IA IA - Elizabeth Collins, 8, & Lyric Cook, 10, Evansdale, 13 July 2012 - #27

[GrainneDhu]

I know there are different types of dogs: there are tracking dogs, air-scent dogs, cadaver dogs and other specialized types of dogs.
I know a cold and damp area is preferable over a hot and dry area for tracking purposes (wasn't it hot and dry at that time?).
I know grass and bushes and soft surfaces are preferable to hardened surfaces like asphalt and cement (lake area would have been a mixture of these surfaces).
I know dogs track from the oldest scent to the newest scent.
And I know that some dogs can track a scent (depending on the type of dog) up to a few weeks, maybe even a month or more in ideal conditions.
Now, since the girls rode the bikes everyday for at least 5 days (I've linked to this info in a quote by Misty in a previous post) and even they rode the bikes that day, how can we be sure that the dogs were tracking rafts from the girls themselves and not rafts dispersed from the bicycle? If a shoe or shirt can hold enough scent to track, surely a bicycle handled, sweat upon and sat on for days at a time would carry a strong scent. I've tried searching for this info myself and there doesn't seem to be much info on how that would help (or confuse) a tracker. Would handling an object covered with rafts (carrying the bicycle) transfer enough of them onto another person for a dog be able to discern the difference?

The weather was horribly hot and humid at the time.

It isn't likely that handling an object would transfer enough skin rafts to another human being to lay a good trail. There's a fairly frequently done demo that disproves the idea: a tracklayer and another human being give each other a big ol' bear hug trying to wipe as much skin area over each other as possible in a public place, then walk side by side for a distance. At some point, the tracklayer separates from the other person and continues to lay track in a different direction.

Even when this is done with identical twins (as in the demo I watched), the scent dog had no problems at all when the designated tracklayer turned away from her twin. That dog followed the designated tracklayer like his nose was on rails.

 

[Mjskit]

Dillin's FB page says he was born in 1992, so he is not a minor.

He is 20? I thought Misty was 33. Am I wrong?

 

[GrainneDhu]

If police waited a week to decide that it was an abduction, why were the FBI already involved and on site by July 15?

I agree.

To me, the evidence says that LE was following several different possibilities at the same time the lake was being drained.

And the entire family was clearly NOT pleading with LE to treat it as an abduction. In the video clip that threecrazykids posted, Grandma Vicki (Lyric's paternal grandmother) was hanging out at the lake because she thought that is where her grandchild was.

 

[GrainneDhu]

Why would FBI be involved if it was not considered an abduction?

No reason.

At least 100 children (some as young as 7 years old) have run away in the Cedar Valley area in the last year and the FBI hasn't been called in to assist with any of those cases. Yes, they are missing but they haven't been abducted, they are runaways. The overwhelmingly vast majority of them return home on their own, are returned by the police or are charged with something and spend time in juvie.

The only case the FBI was called in to assist was Elizabeth and Lyric; that says to me that LE was taking the possibility of an abduction seriously from the very beginning.

 

[GrainneDhu]

Good question...for LE. Vague messages to the public/media have been their MO from the beginning. They weren't (and still aren't) giving anything up. :rocker:

They may not have anything. They may have all but one teeny little piece. They may have more than they need, but already have their perp locked up. They may KNOW but simply can't prove it.

We simply don't know...and may never know.

But you make a great point...why? If they truly believed it was a drowning, would they still need all the FBI resources involved?

They were investigating all the possibilities at the same time: drowning, strayed, run away and abducted.

 

[NWLady]

They were investigating all the possibilities at the same time: drowning, strayed, run away and abducted.

Thank you, Grainne for all your helpfulness and insight in answering everyone's questions. Your knowledge is appreciated and thank you for sharing with us.

 

[Considering]

They were investigating all the possibilities at the same time: drowning, strayed, run away and abducted.

Jumping off your post GrainneDhu. I think this timeline from the December 10, 2012 issue of The Gazette is informative and shows that LE was looking at possibilities other than drowning. The timeline is based on Kent Smock's notes.

http://thegazette.com/2012/12/10/timeline-search-for-girls-reported-missing-in-evansdale/

 

[Snowbunny]

Yes, I agree with you. And I know dogs are sometimes used to track suspects here (not just missing people). I've seen police chases on TV where they lose the suspect, but allow the dogs to get his scent from the car, then send the dogs off after the suspect to find him.

That's true but then LE has a suspect already in mind that they are after, but where the girls were concerned they were looking for them because they were missing and it hadn't been concluded that the girls were even abducted at that time. You can't argue a case in court that a person is guilty just because the dog picked up their scent so I don't know why we are even having this discussion. Its just like the discuss about all the people that showed up at the lake to look for the girls. LE didn't even know that a crime had been committed yet. The sole purpose for everybody to show up was to look for the missing girls.

