Happy Friday, friends. Rosemarie Szostak has been my guest before, and with her she brings the most interesting topics. On her last visit she wrote about sheep sheering! https://www.donnellannbell.com/shearing-sheep-like-a-girl/ Today, she shares her expertise on cadaver dogs. I would say she’s on the top ten of the most talented, versatile people I know. And for the record, I know a lot of people! Please welcome Rosemarie Szostak. ~Donnell
Planning the Perfect Murder? Enter the Cadaver Dog
By: Rosemarie Szostak
Many mystery writers always look for ‘that perfect murder,’ target person dead, body disposed of, alibi good. Easy-peasy, and not so fast. Enter the cadaver dog.
Cadaver dogs are trained to find the dead. All dogs have incredible noses; evolution has honed their desire to hunt and a nose to pick out and follow their prey. Both these traits are channeled to help find the dead.
Author Rose Johnson aka Rosemarie Szostak
Here is a list of what a highly trained, experienced cadaver dog can do:
- Find a dead person in a wilderness area (lost hiker)
- Find a body that was dumped by a killer. Generally, this is within 100 ft of a road or trail. Killers are lazy. Dead bodies are dead weight and hard to drag. Dogs don’t have to be close to pick up the odor. Most of our searches last less than a half hour, but with ground pounders, it could have taken days, if not weeks, and often ground pounders miss the body anyway.
- Finding body parts scavenged by animals and dragged from the original dump site.
- Find a body buried. FYI most killers are not about to dig a 6 ft grave, so most hasty burials are very shallow.
- Find a body that is drowned. Most bodies will pop to the surface, but not all. Dogs are put on boats and can identify where a body is underwater.
But wait, there is more.
- The perp kills someone. Blood everywhere. Perp wraps the body in a tarp, drags it to their car’s trunk, and then gets out the bleach and cleans up the crime scene before disposing of the body.
- Walls and floors are generally porous, so blood will soak in or seep between the floorboards or the wall, and bleach will not remove that. Even twice, the clever perp paints the walls to cover up the bloodied surfaces. Dogs can detect blood behind two coats of paint. So can luminol, but luminol doesn’t always catch the blood seeped behind a baseboard or between the floor tiles. That is where the value of the dog comes in.
- The perp got blood on his clothing, and he washed it. It takes at least seven washings before the dogs can no longer detect the blood on clothing or bedding, or other textiles. How many criminals will wash their clothes seven times?
- During the time, the body is in the trunk, wrapped in a tarp so that there are no fibers left for CSI to find. What is left is residual odor, and the dogs can detect that. Think about burning popcorn. The residual burned popcorn odor sticks around for a very long time.
Some other interesting facts about cadaver dogs:
- They are used to find unmarked graves, such as slave graves here in the south.
- They can help find limb pits. These are pits where amputated limbs were buried near field hospitals during the Civil War.
- They are used to bring home MIA remains from the killing fields of Cambodia, Vietnam, and Europe (WWI and WWII).
- There is no time limit. These dogs are used by archaeologists to identify human bones from thousands of years ago.
Never bring a cadaver dog to a nursing home. Aged individuals’ bodies begin to die even before they do, and a cadaver dog can alert a person who is within 24 hours before they actually die. Yes, I know that is creepy.
Oh yeah, pigs are great for getting rid of bodies, but the scat from a pig still contains human remains odor that the dogs pick up. DNA testing, now being what it is, can determine the human origin of that digested remains.
Do you want to dispose of a body? Good luck with that. A cadaver dog is not fooled, no matter what you try.
About the Author: Rose Johnson (pen name of Rosemarie Szostak) took the path less traveled when she was in college, and majored in science. She has now stepped off that path after a long and successful international career as an academic and a researcher. When Rose is not writing mysteries and exploring the history of the Deep South, she shears heritage flocks of sheep across the south and she, her husband, and her cadaver dogs help law enforcement find closure for families with missing loved ones. They live in a historic (post-Civil War) cotton plantation house on the outskirts of Atlanta, Georgia, and manage a flock of sheep whose bloodlines have been in her husband’s family since the 1800s. Her three passions are 1) science, 2) sheep shearing, 3) when there is time…continuing to write historical mysteries and suspense. Her first two books include “Enemy Fire” a historical mystery set in 1917 in Atlanta covering the US entry into WW1 and the second time Atlanta burned to the ground. Her second book, the first in a series of historical supernatural suspense is set in south Georgia using a cadaver dog to navigate the web of Voodoo and death.
What a great article. A friend of mine has a Rottie who’s a trained cadaver dog, and she’s amazing. Thank you!
Fascinating info!
oh my the part about visiting the nursing home.
That’s what I said, Vicki 😉
Rosemarie, such excellent information. FYI I have cancelled my murderous intent!!!
Hehehe! Just means you have to get more creative!!! 🙂
I didn’t mention alkaline hydrolysis, which is now an accepted method that uses less energy than cremation for end-of-life. Unfortunately, for the criminal, if they tried to dissolve a body in lye, the dogs will alert on the residual liquid or the bones. Just FYI. So if you have a family member that chose this method instead of cremation, don’t use the liquid as fertilizer for your flowers as the cadaver dogs will hit on it!
Fascinating! Especially the comment (in this thread) about lye!
Very interesting! I’ve heard that cats can also sense if a person is about to die, that they’ll sit on a person’s chest if they sense it. Do you know if that’s true?
I also have to mention putting a body through a wood chipper. Yes, this is an actual case. It is a challenge for LE, but the dogs will identify the area where the body was scattered.
This is so interesting! Dogs are amazing beings!
Even though it is creepy about the nursing home, it would be nice to know if a loved one is on the verge of passing. It does sound a bit weird, but once you have had to go through the death of an elderly family member you will understand.
Now…I better go dig that hole deeper! *snark!*
So, as a city folk, can I more successfully kill there?😉 jk- I am not planning on killing anywhere!
I agree, carrying “dead” weight isn’t easy…not that I know first hand. 🙂
Great blog!
I love the fact that a Border Collie is one of the dogs used. I have been involved in Border Collie rescue for about fifteen years and remain amazed at their intelligence, versatility, and capability!
I researched a bit about cadaver dogs because I used one to find a body in a grave in the middle of prairie in one of my mysteries. Their abilities to find bodies deep in water, buried for years, buried under rubble, and other places are incredible.
We were training in an old cemetery and to our surprise, none of the dogs ‘hit’ on any of the graves. They did hit in the field surrounding it. Turns out, someone moved the cemetery tombstones but did not relocate the bodies!
I really enjoyed this post! It’s fun to read about what amazing work K-9s are doing. 🙂 The HRD dog work looks fascinating. Thanks for sharing!