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SapphireSteel said:


This report was biased in that it did not emphasise that 15 OUT OF 19 MARKERS MATCHED.

Quote from Focus Magazine interview with GA *translated

Focus – A newspaper reported that your book could be summed up as "murder, the dog wrote", given the fact that it was the cadaver odour and the blood that were found that led you to sustain the theory that Madeleine McCann died. What do you actually know beyond the dogs?

Gonçalo Amaral – That comment only reveals the ignorance of the person who wrote it. The technique of residue collection using special dogs like these, CSIs, is usual in England, in the United States and it has already led to more than 200 condemnations. The laboratory where the samples [of blood, cadaver odour and DNA from Maddie] were analysed has corroborated these experts' work.

Focus – It has corroborated it, but it does not specify that they belong to Maddie McCann.

G.A. – They can only match that from Madeleine McCann, because the lab had the twins' DNA and it was not a match. Those are 15 out of 19 markers that match.

The fact that 15 out of 19 markers matched is STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT but the way the report was written did not note this. 15 out of 19 is pretty much a positive, just not positive enough for the experts to swear an absolute.

If you read the language it is very neutral, it doesn't say EXCLUDES the McCanns in many places, it just says its not enough to confirm.

Another example of skewed science.
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The FSS said the material in the car could not be said to belong to anyone, they did not exclude any either. They could not identify any sequences, so they did not exclude the twins.

The components mean nothing except it cannot be excluded as belonging to Madeleine or anyone else with those same 15 components. They do not even say those 15 components belong to any individuel. Those exact same components will be in the DNA of her parents too, as well as in thousands of others. There is no way anyone can say the material belongs to madeleine. The FSS could also not identify that material as being any particular bodily fluid, not could they say whether it belonged to three, four or five people.

It is certainly skewed to think because material of at least three people, contained compoents that one person has, that it therefore must belong to that person.
And how can you say that when the FSS say they cannot identify the DNA as belonging to anyone, it somehow lends strength to the idea of it being the mccanss. At the time of testing the flat had had hundreds of people stay in it, some after the mccanns as well as police. There is no reason to claim that material has any more chance of belonging to the mccanns than it does of anyone else.

Also as the report does say 15 out of 19 markers were chared by Madeleine, and then points out why this is not significant, it is hardly bias.
 
BritsKate said:
Is it though? Really? I seem to be reading that the dogs are wrong, full stop, simply because no body was located. Several scenarios have been used to attempt to show that there are times when the dog is still right despite the lack of immediate recovery of a body. No one on this site has ever claimed a dog is never wrong but I do feel it important to acquiesce to the knowledge our verified HRD & SAR posters have obtained through their training and experience.

My point is that the dogs are a tool, like a detective's gut, and should never be utilised as an absolute but rather a smaller piece of the larger picture. Neither though should they be refuted entirely without merit simply because we don't understand their processes and cannot prove, or disprove, a case on their imprint alone. MOO
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It is those like Amaral who have caused the dogs to be looked at more. Like you say they are supposed to be used as a tool or guide, but becuase some people are determined, whatever facts they are presented with, that the mccanns are guilty, they cling to the dogs barking. Grimes has stated they can make mistakes, and has stated they cannot be used as evidence on their own. But people like amaral have focused on the dogs as if these are some sort of proof. I suspect because this is simply because that is all they have, that cannot be disproved. If no body is found, they can just claim they dogs are accurate and the body has just been moved. They need no other evidence in their minds. Look at the way they talk about other things. The FSS states clearly that no DNA of madeleine's was found, and states that whilst one sample belonging to at least three people was found to have 15 components that Madeleine also shared, this mean nothing because components are not unique, and her own parents would have these components as well as strangers. Yet you hear them crying that it must be her DNA she had 15 of those components. They give no explanation as to why those compoents could not have come from her parents.
 