I remember a few years ago here in SD I was driving down a rural highway about 9:00pm and all of a sudden there was search and rescue vehicles, LE, Highway Patrol, Sheriff's Department, Ambulances, all over the place and of course they were stopping traffic. Come to find out there was a 5 or 6 year old little girl that when missing from her farm and they didn't know what had happened to the little one. LE was asking for anybody and everybody to help find the little girl. They figured it was possible she had wandered into one of the fields and had gotten lost. I called my brother who was a Career Firefighter and Division Chief and asked him to active CERT to come out and help. We had approximately 700 people looking for that little girl in the dead of night. LE took everybodies' name down, their address and phone number and where there were going to be allow to searched. We were told specifically what we could do and couldn't do. They also brought the tracking dogs out to help search. It took a little over 3 hours to find the little girl. She was found about 1-1/4 miles away in a bean field but she was okay. The only scent they gave the tracking dogs was her scent and it was the tracking dogs that found her.

 

[jenandemmie]

The weather was horribly hot and humid at the time.

It isn't likely that handling an object would transfer enough skin rafts to another human being to lay a good trail. There's a fairly frequently done demo that disproves the idea: a tracklayer and another human being give each other a big ol' bear hug trying to wipe as much skin area over each other as possible in a public place, then walk side by side for a distance. At some point, the tracklayer separates from the other person and continues to lay track in a different direction.

Even when this is done with identical twins (as in the demo I watched), the scent dog had no problems at all when the designated tracklayer turned away from her twin. That dog followed the designated tracklayer like his nose was on rails.

Thank you very much! This laid to rest a lot of my confusion (and some possible theories).

As an aside for those of you as interested in this aspect as I am, when I went looking for info about scent dogs (absolutely fascinating field) I ran across the transcript of Chris Boyer at Scott Peterson's trial. He was basically the one in charge of the handlers using the scent dogs at the marina when they were looking for Laci's scent. It's very long but since its testimony before a jury the issues are broken down in very basic layman's terms. It was great reading, really. I know it's not MSM but I hope that a court transcript is allowed even if its not regarding the present case. The information in it really helps to understand the training process and the limits and capabilities of these awesome animals.

http://www.pwc-sii.com/CourtDocs/Transcripts/Boyer-trial.htm

 

[GrainneDhu]

Jumping off your post GrainneDhu. I think this timeline from the December 10, 2012 issue of The Gazette is informative and shows that LE was looking at possibilities other than drowning. The timeline is based on Kent Smock's notes.

http://thegazette.com/2012/12/10/timeline-search-for-girls-reported-missing-in-evansdale/

Thank you for that link.

Far from being lackadaisical, it looks to me like the investigation was run in a sensible and timely fashion from the very beginning.

 

[GrainneDhu]

Thank you very much! This laid to rest a lot of my confusion (and some possible theories).

As an aside for those of you as interested in this aspect as I am, when I went looking for info about scent dogs (absolutely fascinating field) I ran across the transcript of Chris Boyer at Scott Peterson's trial. He was basically the one in charge of the handlers using the scent dogs at the marina when they were looking for Laci's scent. It's very long but since its testimony before a jury the issues are broken down in very basic layman's terms. It was great reading, really. I know it's not MSM but I hope that a court transcript is allowed even if its not regarding the present case. The information in it really helps to understand the training process and the limits and capabilities of these awesome animals.

http://www.pwc-sii.com/CourtDocs/Transcripts/Boyer-trial.htm

If you are really interested in the way dogs scent and you have access to any old dog, you can do a little playing around to get an idea of how dogs go about it.

Basically, you confine the dog and then walk around the yard and hide treats within the dog's reach. Then turn the dog loose. The first few times you do it, the dog will just find the treats by accident. If you have a normal greedy dog (the vast majority of dogs think they are living 5 minutes away from death via starvation), they will try to figure out the most efficient way to find the treats. Sooner or later (usually sooner), the dog figures out to follow your scent.

Once the dog has the idea, you can let your track age for varying amounts of time before you turn the dog loose.

Just by watching the dog's body language, including their posture, their head position, how they twitch their noses, the position of the tail, etc, you can learn a lot about how dogs track.

The cool thing is that any healthy dog will do this. Some dogs are indisputably better than other dogs but all healthy dogs can do it. One of the best dogs I saw learning to do scent work was a 15 year old miniature Dachshund. His eyes were milky with age, he was selectively deaf but he loved food and he was very clever at figuring out the most efficient way to get food. Very businesslike, no-nonsense dog. He knew what he wanted and he knew he could get it.

Once you've learned a particular dog's language, it makes walking that dog a whole new adventure.

