer thanks Maria Claxton of the South Carolina Search and Rescue Dog Association and Keith Jacobi of the University of Alabama.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2012/04/etan_patz_search_renewed_can_cadaver_dogs_smell_30_year_old_corpses_.html

An elderly woman who went missing has been found by a sniffer dog because she bottled her scent.

The woman, who has dementia, disappeared from her Florida home for around two hours on Monday.

But she was found less than five minutes after a sniffer dog was given a sample of her scent to trace.

The elderly woman, who made the sample around two years ago, was returned home safely.

In a Facebook post, Citrus County Sheriff's Office said: "Do you have a SCENT PRESERVATION KIT? K9 Ally hopes that you do.

"Last night K9 Ally and her handler, Deputy Justin Williams successfully tracked a missing endangered elderly woman with dementia."



Scent preservation involves using cotton pads to swab underarms and putting them in sealed containers to retain the smell.

Traditionally, sniffer dogs would take the scent of missing people from their pillows or items of clothing.

Police forces in the US are encouraging people to use scent preservation kits to make searches for lost friends and relatives easier.

Sumter County Sheriff's Office, which offers the kits for free, says they are especially helpful for people with "diminishing mental faculties or children".

Scent preservation kits are more effective than old rags because they haven't been contaminated by other smells.

K9 Ally was rewarded with an ice cream for tracking down the missing woman.


http://news.sky.com/story/elderly-woman-found-by-sniffer-dog-because-she-bottled-her-scent-10964247?dcmp=snt-sf-twitter

How good are these dogs?  What a great story. 

Next week (I think) a new series of Dog Patrol starts on CBS  REALITY station.    Saw a trailer today and it showed some very RELIABLE dogs at work.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/aug/06/forensic-scientists-uk-body-farm-corpses


This has led to important breakthroughs in identifying chemicals that linger around places where bodies are buried, chemicals that can still be detected years later. These semi-volatile chemicals can be found on the surface and they can lead police to the place where a body is buried.


Forensic scientists are holding detailed talks with the government about setting up Britain’s first body farm, where researchers would study decomposing human corpses.
The aim would be to understand the precise manner in which cadavers decay in water or in soil or in open air. The US has several such centres, which have waiting lists of people who have left their bodies to forensic science. Their corpses are buried, hung from trees or immersed in water and analysed in detail to understand how they break down in different conditions. However, geographical conditions in America are very different from Britain’s, so researchers want to establish a centre here.

The lessons learned from the centres – which have featured in crime novels by Patricia Cornwell and in forensic science programmes on television – are then used to help find missing bodies and to understand when and how a person was murdered.
Anna Williams, a forensic anthropologist at Huddersfield University, said that cases like those of April Jones, Milly Dowler or the Soham murders “could have been helped with information of the type that we will get from such centres”.
“It would have allowed us to develop improved search and location techniques for finding bodies of people who had been missing for a long time. There is now an urgent need to establish one in this country,” Williams said.

Williams is one of the scientists involved in talks with the Human Tissue Authority (HTA) as part of the effort to have a body farm – or taphonomy facility as it is known officially – built in the UK. (Taphonomy is the study of the processes that occur in an organism after its death.)
“There is a real urgency to this plan,” Williams said. “If we do not get a taphonomy centre, UK forensic science will fall behind other countries.”

Last week the HTA confirmed it was holding talks and was in regular contact with the scientists involved. “Our aim,” a spokesman said, “is to ensure that, were such a facility to be established in the UK, the consent of the individuals who donate their bodies would have primacy and the activities taking place would be subject to the same standards as those required in other areas of research where human tissue is used.”
Another British scientist pressing for a body farm – John Cassella, a professor of forensic science education at Staffordshire University – said that much more research was needed.
“In science, we get answers by carrying out experiments, and forensic science is no different,” he said. “We need to carry out experiments on corpses to understand the processes that take place in humans after they have died and that is just the sort of thing we would do at these centres.”
Until now, British scientists have used pigs – which have physiological similarities to humans – to try to understand what happens to a body after death. This has led to important breakthroughs in identifying chemicals that linger around places where bodies are buried, chemicals that can still be detected years later. These semi-volatile chemicals can be found on the surface and they can lead police to the place where a body is buried.

However, those pushing for a body farm in Britain say that this process could be made much more accurate and useful – which would save police time and money – if they could use human bodies and not those of pigs.
There are now six body farms in the US and plans are under way to build two more. University of Technology Sydney, in Australia, also has a facility, while in the Netherlands, Amsterdam’s Academic Medical Centre plans to open one this year.
“Each of these facilities studies how local conditions affect the decay of human bodies,” said Cassella. “America has very different climate and geology from the UK. So we need one that will provide us with information about how these processes will occur here. ”
According to the magazine Research Fortnight, public acceptance of a body farm may pose a problem, though this could be avoided if the centre was introduced in phases, with the initial step being a facility that studied corpses that have been buried.
Williams estimated that such a farm would cost about £500,000 to set up. “Forensic research gets very little funding from research councils, so we are hoping that an academic institution within a university might help,” she said. “If not, we will turn to crowd funding. More and more research is being funded this way.”