K9Snoop said:
Many dog handlers are ruled to be Expert Witnessess when giving court testimony (and expert according to my dictionary is someone with a high degree of skill or knowledge of a specific subject.) And while it may surprise you, dog handlers don’t operate on faith. We can’t. What we operate on is the training, education, and experience. Training Records is what allows us to draw determinations on the reliability of a particular dog and team. We also tend to run more than one dog over a given area to either confirm or not other alerts. Documentation of what the dog is taught, how often it is done, substances used and of what variety and how much, age of the substances and/or how long it was placed in a location prior to being worked, etc. Many include weather and terrain features such as altitude, wind, humidity, time of day, temperature, barometer reading, what type of clouds cover is present, ground cover, distracters such as food or dead animals, etc. And we conduct on our own research into Scent Theory and Movement, bodily fluids, gases, particles, bacteria. Sad to say my household budget cannot support the full-size research lab I would like so I have to wait until some scientist decides they want to validate in the lab something we are doing in the field. By the way, the definition of “scientist” is a person of science. Science is defined as “the observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of natural phenomena”. So in many ways, I am also a scientist because I am a person who is engaged in the observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of natural phenomena. If anyone is up for a bit of light reading, you can get further understanding through some of the following links. If necessary you can cut and paste into your brower.

http://www.pawsoflife.org/Library/Scent/Settles_Sniffers.pdf - Sniffers: Fluid-Dynamic Sampling
for Olfactory Trace Detection in Nature and Homeland Security—The 2004 Freeman Scholar Lecture

http://www.pawsoflife.org/Library/Scent/Settles 1997 Full-ScaleVentilation.pdf - Visualizing Full-Scale Ventilation Airflows

http://www.pawsoflife.org/Library/Learning/Bentosela 2008.pdf - Effect of reinforcement, reinforcer omission and extinction on a communicative response in domestic dogs (Canis familiaris)

http://www.pawsoflife.org/Library/Scent/Craven_2009.pdf - The fluid dynamics of canine olfaction:
unique nasal airflow patterns as an explanation of macrosmia

http://www.pawsoflife.org/Library/HRD/Curran_2011.pdf - Evaluation of selected sorbent materials for the collection of volatile organic compounds related to human scent using non-contact sampling mode

http://www.pawsoflife.org/Library/HRD/Hoffman_2009.pdf - Characterization of the volatile organic compounds present in the headspace of decomposing human remains

http://www.pawsoflife.org/Library/HRD/Vass.pdf : Decompositional Odor Analysis Database – Phase I

http://www.pawsoflife.org/Library/Scent/lorenzo.pdf : Laboratory and field experiments used to identify
Canis lupus var. familiaris active odor signature chemicals from drugs, explosives, and humans


I used to have to hunt for these articles there is a wonderful website at www.pawsoflife.org. Who has gone through the trouble for me. Go to the right side and click on the library link. It’s broken down into subject matter or general topics.




Cops love it (as well as the prosecuting attorneys) when they can actually find what they want to find. And I don’t think anyone here is debating that but we don’t call dogs a scientific tool. What they are is an investigative tool. They are informants. They are giving you a potential lead or avenue for further investigation. Their testimony (if you characterize it as such) is considered circumstantial and should undergo further verification. Mr. Grimes said that multiple times in his report. However, here is where I think the conflict starts. When we have a dog alert and nothing is able to be located. Does this invalidate the alert? No.




Let me pull the following example. A person go up to a house, opens the door, steps inside a moment, stands there looking around before leaving, shutting the door. You get home from a day at work. You get to the front door, open it, and a blast of unwashed body odor hits you in the face. You know that odor shouldn’t be there. You have just moved into this house because in your last house you had several incidents of break-ins by some unwashed goons of the Skunk Squad before the cops arrested them. So you know what that odor means. The Skunk Squad is back! You call the cops, telling them you think someone broke into your flat. The responding officers don’t smell anything as you walk around saying “don’t you smell that?” but decide to humor you by calling in Forensics. Forensics, of course, don’t find any fingerprints or evidence of forced entry. Does this mean that someone wasn’t in your flat? No, of course not. It just means forensics was unable to recover physical evidence that someone opened the door and entered your flat. It doesn’t mean that the door wasn’t opened. It doesn’t mean that someone didn’t come in. It doesn’t mean that you didn’t smell what you smelt. So now we have you (playing the part of the dog) saying the door was opened and someone with reeking BO was there (the dog alert) but forensics saying you are a liar because there is no evidence of such. Who is believed? So what any good detective do when faced with conflicting data does, he looks for third party verification. He goes and knocks on a few doors until he finds someone who says they saw someone hanging around the front of your house. But that doesn’t mean anyone entered your house. Still knocking at doors he finds someone who says they saw a person standing at your door. But this doesn’t mean that someone entered your flat (which means you are still wrong), so he knocks further until, finally, he finds someone who saw a person exiting out of the door of your flat. With this the cop comes back to you with a guess-there-was-someone-in-your-flat statement and finally agrees with you that, yes, you were right. Gee, don’t you feel happy now? The cops were finally agreed with you that someone was in your flat as you stand there saying Of-course-I-told-you-that.