 

[jenandemmie]

If you are really interested in the way dogs scent and you have access to any old dog, you can do a little playing around to get an idea of how dogs go about it.

Basically, you confine the dog and then walk around the yard and hide treats within the dog's reach. Then turn the dog loose. The first few times you do it, the dog will just find the treats by accident. If you have a normal greedy dog (the vast majority of dogs think they are living 5 minutes away from death via starvation), they will try to figure out the most efficient way to find the treats. Sooner or later (usually sooner), the dog figures out to follow your scent.

Once the dog has the idea, you can let your track age for varying amounts of time before you turn the dog loose.

Just by watching the dog's body language, including their posture, their head position, how they twitch their noses, the position of the tail, etc, you can learn a lot about how dogs track.

The cool thing is that any healthy dog will do this. Some dogs are indisputably better than other dogs but all healthy dogs can do it. One of the best dogs I saw learning to do scent work was a 15 year old miniature Dachshund. His eyes were milky with age, he was selectively deaf but he loved food and he was very clever at figuring out the most efficient way to get food. Very businesslike, no-nonsense dog. He knew what he wanted and he knew he could get it.

Once you've learned a particular dog's language, it makes walking that dog a whole new adventure.

I have an 8 year old Beagle and a 14 year old daughter that I could keep very busy this way! She's always looking for new ways to play with him. He's really just a nose on 4 feet. I remember one time we had to crate him in the garage for some reason or another and he just wouldn't settle down for anything. He just kept barking and scratching and whining. Finally I let him out and he goes straight to a corner in the garage where we had set the takeout leftovers for the night instead of hauling them to the trash bin outside. Once I gave him a treat and took the bag outside he went right to sleep without a fuss! I don't think I could sleep either with the lingering smell of pizza boxes just a few yards away!

 

[cluciano63]

OT, but I have to say, many of you are so patient here on this thread, to go over every detail, with nothing new coming out. This thread stays much more active than many others manage to do, with so little new information. If a case could be solved by dedication alone, surely this one will be.

 

[GrainneDhu]

I have an 8 year old Beagle and a 14 year old daughter that I could keep very busy this way! She's always looking for new ways to play with him. He's really just a nose on 4 feet. I remember one time we had to crate him in the garage for some reason or another and he just wouldn't settle down for anything. He just kept barking and scratching and whining. Finally I let him out and he goes straight to a corner in the garage where we had set the takeout leftovers for the night instead of hauling them to the trash bin outside. Once I gave him a treat and took the bag outside he went right to sleep without a fuss! I don't think I could sleep either with the lingering smell of pizza boxes just a few yards away!

The great thing about teaching a dog to do scent work is that 15 minutes of scent work tires out a dog more than 2 hours of running. Doing scent work is heavy mental effort for a dog and it wears out that busy little brain.

There is actually a competitive sport called nosework, if your daughter gets really hooked.

 

[Bootsctr]

Thank you, Grainne for all your helpfulness and insight in answering everyone's questions. Your knowledge is appreciated and thank you for sharing with us.

Yes, yes and YES! I think I have a little crush on you.... and I mean that in the most admiring way :blushing:

While I was away snoozing, you guys have provided me with lots of information to ponder today. Thank you jenandemmie for the links and everyone else's and the food-for-thought posts! I am definitely going to try the exercise you explained with my dog Grainne! I can't wait. She is going to love it. She thinks I am the most boring person in the world, so this will definitely give her something to do.

I would especially like to thank threecrazykids for keeping this thread active and moving! Now where is she ? She has a lot to catch up on . . .

:coffeews:

 

[Bootsctr]

The great thing about teaching a dog to do scent work is that 15 minutes of scent work tires out a dog more than 2 hours of running. Doing scent work is heavy mental effort for a dog and it wears out that busy little brain.

There is actually a competitive sport called nosework, if your daughter gets really hooked.

Do you have specific links or would googling bring me good results? Thanks again for your valued input... especially regarding the dogs. :seeya:

 

[GrainneDhu]

Do you have specific links or would googling bring me good results? Thanks again for your valued input... especially regarding the dogs. :seeya:

Here's the link for the organisation that runs nosework trials and holds courses for dog owners to learn how to do it:

http://www.funnosework.com/

It is somewhat like the work drug or explosives detection dogs do, in that there are four different scents (in this case, harmless essential oils rather than anything dangerous!) and the dogs are taught to look for those scents in different environments.

It is all done via positive reinforcement, there's no force involved. It is amazing to see what dogs who have "only" been household pets can really do, given the right circumstances.

 

[threecrazykids]

The dogs were being used to try to follow Elizabeth and Lyric's movements only. Not anyone else in the world, only Elizabeth and Lyric. So anyone who may have touched the scent articles provided by each family for the dog had to be ruled out for the dogs because the dog's mission was to follow Elizabeth and Lyric.

