The first dog trained officially and exclusively for cadaver search by a police department began work in 1974. New York State Police were investigating a homicide in Oneida Country that involved multiple buried victims in a large forested area. Tpr. R.D. “Jim” Suffolk and “Pearl,” a yellow Labrador Retriever, were trained at the Southwest Research Institute, a military research facility in San Antonio, Texas. Pearl’s first find was part of a multiple homicide, the body of Syracuse college student, Karen Levy, who’d been buried four feet deep.
The first recorded use of a cadaver dog may be much older. In 1809, a county clerk used his dog to perform a cadaver search in Germany in what was known as the “Bavarian Ripper” case centered around two girls who disappeared mysteriously. When the clerk took his dog for a walk past the house of the primary suspect, the dog, which didn’t have the training of a modern cadaver dog, repeatedly “alerted” at the man’s shed. A subsequent search of the shed lead to the discovery of the mutilated victims, and ultimately, a confession, conviction, and the execution of the perpetrator, Andreas Bichel.
It took a couple of hundred years, give or take, to fully understand the “smell of death,” and why cadaver dogs, who are 95 percent accurate, are able to smell remains buried as deep as 15 feet underground. A body’s scent is made up of cells and what are called volatile fatty acids. Air exchange comes up through the soil, but a dog’s ability to detect that rising scent hinges on the kind of soil that’s involved, how tightly it’s packed, and how long the remains have been there. A dog might have trouble finding remains buried only six inches deep if the soil is, say, tightly compacted clay, but roots from vegetation can help provide a way for the scent to come out.
Dogs are being trained so successfully that they can specialize (water versus land), are able to detect the scent of human remains under 30 metres of water, and tell the difference between a dead possum and a dead hiker. Some dogs are now specializing in blood scent.
Cadaver dog work a difficult job, but a necessary one that brings closure to bereaved families, and conviction of criminals who need to be off the streets.
Image: “Yellow Labrador Retriever Puppy” by Mary Sparrow
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