Welcome to the world of canine scent detection.

None us blindly follow our dogs. Most of us have years of training documentation on each and every dog we work. In other words if you did a task in the past and were right 9 times out of 10 in the past, the chances are 90% that you are right this time. Why would I not give you the benefit that you are not right? This isn't blind faith, this is earned respect. And we are our biggest doubters of our own dogs. We are constantly training, testing, and documenting what we do. We have to. Not only for our own peace of mind but to be able to deal with situations like this.
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According to a FOI that SYP answered Eddie and grimes, whilst in SYP employ, had carried out 17 cases alone, and found one body, whilst as a team with another dog and handler they worked twnety and found four. I do not now the details of the cases where no body was found, but certainly Jersey was held to be a mistake. I agree it is not the dogs fault, I think it is down to people like Harper and Amaral putting too much reliance on the dogs. The fact is you cannot say a dog alerting is evidence and therefore claim it does not matter if no drugs were found on soemone, or no evidence of a detah was found. If a drugs dog alerted to someone and no drugs were found, it would not even get to the cps, let alone a court.
 
The fact that 15 out of 19 markers matched is STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT but the way the report was written did not note this. 15 out of 19 is pretty much a positive, just not positive enough for the experts to swear an absolute.

This is 100% incorrect. Plenty of people will have those same components. It is sequence that is important not components. It is not in the least statistically significant, especially as the DNA came from between three to five people, and the components could have come from every signle one of those people. Plus every single component in madeleine's DNA will be found in the dna of her parents i.e if you took DNA from kate and Gerry mixed it together and looked at the components, 100% of madeleines components would be there (assuming the material was enough to look at).

Basicly if you got the dna of five people and mixed it up and looked at the components there is a high chance the mix would share fifteen components with you. If you took the material from somewhere where you had plenty of relatives, the chances of the mix having 15 components which you also had is very high.
 
brit1981 said:
According to a FOI that SYP answered Eddie and grimes, whilst in SYP employ, had carried out 17 cases alone, and found one body, whilst as a team with another dog and handler they worked twnety and found four. I do not now the details of the cases where no body was found, but certainly Jersey was held to be a mistake. I agree it is not the dogs fault, I think it is down to people like Harper and Amaral putting too much reliance on the dogs. The fact is you cannot say a dog alerting is evidence and therefore claim it does not matter if no drugs were found on soemone, or no evidence of a detah was found. If a drugs dog alerted to someone and no drugs were found, it would not even get to the cps, let alone a court.
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Not ever search results with a find. Nor even every other search, or every third or fourth. I can't speak others but the vast majority of my cases do not produce a body or any alerts. The police get a tip or lead that there might be a body buried at a location. Instead of digging up acres of ground looking they will run a dog over it to see if there is any reason to dig and if so, where. I mean let's face it. If they knew where there was a body, they wouldn't need a dog. They would just go there and locate it themselves. I know some handlers who train, deploy, search;, and retire a dog without ever gettting a find. But that does not mean the time and effort were wasted. It is just as important that the dog indicate correctly that there is not a body there as it is when there is. A dog that gives incorrect positive alerts (normally detected in training) costs the department using them in time, manpower, and heavy equipment rentals. A dog that fails to detect can be as bad because that means someone's loved one is still unfound and causing grief and heartache to that family.

