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Above image from The McCann GalleryEddie, the English Springer Spaniel, is a trained Enhanced Victim Recovery Dog. He is trained to detect the odour that emanates from a human body and has been called in by the FBI and police forces all over the world. Details from Eddie's CV of successful work on previous cases can be found here (Chapter 16 of "The Truth of the Lie.")
In June last year, as detailed in the press this week, Eddie was called in to locate a missing Orkney man's body.
"A sniffer dog located the grave of a missing man Robert Rose, a murder jury was told this afternoon.
FBI consultant Martin Grime was giving evidence at the High Court in Glasgow in the trial of John Campbell, 59, and Stephen Crummack, 51, who deny murdering Robert Rose on Sanday on June 6 or 7, 2009 and burying his body in sand dunes.
Mr Grime told the High Court in Glasgow that he and his springer spaniel dogs Eddie, Keela and Morse, were called in by Northern Constabulary in the hunt for Bob Rose, who disappeared on June 6, last year.
Mr Grime told prosecutor Alex Prentice QC that one of the dogs, Eddie, who is trained to detect dead bodies, reacted when he was taken to sand dunes at Sty Wick, on June 24, last year.
He said: "I noticed a change in his behaviour. As soon as he got into the bottom of the scooped out sand dune he identified one spot.
"His normal reaction is to bark. On this occasion he started to dig, which I've never seen him do before. As soon as he started to dig I called him back."
The jury heard that a thin metal probe was then put into the spot Eddie indicated before a forensic anthropolist was called in to excavate the crime scene.
The jury was told that a body was found at the spot where Eddie had indicated." The Orcadian February 16th 2010
Eddie's alert signal, to having detected the odour he is trained to find, is barking. In this video, he can be seen working on the Madeleine McCann case, when he alerted in certain areas of the McCanns' holiday apartment, in the car they rented three weeks after Madeleine disappeared, and to some articles of clothing: two items belonging to Kate McCann and a child's red T shirt.
"Mr Grime told the court that Eddie's nose is so sensitive that if someone touched a dead body, then touched a piece of paper before hiding it, Eddie would be able to locate the paper using his sense of smell."
Kate McCann explains Eddie's reaction to her clothes by stating that before the holiday, she had come into contact with 6 dead bodies and that she had taken Maddie's soft toy Cuddle Cat to work with her. The McCanns also attempted to explain the odour in their hired vehicle as the smell left behind by rotting meat and soiled nappies they had transported to the tip.
Enhanced Victim Recovery Dogs like Eddie are trained to ignore rotting meat. In this Google video, Doberman dogs locate a body buried several feet beneath heaps of rotting meat. They were not deflected in their work by the meat.
In the recent hearing of the court case in Lisbon, concerning the banning of Gonçalo Amaral's book, "The Truth of the Lie," Isabel Duarte, lawyer for the McCann couple, commented that during the investigation Ricardo Paiva, a senior Portuguese police officer had stated that Eddie had failed at least once. She was probably referring to the Haut de la Garenne case in Jersey, where a piece of coconut shell was found where Eddie had alerted. If we are to take the words of Eddie's trainer Martin Grime as fact, this does not mean failure on Eddie's part, since Eddie can detect cadaver odour on something which has been in contact with a body. Eddie is trained to detect the odour of decomposition that is left behind when a body has rested, however temporarily in a given place. Eddie's training and his success rate would indicate that at one time there had been a body where indicated at Haut de la Garenne.
Dogs don't lie, Ms Duarte. People do and maybe you should be asking why your clients came up so readily with excuses for the dogs findings in Praia da Luz. Six dead bodies just before going on holiday and Kate McCann was a one and a half days a week locum GP? She took a soft toy to work with her and it came into contact with dead bodies? Two doctors transported rotting meat and soiled nappies in such a way that they leaked all over the boot of a hired vehicle? You know, in Scotland we have a well-known retort to that kind of rubbish. "And the band played believe it if you like, ting ting!"