Hi GGG,in reference to the Guardian article and the UK undertaking having a"Human Site"to discover the process of forensic matter?
Just imagine if you are a perpetrator of one of these acts,you then found out where the sites where being undertaken,that if there wasn't a 24 Seven monitoring of the area,where the perpetrators could dispose of their own victims?
Sherlock Holmes would have to come out of retirement or Burke and Hare would be busy?

http://www.crimeonline.com/2017/08/22/breaking-remains-of-missing-autistic-girl-found-in-a-burn-pile-at-mothers-property/

BREAKING: Remains of missing autistic girl found in a burn pile at mother’s property www.crimeonline.com A Missouri woman is facing murder charges after authorities found the remains of her 16-year-old daughter in a burn pit on her property. KARE 11 reports that Ozark County Prosecutor John Garrabrant announced on Tuesday that Rebecca Ruud, of Longrun, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder after the remains of her teen daughter, Savannah Leckie, who …

Authorities brought canine dogs to Ruud’s property, and two different dogs at different times hit on the same spot by a burn pile. Someone covered the area with fresh leaves and branches, but authorities found what a forensics expert later confirmed to be human remains and ashes.

These dogs are so reliable, huge help to law enforcers.

And used productively in the Italian earthquake in the last few days.

Keitei wrote:These dogs are so reliable, huge help to law enforcers.

Hi Keitei,but not in the case of Madeleine McCann,where numerous acts of Officialdom,try to down play what Martin Grimes Forensic Police dogs Eddie,Keela,alerted to on clothing,car key fob,Car boot,"Nothing to see here,Now move along please"even after Ten years,Scotland yard,never ever wish to discuss,why?
1 If the dogs alerts where wrong,it could jeopardise previous Scotland Yard convictions?
2 Puts Scotland Yard in a very precursor position of a failure of duty?

willowthewisp wrote:

Keitei wrote:These dogs are so reliable, huge help to law enforcers.

Hi Keitei,but not in the case of Madeleine McCann,where numerous acts of Officialdom,try to down play what Martin Grimes Forensic Police dogs Eddie,Keela,alerted to on clothing,car key fob,Car boot,"Nothing to see here,Now move along please"even after Ten years,Scotland yard,never ever wish to discuss,why?
1 If the dogs alerts where wrong,it could jeopardise previous Scotland Yard convictions?
2 Puts Scotland Yard in a very precursor position of a failure of duty?

For me, it's just clutter & too much of it, I ignore.
--------------

EXCLUSIVE: Cadaver dogs search decrepit lake house of three elderly Seattle brothers suspected in 10-year-old girl's disappearance after cops find sickening trove of child porn and kids' penny loafers

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/sep/15/first-sniffer-dogs-trained-to-detect-digital-data-devices-in-uk-unveiled

First sniffer dogs trained to help find paedophiles, terrorists and fraudsters

Tweed, a springer spaniel, and Rob, a black labrador, learning to help UK police detect hidden data devices

Sniffer dogs trained to help police catch paedophiles, terrorists and fraudsters by detecting hidden digital storage devices have been unveiled in the UK.
Tweed, a 19-month-old springer spaniel, and Rob, a 20-month-old black labrador, are said to the first digital detection dogs outside the US.
The dogs have been trained by Devon & Cornwall and Dorset police but have already been used at crime scenes across the UK. They have been used to sniff out hidden data devices such as USB sticks, SD cards and hard drives.
Ch Supt Jim Nye, commander for the alliance operations department that works across the two forces, said: “These dogs will give the police a new way to fight the threat of terrorism, paedophiles and fraudsters.”

In 2015, dog instructor PC Graham Attwood began to research whether dogs could be used effectively in this way and worked with his counterparts in Connecticut, who use digital detection dogs.
Most dogs used by the south-west forces come from their own puppy breeding scheme, are given as gifts or are rescue dogs. However, Tweed and Rob were bought especially for this job when they were about 15 months old.
Attwood said: “Myself and members of the alliance dog school initially handled and trained Tweed and Rob mainly in our own time as we were committed to our usual daily duties of training the forces’ other operational police dogs.”
Mike Real, a recently retired Connecticut state police dog instructor and co-founder of the American programme, along with special agent Jeffrey Calandra, who is the only digital detection dog handler in the FBI, were invited to Devon for a week to train and assess Tweed and Rob.
They passed their assessment with flying colours and were set to work.
Attwood, added: “Our digital dogs have already proven to be a success and have been used in over 50 warrants executed across the UK, including Hampshire, Essex, south Wales, and North Yorkshire.
“We have already seen some really fantastic results from these two dogs. Tweed on one warrant indicated that something may have been within what looked like a Coke can. This was then inspected by a search officer and discovered that it was actually a money box that had a number of SD cards hidden within it.
“Rob has also indicated a small device hidden carefully in a drawer which would have likely to have been missed by the human eye.”
If the dogs continue to do well, others may be trained. The dogs live at home with their new full-time police dog handlers, PC Martin King and PC Jill Curnow.

Better keep them away from a special group of friends then?
Naughty step,whack from moderator,100 times I must not mention certain things?

Earthquake in Mexico

School collapsed killing many children and trapping hundreds more in the rubble.
They have sent in - - - DOGS.
Just suppose the McCanns said "There is no point. We know they are incredibly unreliable”.
Not even Mendax Mitchell would say that, would he ?
Only Gerry, in the entire world KNOWS . . .   And only he says it.
Because once they admit dogs are reliable - they are finished.

Another useless and 'Notoriously unreliable" dog, searching for children in the rubble of Mexico . . .

Race against time to save little girl trapped in rubble of school destroyed in Mexico earthquake as rescuers identify FIVE other children under the debris 44 hours after the quake struck





A large piece of concrete is lifted from the disaster zone as marines and volunteers desperately hunt for Frida Sofia and the five other children who are buried with her 


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4905036/Video-shows-moment-kids-rescued-Mexican-school.html#ixzz4tKUn2iP4

Hero: > > > A dog also named Frida (pictured), is helping rescuers search among the rubble in Mexico City. She has saved over 50 people in her career.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/sep/23/ukcrime.internationalcrime


posted link without adding - if dogs are unreliable why would the article state that Mr & Mrs had urged the use of them?

An unreliable dog....SACKED!



A few weeks into CIA training, labrador Lulu began to show signs she simply "wasn't interested in detecting explosive odours".

By Ceren Senkul, News Reporter

Some people just aren't cut out for the realities of a high-pressure work environment - and it would seem the same goes for dogs.

Lulu the labrador's handler had high hopes of her becoming the CIA's latest bomb-sniffing talent, but it was not meant to be.

It started out well, according to a "pupdate" on the CIA's website, but soon started to go downhill.

A few weeks into training, Lulu began to show signs that she simply "wasn't interested in detecting explosive odours", the blog post said.

"Lulu was no longer interested in searching for explosives," the post said.

"Even when they could motivate her with food and play to search, she was clearly not enjoying herself any longer."

The post went on to say that the mental and physical wellbeing of the sniffer dogs is the CIA's priority, so they "made the extremely difficult decision to do what's best for Lulu and drop her from the programme".

But it is not all bad news, as handlers have the option to adopt dogs who are dropped.

Lulu now has a new home, and spends her days chasing rabbits and squirrels in the garden - much less stressful.

It is not clear whether Lulu simply wasn't up to the challenge of sniffing out bombs, or whether it was all part of a cunning plan to never have to go to work.

Either way, she's happy, and so is her handler - and the CIA can now focus on its top dogs.

http://news.sky.com/story/bomb-sniffing-dog-fired-from-cia-for-refusing-to-sniff-bombs-11087751



Don’t you love the idea that the ONE unreliable dog anyone has ever heard of is immediately SACKED?

The volunteers tasked with searching for 3-year-old Sherin Mathews say they believed they would be able to bring the little girl home.
"I started doing this a long time ago in the military, and there was always a sense of bringing somebody home was something good," said Jerry Seevers, one of the K-9 handlers on the scene Sunday when Sherin's body was discovered in a drain in suburban Dallas.
Seevers and 15 other handlers help make up the team at the nonprofit MARK9 Search & Rescue. The team is made up entirely of volunteers who are specially trained to help law enforcement and first responders in search and rescue operations.
MARK9 assisted Richardson police in several prior searches for Sherin Mathews as police looked in wooded areas near the Mathews family home, helping police rule out certain spots and refocus on others.

Father of Sherin Mathews on Suicide Watch in Dallas Co. Jail

The father of Sherin Mathews, the 3-year-old Richardson, Texas, girl found dead in a culvert Sunday, is now in the Dallas County Jail and on suicide watch. Meanwhile, her mother is not facing charges, and her attorneys insist she is cooperating with police.
(Published Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2017)
Sunday, five pairs of volunteers and dogs from MARK9 responded to another request from Richardson police to search for Sherin again. Searchers say the weather conditions were ideal. Overnight rain along with a breezy and humid morning helped dogs pick up the scent.
One K-9 led her handler to a field north of the Mathews home and eventually to the culvert where investigators found the small child's body.


"She started doing it from a long way off, and it wasn't an area she was supposed to be looking in, but that's how it concluded," said Seevers, of the K-9's path. "She found her way there.

One of the things we have to do is we have to believe in them and she took us there."

• Body of Sherin Mathews Released by Medical Examiner
  
  The teams assist in a wide range of searches, responding to calls from law enforcement at all hours.

"When they say it's a child involved, it's 100 percent everybody in," Seevers said.
In the Sherin Mathews case, the discovery was not the outcome the community hoped for, though it was necessarily to the investigation.

Lawyers: Sini Mathews Had Nothing to Do with Sherin's Death

The lawyers representing Sini Mathews published a statement late Wednesday afternoon saying Mathews denies any involvement in the death of her adoptive daughter, Sherin.
(Published Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2017)
On Wednesday, Sherin's adoptive father Wesley Mathews was put on suicide watch at Dallas County Jail. He has been charged with felony injury to a child. 
Mathews originally told police that Sherin disappeared while being punished, where she was forced to stand outside by a tree at 3 a.m. for not drinking her milk. A day after her body was found, Mathews told police that his daughter choked to death after he "physically assisted" her in drinking her milk. He then told police that he moved her body from the family's Richardson home, though police haven't said where he said he took the little girl's remains. 
"Being able to bring closure, whether it's a good closure or one you're not expecting, to me is very rewarding," said Chris Holmberg, a chief financial officer for a construction company who volunteered the day before Sherin was found with her German Shepherd, Hope.

• Caregiver of Sherin Mathews Wants Answers
  
  

"You're still dealing with the loss. It's not ours particularly, but once you're involved, you're involved. It becomes a part of you," Seevers said.
He adds that it only strengthens the team's resolve to continue to respond when rescuers call for help.
"You never know when the next call is coming. The fact that you were successful gives you something to say, let's go find the next one," Seevers said.

Body ID'd as Sherin Mathews; Father Says She Choked on Milk

The adoptive father of a 3-year-old Richardson girl whose body was found Sunday is transferred to the Dallas County Jail Wednesday after telling police he witnessed her death.
(Published Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2017)


http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/K-9-Handlers-Who-Found-Sherin-Mathews-Share-Their-Story-453464213.html



Darn that unreliable dog, looking in an area she wasn't supposed to be in after detecting the scent of a corpse from a long way off.

Care to explain this one away gerry?

Excellent work by that darn unreliable dog.

Hi to Lulu.   Enjoy your new life.    Love the story .

Cumbria Police Dogs‏ @policedogunit  2h2 hours ago


After finding £1.4m+ drugs, 3 illegal firearms, £350k+ cash & fathering 10 PD pups, it’s time for Alfie to hang up his harness and retire.

Remember that behind these incredible dogs are incredible dog handlers and an incredible police service.

The dog with a nose for notes: Jessie the Heathrow springer spaniel has sniffed out cash worth £1 MILLION being smuggled through the airport 

Jessie, a two-year-old springer spaniel has only been working with the UK Border Force for five months but has had a 'unprecedented run of success' including finding more than £1million.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/mar/11/dogs-trained-to-sniff-out-ancient-treasures-looted-from-syria

Dogs trained to sniff out ancient treasures looted from Syria www.theguardian.com Special K-9 units may soon be deployed in the fight against terrorists and criminals looting precious artefacts from war zones

And this one had not been trained for anything !

https://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/929982/Breast-cancer-Lena-Roberts-Sky-English-springer-spaniel-pawing-detection-treatment



And a couple of comments:

• Friends' terrier used to sniff behind my left knee every time I went for dinner. I had a mole / freckle there. Eventually the dermatologist took it off, and a week later, after it had been to cytology, got me back in to take
  another 2mm each side ! Whatever the infamous two doctors say -
  
  Dogs are notoriously RELIABLE. And these had not even been trained.
  
  
  
  
• MontyBatton
  5h
  
  I had a cat that used to lick a mole on my leg and I ended up going to the Doctor and said to her that my cat was always licking it . Turned out to be a nasty melanoma.
  
  

There's no doubt about it, those sniffer dogs are amazing. Trained to do so, they will produce amazing results.
If I were to visit my neighbour and drop a bag of cocaine in his lounge (  for example ) , inform the police who then bring in the sniffer dogs, as sure as anything the dogs will 'sniff' out the contraband or at the very least alert that cocaine had been there at some time. However does that make my neighbour guilty?
The point I'm making is that yes, accepted, the dogs are brilliant but men can be pretty devious. Where the orange/ pink blanket was concerned : The fact that the McCanns gave this blanket to the PJ and the McCanns SAID it was Madeleine's rendered the whole exercise useless as far as tracing Madeleine's whereabouts was concerned.