Also do not confuse drug dogs with cadaver dogs. In the U.S., an alert by a drug dog is probable cause and gives the officer the legal right to search even if the person does not consent to it. A cadaver dog's alert is not held in the same regard.
 
I was not saying that the fact eddie only found five bodies in 37 searches (four were found as a team) meant that the other thirty two time she must have missed the body. I was simply stating his record with syp. the fact is the cadaver dogs are not used and not allowed as evidence for a reason.
And my point about the drugs dog was that they can alert all they want, but without drugs a prosecution will not even make it to the CPS let alone court as even drugs dogs cannot be counted as reliable evidence on their own.

I understand what you mean about the false positives. As well as th ejersey case there was a case where cadaver dogs alerted in the home of a missing person, who later turned up alive. In this case it was blamed on second hand furniture. The fact they can alert to second hand furniture maes me wonder how accurate they are in practice - there is no use in an alert just ebcause some furnitur ewas once in a house where someone died, or soemone once died in a house. There must be very few houses in the Uk where either someone has not died in there at some point, or does not contain furniture that may have at some point been in a house that died.

Also Eddie is according to grimes trained to detect blood (even from a living person) is this normal in a cadaver dog?
 
brit1981 said:
Also Eddie is according to grimes trained to detect blood (even from a living person) is this normal in a cadaver dog?
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If a dog is trained to detect the blood as well as flesh (and almost all of us are) then yes. Whether a person dies and the blood dies in place or if you physically remove blood from a living person, the blood still dies. Once the blood does not receive the nutrients and oxygen it needs to live, it dies. Which is why whole blood in the hospital has a shelf life much like whole milk. You can slow down the degredation via refrigeration but eventually it turns bad. It would be the same if you cut the finger off a living person. The finger removed from a living person will break down and rot just as it would if it came from a dead person. The smell of decomp (or the smell of cellular death) is the same.
 
brit1981 said:
According to a FOI that SYP answered Eddie and grimes, whilst in SYP employ, had carried out 17 cases alone, and found one body, whilst as a team with another dog and handler they worked twnety and found four. I do not now the details of the cases where no body was found, but certainly Jersey was held to be a mistake. I agree it is not the dogs fault, I think it is down to people like Harper and Amaral putting too much reliance on the dogs. The fact is you cannot say a dog alerting is evidence and therefore claim it does not matter if no drugs were found on soemone, or no evidence of a detah was found. If a drugs dog alerted to someone and no drugs were found, it would not even get to the cps, let alone a court.
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Do you have a sensible link for this as I would like to see it
 
brit1981 said:
I was not saying that the fact eddie only found five bodies in 37 searches (four were found as a team) meant that the other thirty two time she must have missed the body. I was simply stating his record with syp. the fact is the cadaver dogs are not used and not allowed as evidence for a reason.
And my point about the drugs dog was that they can alert all they want, but without drugs a prosecution will not even make it to the CPS let alone court as even drugs dogs cannot be counted as reliable evidence on their own.

I understand what you mean about the false positives. As well as th ejersey case there was a case where cadaver dogs alerted in the home of a missing person, who later turned up alive. In this case it was blamed on second hand furniture. The fact they can alert to second hand furniture maes me wonder how accurate they are in practice - there is no use in an alert just ebcause some furnitur ewas once in a house where someone died, or soemone once died in a house. There must be very few houses in the Uk where either someone has not died in there at some point, or does not contain furniture that may have at some point been in a house that died.

Also Eddie is according to grimes trained to detect blood (even from a living person) is this normal in a cadaver dog?[/QUOTE]

Yes. "Cadaver" dog is misleading. Some are exclusively cadaver by training, some are sniffer dogs by training.

A good sniffer dog will be able to pick up many different scents.

The scent of a cadaver is markedly different to the scent of a live body, so it's apples and oranges.

It means nothing to the dog - a scent is a scent and they are all different.
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Badhorsie, It was originally up on the syp site, but it was a couple of years ago so the primary source link is dead. You can either google it and see the FOI up on other sites, or email SYP making another FOI.
 
