http://www.doenetwork.us/cases/28dfab.html http://library.triblive.com/interconnect/intercon.dllCadaver dog tackles Canadian mystery
By Mary Pickels
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
When a call comes in for C.J., it's a somber one, summoning the 4-year-old black Labrador on a mission to recover human remains.
In her two-plus years as a cadaver/trauma dog for the Greensburg Fire Department, C.J. has responded to 19 search requests throughout Pennsylvania and in Florida.
C.J. is about to get her first foreign assignment, traveling with her handlers, Greensburg fireman John Ackerman and Fire Chief Ed Hutchinson, to Alberta, Canada, to search for the remains of a 15-year-old girl missing for 12 years.
"She's usually called out at least once or twice a month," Ackerman said of his charge. "She worked with Florida law enforcement twice in 1994, and we went to Wayne County near the New York border in May. This is her first time out of the country."
Ackerman, Hutchinson and C.J. will fly to Edmonton, Canada, today, then travel by car another three hours to Hinton, where Shelley-Anne Bacsu disappeared May 3, 1983.
C.J. will fly up front in the passenger compartment with her handlers.
"She is accorded all the courtesies of a Seeing Eye dog," Ackerman said.
Ackerman said Bacsu was last seen on a road near Hinton, and her case has been treated as a kidnapping.
"Apparently there is some new information leading investigators to believe she is dead and might be in this area," he said.
Susan Antonello, investigative support coordinator for the Missing Children Society of Canada, contacted Ackerman in early August about searching an area the size of three football fields for Bacsu's body.
"That's not a big deal for her," he said, noting that one dog team, consisting of the dog, its handler and an observer, can cover one square mile in three and a half hours. If there are any clues in the area, Ackerman said, there is an 85 percent chance the dog will find them.
To get the same 85 percent probability of detection using people, he said, it would take 176 trained searchers spaced 30 feet apart to cover the same square mile in 3 hours.
C.J. completed K-9 basic cadaver search school and K-0 advanced cadaver search school and was specifically taught to check evidence for the scent of human decomposition.
A cadaver dog is specifically trained to methodically check an area for one particular scent. If he become aware of the scene, he will zigzag between its boundaries to find the scent's strongest concentration. He will then attempt to get at the source by digging, scratching or barking.
What he's searching for is a dust "raft" of dead skin cells, which dogs can smell. They can also detect base elements as a human body decomposes. Ammonia compounds, hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen phosphide and methane can remain in the environment for years, and soil samples from very old grave sites have shown high concentration of those compounds.
"She's trained almost like a drug dog. She is not used for search and rescue," Ackerman explained. "The bloodhounds do that."
C.J. is experienced with older grave training, he said, giving her the ability to search for remains that may be 12 years old.
Searches like this one are called speculative, he added, meaning there is a suspicion of human remains, but there is also the possibility the person sought is nowhere near the area being searched.
"What this (search) does is eliminate area," he said. "We hope it can put the parents at ease, that at least they might know one way or the other. We would like to wrap it up for them. You can imagine how they feel, not knowing for 12 years."
She's one of the few cadaver dogs Ackerman knows of. "I would be surprised if there are three in Pennsylvania," he said.
C.J. has so far made three body locations, her first success being the recovery of the body of plane-crash victim Craig R. Dimitris, 31.
Dimitris died from hypothermia and exposure following a plane crash on the Laurel Mountain ridge in January 1993. The plane itself was not discovered until mid-March, and C.J. was able to locate the passenger's body under three feet of snow, about 100 feet from the wreckage.
Barry L. Reeger photo