Re: Capabilities of the Dogs

Heisenburg Sat 05 Mar 2016, 9:29 am

dogs don't lie wrote:Where or when would cadaver odour stop being transferable? Otherwise all clothes would alert, heck, doctors/police could be muderers, what would be the point with Eddie? I've just buried my father-in-law (called Eddie) yesterday, do I have cadaver odour? Just questions and I totally believe in Eddie and Keela!
IMO.

As an aside,FIL died in his flat over 12 months ago its been occupied since I wonder if Cadaver dogs would alert.

costello Sat 05 Mar 2016, 9:33 am

dogs don't lie wrote:Where or when would cadaver odour stop being transferable? Otherwise all clothes would alert, heck, doctors/police could be muderers, what would be the point with Eddie? I've just buried my father-in-law (called Eddie) yesterday, do I have cadaver odour? Just questions and I totally believe in Eddie and Keela!
IMO.

That is the question ddl, good point and I totally agree with you. Sincere condolences with regards to your father-in-law.

Neveronasunday Sat 05 Mar 2016, 9:36 am

I feel we have to be very precise on this subject and recognise the particular point that seahorse made yesterday - ie that we haven't yet conclusively established if Eddie reacted in different ways to cadaver and blood. Before this discussion goes any further, do we have confirmation or otherwise of that?

If not, cadaver scent was only present in places where he reacted and Keela didn't.

This is something that I have never seen discussed on forums before and it is crucial to determine the places where cadaver scent was found, as opposed to blood. And, let's face it, people bleed on many days in many places.

I would also like to know if Eddie and Keela would have reacted, for example, to a piece of meat that had dripped blood on a kitchen worktop while preparing lunch. Any thoughts on that?

Guest Sat 05 Mar 2016, 9:40 am

Here's the link to the info about who occupied 5A after the McCanns...
http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/DCCB_LETTER.htm

This does unfortunately give another reason why the dogs' evidence might be dismissed in court... they were brought in too late, and the crime scene was not secured in the interim.

ETA - I totally believe the dogs found incriminating evidence and that it is very relevant to the case. I just feel, unfortunately, that because of the length of time it took to bring them in, and because the apartment was not locked and secured, their evidence would be robustly challenged in court and possibly dismissed for those reasons.

dogs don't lie Sat 05 Mar 2016, 9:40 am

Thanks Costello, I think we really all need to understand this, how it works. I think MG said Eddie gave a strong alert at the sofa and the wardrobe but I need to study again to try and understand.

dogs don't lie Sat 05 Mar 2016, 9:44 am

Think Keela only reacts to blood from a deceased human and nothing else, including animals, still, don't take my word I still need to refresh.

seahorse Sat 05 Mar 2016, 9:49 am

Neveronasunday wrote:I feel we have to be very precise on this subject and recognise the particular point that seahorse made yesterday - ie that we haven't yet conclusively established if Eddie reacted in different ways to cadaver and blood. Before this discussion goes any further, do we have confirmation or otherwise of that?

If not, cadaver scent was only present in places where he reacted and Keela didn't.

This is something that I have never seen discussed on forums before and it is crucial to determine the places where cadaver scent was found, as opposed to blood. And, let's face it, people bleed on many days in many places.

I would also like to know if Eddie and Keela would have reacted, for example, to a piece of meat that had dripped blood on a kitchen worktop while preparing lunch. Any thoughts on that?

As I posted earlier here's an article from the Timesonline, 2005, so before this whole saga started:

"When faced with a "clean" crime scene, Mr Ellis and PC Martin Grimes, Keela's other handler, will first send in Frankie, a border collie, and Eddie, another springer spaniel, to pick up any general scent. Then they wheel in the big gun.

"We take Keela in and she will find the minutest traces of blood," Mr Ellis said. "It's not like looking for a needle in a haystack any more. The other two dogs will find the haystack and Keela will find the needle."

While the other dogs bark, Keela has been trained to freeze and pinpoint the area with her nose."

http://www.mccannfiles.com/id157.html

So we know from the above that only Keela ever froze. The other dogs including Eddie barked. So I would deduce from that that Eddie made no distinction between cadaver odour and dried blood.

dogs don't lie Sat 05 Mar 2016, 9:53 am

So does that mean when Keela freezes, indicates that blood is from a human corpse and only a human corpse?

seahorse Sat 05 Mar 2016, 9:54 am

dogs don't lie wrote:So does that mean when Keela freezes, indicates that blood is from a human corpse and only a human corpse?

Not necessarily. It could be dried blood from a live or dead person. Or it could be dried blood from a dead or live pig (on which she was trained).

ETA as Heisenberg points out below Keela only detects human blood. So I am wrong in the above.

Heisenburg Sat 05 Mar 2016, 10:00 am

M Grime says Eddie only barks when he finds something,in this case only cadaver alert,Keela only alerts to human blood..

Ok what was done was we deployed the victim recovery dog into the apartment and by experience and the training of the dog what I first noticed is that as soon as I came in that the dog was very excited and as a handler I can pick up his body language etc and it would appear to me that as soon as he has come into the house he's picked up a scent that he recognises and he has then gone through the apartment trying to source where that scent source has come from and as he has worked through the house the only two places where he picks up enough scent to give me the bark alert are in this bedroom, in this corner where he was barking.

The second dog that we've seen work today is the crime scene dog Keela. She will only indicate to me when she has found human blood, only human blood and it is only blood and there must be something there physically for her to be able to alert to me that's she has actually found something

seahorse Sat 05 Mar 2016, 10:00 am

Another bit of interesting information:

"One of the questions surrounding human cadaver dogs is how soon after death they can recognise a corpse, and how long a "fresh" corpse must remain in one place for a dog to detect that it has been there. In a study published last year, the forensic pathologist Lars Oesterhelweg, then at the University of Bern in Switzerland, and colleagues tested the ability of three Hamburg State Police cadaver dogs to pick out – of a line-up of six new carpet squares – the one that had been exposed for no more than 10 minutes to a recently deceased person.

Several squares had been placed beneath a clothed corpse within three hours of death, when some organs and many cells of the human body are still functioning. Over the next month, the dogs did hundreds of trials in which they signalled the contaminated square with 98 per cent accuracy, falling to 94 per cent when the square had been in contact with the corpse for only two minutes. The research concluded that cadaver dogs were an "outstanding tool" for crime-scene investigation."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-csi-death-dogs-sniffing-out-the-truth-behind-the-crime-scene-canines-835047.html

Backed up by Grime in his rogatory:

"'How long does a cadaver have to be in contact with a surface or an object for the odour to be detected''
Cross-contamination is immediate."

http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/MARTIN_GRIMES_RIGATORY.htm

seahorse Sat 05 Mar 2016, 10:04 am

Heisenburg wrote:M Grime says Eddie only barks when he finds something,in this case only cadaver alert,Keela only alerts to human blood..

The second dog that we've seen work today is the crime scene dog Keela. She will only indicate to me when she has found human blood, only human blood and it is only blood and there must be something there physically for her to be able to alert to me that's she has actually found something

Yes, you're right. Keela was only trained on human blood from donors.

EVRD dogs were trained on pigs (as training on human cadaver was and maybe still is illegal in the UK) but from what I understood had training in the USA on human cadavers where it is legal.

chirpyinsect Sat 05 Mar 2016, 10:12 am

dogs don't lie wrote:Think Keela only reacts to blood from a deceased human and nothing else, including animals, still, don't take my word I still need to refresh.

Not got time at the moment to check but I think Keela can react to dried blood from a live human but not fresh blood. Correction welcome.

Heisenburg Sat 05 Mar 2016, 10:13 am

seahorse wrote:
Heisenburg wrote:M Grime says Eddie only barks when he finds something,in this case only cadaver alert,Keela only alerts to human blood..

The second dog that we've seen work today is the crime scene dog Keela. She will only indicate to me when she has found human blood, only human blood and it is only blood and there must be something there physically for her to be able to alert to me that's she has actually found something

Yes, you're right. Keela was only trained on human blood from donors.

EVRD dogs were trained on pigs (as training on human cadaver was and maybe still is illegal in the UK) but from what I understood had training in the USA on human cadavers where it is legal.

Although the dog is not named it seems as if Eddie is used first so its safe to assume this is Eddie he is referring to,the dog can differentiate between pork and human..

There were no alert indications from the remaining properties. I did however
see the dog search in the kitchen waste bins. These contained meat
foodstuffs including pork and did not result in any false alert response.

Bampots Sat 05 Mar 2016, 10:16 am

Keela froze when she found blood,from article on Martin Grimes in PJ files on here. ....

takes in Keela. She can be seen freezing — a sign she has found something — underneath the window where Eddie had earlier barked.
Martin says on camera: “The crime scene dog has given me a positive indication. That indicates to me there is some human blood there. She will detect blood that is very old and find anybody’s blood.”

chirpyinsect Sat 05 Mar 2016, 10:18 am

seahorse wrote:Another bit of interesting information:

"One of the questions surrounding human cadaver dogs is how soon after death they can recognise a corpse, and how long a "fresh" corpse must remain in one place for a dog to detect that it has been there. In a study published last year, the forensic pathologist Lars Oesterhelweg, then at the University of Bern in Switzerland, and colleagues tested the ability of three Hamburg State Police cadaver dogs to pick out – of a line-up of six new carpet squares – the one that had been exposed for no more than 10 minutes to a recently deceased person.

Several squares had been placed beneath a clothed corpse within three hours of death, when some organs and many cells of the human body are still functioning. Over the next month, the dogs did hundreds of trials in which they signalled the contaminated square with 98 per cent accuracy, falling to 94 per cent when the square had been in contact with the corpse for only two minutes. The research concluded that cadaver dogs were an "outstanding tool" for crime-scene investigation."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-csi-death-dogs-sniffing-out-the-truth-behind-the-crime-scene-canines-835047.html

Backed up by Grime in his rogatory:

"'How long does a cadaver have to be in contact with a surface or an object for the odour to be detected''
Cross-contamination is immediate."

http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/MARTIN_GRIMES_RIGATORY.htm

This still means though that the person needs to have been dead for at least 90 minutes for cadaverine to develop. So by that reckoning it doesn't necessarily mean that M lay behind the sofa for 90 minutes at least. It could be she died elsewhere and either her body or something that had been on her body was then placed there. Am I correct?

Heisenburg Sat 05 Mar 2016, 10:21 am

chirpyinsect wrote:
seahorse wrote:Another bit of interesting information:

"One of the questions surrounding human cadaver dogs is how soon after death they can recognise a corpse, and how long a "fresh" corpse must remain in one place for a dog to detect that it has been there. In a study published last year, the forensic pathologist Lars Oesterhelweg, then at the University of Bern in Switzerland, and colleagues tested the ability of three Hamburg State Police cadaver dogs to pick out – of a line-up of six new carpet squares – the one that had been exposed for no more than 10 minutes to a recently deceased person.

Several squares had been placed beneath a clothed corpse within three hours of death, when some organs and many cells of the human body are still functioning. Over the next month, the dogs did hundreds of trials in which they signalled the contaminated square with 98 per cent accuracy, falling to 94 per cent when the square had been in contact with the corpse for only two minutes. The research concluded that cadaver dogs were an "outstanding tool" for crime-scene investigation."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-csi-death-dogs-sniffing-out-the-truth-behind-the-crime-scene-canines-835047.html

Backed up by Grime in his rogatory:

"'How long does a cadaver have to be in contact with a surface or an object for the odour to be detected''
Cross-contamination is immediate."

http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/MARTIN_GRIMES_RIGATORY.htm

This still means though that the person needs to have been dead for at least 90 minutes for cadaverine to develop. So by that reckoning it doesn't necessarily mean that M lay behind the sofa for 90 minutes at least. It could be she died elsewhere and either her body or something that had been on her body was then placed there. Am I correct?

Clothes? the body was in 5j,opinion of course.

Neveronasunday Sat 05 Mar 2016, 10:26 am

I'm not trying to convince myself that the blood wasn't MM's because I have an open mind on that, but I do keep thinking about Chirpy's fella who was bleeding in 5a for 45 minutes one day between May and August. That's potentially a heck of a lot of blood smears around the apartment.

Regarding cadaverine scent: if, as it appears, Eddie had only the one way of alerting, and he did it to indicate a general crime scene, we should establish those places, and only those places, where Eddie barked and Keela didn't freeze, ie crime scene but no blood. That's where the cadaver scent is likely to have been.

We need to list those places otherwise we are just guessing.

As I said earlier, if it was on clothes the crime scene is potentially everywhere that those clothes have been, not just in Praia. If you include cross-contamination the area becomes even wider.

I am trying to be thorough because attempting to pin this down requires forensic accuracy.

seahorse Sat 05 Mar 2016, 10:29 am

Heisenburg wrote:
seahorse wrote:
Heisenburg wrote:M Grime says Eddie only barks when he finds something,in this case only cadaver alert,Keela only alerts to human blood..

The second dog that we've seen work today is the crime scene dog Keela. She will only indicate to me when she has found human blood, only human blood and it is only blood and there must be something there physically for her to be able to alert to me that's she has actually found something

Yes, you're right. Keela was only trained on human blood from donors.

EVRD dogs were trained on pigs (as training on human cadaver was and maybe still is illegal in the UK) but from what I understood had training in the USA on human cadavers where it is legal.

Although the dog is not named it seems as if Eddie is used first so its safe to assume this is Eddie he is referring to,the dog can differentiate between pork and human..

There were no alert indications from the remaining properties. I did however
see the dog search in the kitchen waste bins. These contained meat
foodstuffs including pork and did not result in any false alert response.

Good find. Maybe the initial training is on pigs, which is later followed up by training in the USA on human cadaver.

Obviously Grime is guarded about his training methods as he says in this article:

""We don't discuss what the training involves, but it's a lot more than putting bits of meat on the ground for them to hunt out," says Mr Grime, a retired South Yorkshire Police officer who now works as an independent consultant. "

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7263355.stm

I think we can safely conclude that Eddie reacted to human scent, whether it was cadaver or dried blood.

seahorse Sat 05 Mar 2016, 10:31 am

Neveronasunday wrote:I'm not trying to convince myself that the blood wasn't MM's because I have an open mind on that, but I do keep thinking about Chirpy's fella who was bleeding in 5a for 45 minutes one day between May and August. That's potentially a heck of a lot of blood smears around the apartment.

Regarding cadaverine scent: if, as it appears, Eddie had only the one way of alerting, and he did it to indicate a general crime scene, we should establish those places, and only those places, where Eddie barked and Keela didn't freeze, ie crime scene but no blood. That's where the cadaver scent is likely to have been.

We need to list those places otherwise we are just guessing.

I've listed those upthread:

* corner of parents' bedroom
* cuddle cat
* flowerbed
* two items of clothing belonging to Kate
* one airplane top belonging to Sean

There is also mention in Amaral's book of scent detected on the veranda, but I can't find it in the PJ files.

Heisenburg Sat 05 Mar 2016, 10:33 am

seahorse wrote:
I think we can safely conclude that Eddie reacted to human scent, whether it was cadaver or dried blood.

The way I read it,is that Eddie is used first then Keela,Eddie alerts in a general area,Keela then alerts to a specific area.

The first alert was given with the dogs head in the air without a positive area
being identified. This is the alert given by him when there is no tangible
evidence to be located only the remaining scent.

The second alert was one where a definitive area was evident. The CSI dog
was therefore deployed who gave specific alert indications to specific areas
on the tiled floor area behind the sofa and on the curtain in the area that was
in contact with the floor behind the sofa. This would indicate to the likely
presence of human blood.

Heisenburg Sat 05 Mar 2016, 10:36 am

seahorse wrote:
There is also mention in Amaral's book of scent detected on the veranda, but I can't find it in the PJ files.

The EVRD alerted in the:
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.
My observation of the dog's behaviour in this instance was that the dog's
behaviour changed immediately upon opening the front door to the apartment.
He will normally remain in the sit position until released and tasked to search.
On this occasion he broke the stay and entered the apartment with an above
average interest. His behaviour was such that I believed him to be 'in scent'
and I therefore allowed him to free search without direction to allow him to
identify the source of his interest. He did so alerting in the rear bedroom.

http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/MARTIN_GRIMES.htm

Neveronasunday Sat 05 Mar 2016, 10:45 am

Thanks seahorse, so we have the following list:

(All mobile things like clothes don't necessarily indicate a crime in Praia. They may have picked up the scent elsewhere)

Corner of bedroom - cross-contamination from clothes or suitcase containing clothes? Need to know if this is possible
Cuddle Cat - cross-contamination, or corpse in UK or somewhere else not Praia?
Flowerbed - cross-contamination from bag or suitcase placed there on the way into 5a? Don't know if possible
Clothing - not directly related to Praia or 5a so the scent could have been acquired anywhere

Please note I am not saying any of the above is proven or even possible. But it needs to be discussed by those of you who are better informed on crime scene analysis than I am (does anyone here watch Bones?)

This is the return to 5a on 22 May following the visit to the UK. What is in the bags? And there may be more in the car. Not just a few extra photos of MM.

http://www.mccannfiles.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/.pond/zzgerryreturnswithclarence.jpg.w300h204.jpg

Once again, it's important to remember that an alert by the crime scene dog (Eddie) does not in itself appear to indicate cadaver scent. It may be blood unless Keela failed to react in the same place.

Bampots Sat 05 Mar 2016, 10:57 am

does it say he bled in the bathroom?

**candyfloss** Sat 05 Mar 2016, 11:02 am

There is a thread already about the dogs, with some good discussion here.....

https://maddiemccannmystery.forumotion.co.uk/t218p15-capabilities-of-cadaver-dogs

It might be an idea to merge the posts from here, perhaps Freedom can move the posts here ^

Done!

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