K9Snoop said:
If a dog is trained to detect the blood as well as flesh (and almost all of us are) then yes. Whether a person dies and the blood dies in place or if you physically remove blood from a living person, the blood still dies. Once the blood does not receive the nutrients and oxygen it needs to live, it dies. Which is why whole blood in the hospital has a shelf life much like whole milk. You can slow down the degredation via refrigeration but eventually it turns bad. It would be the same if you cut the finger off a living person. The finger removed from a living person will break down and rot just as it would if it came from a dead person. The smell of decomp (or the smell of cellular death) is the same.
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So if both eddie and keela alert to something how can one tell if the alert is due to blood from a living person, or from a cadaver having been there.
For instance both Eddie the dog who is trained to alert to cadaver and bodily fluids, and keela who is trained ot alert to blood, both alerted to the card fob of the mccanns hire car. The FSS found cellular material on the fob that matched Gerry McCann. How can anyone say the alert from eddie was due to cadaver scent on the fob, rather than Gerry having nicked his finger and got a bit of blood on it?
 
brit1981 said:
So if both eddie and keela alert to something how can one tell if the alert is due to blood from a living person, or from a cadaver having been there.
For instance both Eddie the dog who is trained to alert to cadaver and bodily fluids, and keela who is trained ot alert to blood, both alerted to the card fob of the mccanns hire car. The FSS found cellular material on the fob that matched Gerry McCann. How can anyone say the alert from eddie was due to cadaver scent on the fob, rather than Gerry having nicked his finger and got a bit of blood on it?
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They can’t.

Eddie is trained to alert to human decomp odor (be that blood, flesh, purge fluids, etc). Keela is trained for blood and blood only. You can have one or both alert. Both of the alerts mean things separately and then together.

You can have HR odor but no external blood present. If that is the case then only Eddie will alert. Keela will not. If you have external blood then both dogs should alert. So what does the fob alert mean? It only means that 2 dogs (one trained for HRD and fluid and one dog trained for blood only) alerted on the car fob. So take that grain of rice and add it to the rest of the meal. Add it in with the other circumstantial evidence.
 
K9Snoop said:
They can’t.

Eddie is trained to alert to human decomp odor (be that blood, flesh, purge fluids, etc). Keela is trained for blood and blood only. You can have one or both alert. Both of the alerts mean things separately and then together.

You can have HR odor but no external blood present. If that is the case then only Eddie will alert. Keela will not. If you have external blood then both dogs should alert. So what does the fob alert mean? It only means that 2 dogs (one trained for HRD and fluid and one dog trained for blood only) alerted on the car fob. So take that grain of rice and add it to the rest of the meal. Add it in with the other circumstantial evidence.
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Circumstantial evidence of what? To me it is circumstantial evidence that Gerry McCCann got a tiny bit of his own blood on the fob. the FSS report says "A low level incomplete DNA profile which matched the corresponding components in the DNA profile of Gerald McCann was obtained from cellular material on the key card " and the two dogs alerted. This says to me that either Gerry McCann (or perhaps someone very closely related to him, such as his sibling) got a tiny bit of his own blood on it.
 
I may be wrong but I think that K9snoop meant "circumstantial evidence" in a general sense, not particularly about this case.

Coming on this thread provokes real anxiety in me,I really don't know why I bother however I really care about this little girl being found
 
Why anxiety?
I hope she is found alive and well. I am not confident though to be honest. However I would have said that about Jaycee lee dugard, and others like her. So there is always hope. I always thin about Katrice Lee Major - went out of sight for a minute in a busy supermarket, and thats it. No hint of her since 1981. It just seems impossible.
 
It is the extreme behaviour by the various "pro" and "anti" factions who have attached themselves to this case which cause the anxiety.
 
badhorsie said:
It is the extreme behaviour by the various "pro" and "anti" factions who have attached themselves to this case which cause the anxiety.
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I agree, but it provokes anger in me, not anxiety.

Every time I read a vehement "pro" posting I just shake my head. This is an example of what lots of money, good lawyers, expensive PR, and an unshakeable liar or two can do to muddy and interfere with what SHOULD be a focused search for a little girl.

Instead we have media manipulation, blatant child neglect (at the very least), book tours, and law suits against anyone and everyone who wishes to question the central players...much like the Ramseys, a decade earlier.

It seems that everyone has forgotten the little lost girls in the middle of this mess...except US, the caring public.

We need to just keep pressuring our governments in the hope that someone somewhere will have the balls to step up for these babies, and compel those who are hiding behind their fancy lawyers to co-operate in a complete and thorough investigation.

We call them "inquests" here. The courts order a hearing which compels everyone involved to give evidence, in one place, at the same time. Doesn't sound like much more than beauracracy, but this is exactly what solved the Daniel Morcombe case down here in Australia. Once everyone was being forced to speak, on record, at the same time in the same venue, discrepancies became clear which resulted in an arrest.

We must not give up, for Madeleine.:maddening:
 
brit1981 said:
The fact that 15 out of 19 markers matched is STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT but the way the report was written did not note this. 15 out of 19 is pretty much a positive, just not positive enough for the experts to swear an absolute.

This is 100% incorrect. Plenty of people will have those same components. It is sequence that is important not components. It is not in the least statistically significant, especially as the DNA came from between three to five people, and the components could have come from every signle one of those people. Plus every single component in madeleine's DNA will be found in the dna of her parents i.e if you took DNA from kate and Gerry mixed it together and looked at the components, 100% of madeleines components would be there (assuming the material was enough to look at).

Basicly if you got the dna of five people and mixed it up and looked at the components there is a high chance the mix would share fifteen components with you. If you took the material from somewhere where you had plenty of relatives, the chances of the mix having 15 components which you also had is very high.
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The DNA material and cadaver scent was found in places it should not have been found.

Most importantly, behind the sofa in apartment 5A.

Eddie and Keela were walked through the ENTIRE holiday complex, and only alerted for a cadaver in ONE APARTMENT...the McCanns.

They also alerted to cadaver on cuddle cat (which was promptly washed my Kate).

Further, there were questions asked about FSS Ltd, which although a British firm, carries NO official licence to test DNA, nor do they adhere to any recognised standards in testing. There are also questions as to the ownership of FSS Ltd and their connection to 3i, a company with links to the McCann Corporation.

This case is like an onion - the more layers you peel away, the stinkier it gets.:banghead:
 
brit1981 said:
Circumstantial evidence of what? To me it is circumstantial evidence that Gerry McCCann got a tiny bit of his own blood on the fob. the FSS report says "A low level incomplete DNA profile which matched the corresponding components in the DNA profile of Gerald McCann was obtained from cellular material on the key card " and the two dogs alerted. This says to me that either Gerry McCann (or perhaps someone very closely related to him, such as his sibling) got a tiny bit of his own blood on it.
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If you are looking at it as a single, isolated event held apart and separate from the events, circumstances, and from any other info in this situation then it means exactly what what I said.

"...2 dogs (one trained for HRD and fluid and one dog trained for blood only) alerted on the car fob."

That's it! No more, no less.

What the forensic lab results were and what that means is outside my purview. I am not a serology or DNA specialist.
 
K9Snoop said:
If you are looking at it as a single, isolated event held apart and separate from the events, circumstances, and from any other info in this situation then it means exactly what what I said.

"...2 dogs (one trained for HRD and fluid and one dog trained for blood only) alerted on the car fob."

That's it! No more, no less.

What the forensic lab results were and what that means is outside my purview. I am not a serology or DNA specialist.
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It was low-copy DNA which is NOT accepted in any court and is currently being queried as it has found to show false results, resulting in judgements being overturned.

As such, it cannot be regarded as reliable enough for court.

HOWEVER...the DNA located was consistent with a child of K&G.

What's more important is WHERE it was located...places it had no right to be, for example, in a boot locker of a car hired AFTER Madeline went missing, and behind a sofa in apartment 5A.

The sniffer dogs ALERTED FOR CADAVER IN THE SAME PLACES.

Alone, neither are proof of anything. Together, they build a compelling picture of what really happened that day.
 
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