If there were no other evidence placing Uncle Fred at the lake, I doubt the scent dog evidence would be allowed into trial. Scent dogs can provide probable cause but are not allowed to be used to convict on their own.

So, say Lucrezia Borgia says she doesn't know where on earth her boyfriend is, she hasn't seen him in a year. LE walks a trained HRD dog around her extensive gardens and the dog indicates strongly on one bed of flowers. That gives LE probable cause to dig Lucrezia's flower bed up and discover the corpse of her boyfriend.

Uh oh, Lucrezia is in big trouble. She's charged and at trial, one anticipated issue is that her lawyers will say that those mean ol' policemen just didn't like Lucrezia because she has been abandoned by so many boyfriends who died. Her defence attorneys are anticipated to argue that the police had no reason to dig up Lucrezia's flower bed.

That is where the scent dog evidence is brought into trial: to prove that the flower bed wasn't dug up simply because the police don't like poor little Lucrezia but because they had good reason to think they would find a body in there.

Thank you so much for this!:great: This is exactly what I was hoping to have answered. In my example...Uncle Fred said he'd never been to the lake or hadn't been in years and had no reason for his scent to be there.

The dog's can hit on a scent and prove otherwise. It may not be enough to convict, but it's enough to know that Uncle Fred is being less than truthful in his whereabouts for the day. Sure, LE is going to need more evidence to prove he was there, but they at least were able to use the dogs to prove his scent was at the lake.

 

[threecrazykids]

I agree.

To me, the evidence says that LE was following several different possibilities at the same time the lake was being drained.

And the entire family was clearly NOT pleading with LE to treat it as an abduction. In the video clip that threecrazykids posted, Grandma Vicki (Lyric's paternal grandmother) was hanging out at the lake because she thought that is where her grandchild was.

You are correct...I would post the family members who said from the beginning that they believed girls were abducted and NOT in the lake, but I will leave that research up to each sleuther.There are plenty of clips and transcripts out there showing who thought the girls were abducted.

However, you are correct...Grandma Vicki didn't appear to think the girls had been abducted in the video I posted.

 

[threecrazykids]

That's true but then LE has a suspect already in mind that they are after, but where the girls were concerned they were looking for them because they were missing and it hadn't been concluded that the girls were even abducted at that time. You can't argue a case in court that a person is guilty just because the dog picked up their scent so I don't know why we are even having this discussion. Its just like the discuss about all the people that showed up at the lake to look for the girls. LE didn't even know that a crime had been committed yet. The sole purpose for everybody to show up was to look for the missing girls.

I remember a few years ago here in SD I was driving down a rural highway about 9:00pm and all of a sudden there was search and rescue vehicles, LE, Highway Patrol, Sheriff's Department, Ambulances, all over the place and of course they were stopping traffic. Come to find out there was a 5 or 6 year old little girl that when missing from her farm and they didn't know what had happened to the little one. LE was asking for anybody and everybody to help find the little girl. They figured it was possible she had wandered into one of the fields and had gotten lost. I called my brother who was a Career Firefighter and Division Chief and asked him to active CERT to come out and help. We had approximately 700 people looking for that little girl in the dead of night. LE took everybodies' name down, their address and phone number and where there were going to be allow to searched. We were told specifically what we could do and couldn't do. They also brought the tracking dogs out to help search. It took a little over 3 hours to find the little girl. She was found about 1-1/4 miles away in a bean field but she was okay. The only scent they gave the tracking dogs was her scent and it was the tracking dogs that found her.

So, when (in your opinion) do you think LE finally accepted the fact that these girls were indeed a victim of a crime? They didn't officially announce it as an abduction until 1 week after they'd been missing.

IMO, even though LE didn't state in MSM that they felt this was a crime scene doesn't mean they were't doing parallel investigations including a possible abduction (or something equally sinister).

Abben said that just because the bikes and purse were there didn't prove the girls themselves were there and that (I believe) was one of the first presser's following the discovery of the bikes. I believe he used the words "It's like they disappeared into thin air".

LE here is known to keep it very quiet. They don't lay their cards out all obvious for everyone to see. I think LE had different agents pursuing every option they could think of from the get go.

The media however swarmed to the lake by the hundreds because that is where all the action was taking place. And if the media was happy to stick to the lake and watch the lake drain I don't think LE was going to do anything to draw attention to a reporter and say "Hey...look over here...were going go talk to (insert name here) because we got a tip she and her boyfriend didn't show up for work Friday".

They were content keeping the media to their 4pm pressers and only reporting what was divulged during those. The rest was all rumor and speculation.

:moo: