Cadaver dogs perform a grim but essential task – locating the presence of human remains, even minute particles of human remains. In America, the cadaver dogs first achieved national recognition in the aftermath of 9/11, helping to locate partial remains and thus confirm the death of missing people.
These dogs have gained a considerable fan-club, and it is oft quoted that ‘the dogs don’t lie’. Maybe they don’t have the capacity to lie – but neither can they always be relied upon to tell the truth.
In America a four month search for a missing woman came to a grisly end when her husband spotted her foot sticking out of a pile of rubbish in their home – a house that the police and specialised cadaver dogs had searched several times already.
Dogs that are apparently able to search the rubble of a 110 story building for minute particles of human remains, had failed to locate an entire body hidden beneath a mound of rubbish inside the house pictured above. Apparently food, clothing and decomposing garbage had hindered their accuracy.
Anna is the landlady of the Raccoon Arms. She lives in the Monbazillac area of South West France and still takes a keen interest in British politics.
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Bonjour, Anna.
All sorts of sniffer dogs are known to make “false negatives” from time to time. So-called “false positives” are very rare, though.
I do find it a very strange story on several accounts. For one, the husband himself, who had been unable to locate his wife in his own house …
Oh My, They’ll have fun debunking this.
If the dogs can’t find a corpse when there is one, what use are they when there isn’t?
So the dogs missed the presence of the body – and yet the husband happens to see a foot sticking out that no-one else (including the dogs) had noticed? My house isn’t the tidiest of places, but I think I would notice a human foot sticking out of somewhere, especially if I were searching for a missing person. More to this than meets the eye, I think. My guess is that the dogs were correct and there was no body to find. Someone moved it later and then the husband ‘found’ it.
I just read the article. This case smells, also figuratively speaking.
And I send my own little Miss Marple in Las Vegas an email, asking for local information
It would appear the American police used guide dogs in their search if they were unable to spot a foot sticking out from a pile of rubbish (“But we were told to look for a body”). One can google many cases of police failing to find bodies in cars that crash off road.
I can see how police could fail to spot a body ejected from a car in a crash, as they would not know how many people they were looking for. In this case, they had a specific individual to search for, and a building to search in. I can’t believe that the search team (whether or not the dogs were any good) would fail to spot a ‘foot sticking out’ that the husband could just stumble across later on after the search team had gone home. As one of the commenters on the original story says, it would be worth while examining the contents of any freezers in the vicinity and noting any large, empty spaces.
I expect that the rubbish fell on her, and then shifted again as the body decayed.
I think the point is that this house was searched three times at least. But apparently the decaying vegetable and other matter confused the dogs.
However, the one thing we can be sure of is that Cadaver Dogs won’t find a Cadaver if there isn’t one to find.
“These dogs have gained a considerable fan-club, and it is oft quoted that