In Search of the Missing Page 15

  At 6 a.m. Áine – exhausted and drained – threw herself down on the grass at the top of a hilly field. Zak lay down beside her. She felt burnt-out, defeated and crushed. Surely there was a better, easier, quicker way to break down areas when searching for a missing person? The whole search-dog scenario was getting to her. She felt annoyed that in most searches the dogs were not called in early enough, which made their work more difficult and lessened their chances of success. Air-scenting dogs had to work extremely hard because scent lingers everywhere. Their work rate was phenomenal.

  She sat thinking, gazing hopelessly towards the sky; the low-hanging clouds matched her sullen mood. Then, as she watched, still deep in thought, a magnificent sunrise began to break through, leaving the bleak of night behind, brightening the landscape all around, bringing hope of a new day, the promise of a fresh start. Her mind suddenly turned to bloodhounds – for years known as ‘racist dogs’ because they were used in the US to track down slaves and by whites in Africa to catch poachers. People wrongly perceive bloodhounds as intimidating, when they are, in fact, merely hunters. Áine pondered the possibility of using bloodhounds here in Ireland, weighing up what they had to offer in comparison to air-scenting dogs. As air-scenting dogs look for human scent as opposed to a specific scent, they often have to spend much time eliminating others from the search, depending on how many people are present. If the missing person is at the top of a mountain and an air-scenting dog starts at the bottom, the dog may have to search the entire mountain before making the find. Precious time is lost. If bloodhounds are used, they can take the scent from where the missing person was last seen and trail directly to that person, saving much time and effort as they concentrate on a specific scent. The more Áine thought about it, the more convinced she became that bloodhounds would have a higher rate of success in search operations than air-scenting dogs. Bloodhounds, she decided, were the way forward, the better option.

  The missing woman turned up safe and well, without the aid of searchers. She simply walked unannounced into a neighbour’s house. The locals were right: she had become temporarily confused, lost her way and wandered, thinking she was going somewhere else.

  But the failed search in Newcastle West proved a turning point for Áine and, indeed, for all of us, as she returned home filled with a fire and determination that no earthly power could quench. Her mind was set on owning a bloodhound. But nobody believed she would actually make the move, least of all me.

  Once Áine got her hands on a list of hunting packs, there was no stopping her. She contacted Nick Wheeler, an East Sussex breeder, and begged him to put her name on his list for a pup. Breeders are slow to give up their lines easily; they want genuine owners who are not in it for the money. Nick wasn’t willing to commit straight away, but Áine annoyed the hell out of him until she finally got what she wanted.

  Lucy was flown over from Heathrow to Cork airport at the age of just twelve weeks. She had gone from a hunting kennels to a plane, and must have been terrified. On her crate was written ‘Hi, I’m Farcry Delphinium! Please talk to me.’ Farcry was actually the name of the kennels from which she had come, and delphinium, the flower, was simply added on. As the guy at Cork airport handed over the crate to Áine, he said, ‘What a stupid bloody name to give a dog!’

  Áine drove up to me at work, proud as punch with the pup in the back. The poor dog looked scared out of her mind! She had big, long ears, almost black. But her colour lightened as she got older. I couldn’t believe Áine had actually done it! She began training her straight away. Soon, Lucy was swaggering around the place full of herself, as if to say ‘I’m miles too good for here!’ And she was good, and quickly showed what she was made of by making her first find at only ten months. In a way Lucy was a guinea pig, as she was the first bloodhound to be trained in Ireland for work as a search-and-rescue dog. From the very beginning, she had a great drive to work. She was a natural hunting dog and had a good instinct. Trying to exercise her like a normal dog was almost impossible as she’d drop her head and track anyone who had walked the path before her.

  Her English breeders, Sue and Nick Wheeler, kept in constant contact by phone. They checked up on her progress and gave advice. But it took me a good twelve months before I could make any sense of how a bloodhound worked. Before I tried my hand at training Lucy, Áine had already put in a good deal of work with her. Having been an active member of K-9, Áine already had plenty of doggy experience behind her. She had been involved in many notable rescues throughout Ireland with her air-scenting dog Zak, an active water-search dog with nine confirmed finds to his credit. She had also trained in schutzhund, and fully understood tracking dogs. Now she was committed to learning all she could about trailing dogs and to giving Lucy the best possible training. From what I could see, she was making a great job of it.

  When I decided to get involved, I had to start from scratch. I knew absolutely nothing about bloodhounds. I came from a different tradition of dogs that had taught me all about tracking dogs and air-scenting dogs – so much so that I was dubious about bloodhounds. I was entering totally new territory and stepping way outside my comfort zone. I began the training session by putting Lucy on a long, thirty-foot lead. I sent a body walking ahead, down one particular side of the road. When we set off, Lucy veered to the opposite side. But she was obviously picking up scent there as the wind can carry off scent in all directions. Even a passing car can whisk it away and sprinkle it over other areas. The scent might rest along by ditches or settle down on bushes or briars. Lucy never worked in a straight line. She trawled along, over and back. She forged ahead with speed. I held onto the lead with all my might as she dragged me along behind her with force, almost pulling the hands off me as I tried to keep up. If she lost a scent, she backtracked without hesitation. Then she circled wide until she picked it up again.

  The body laid markers for me along the way to show the direction taken. When training, it’s essential that the dog always makes a successful find. Markers – such as toilet paper or flags – are used to mark turns and directions of the trail-layer. Should a young dog totally lose the trail, the handler can guide the bloodhound back onto the right path. It also gives the handler confidence in the dog when the dog makes the correct turns. A piece of white paper under a tree meant that the body had turned right. A pink piece signalled a left turn. A stick in the ground indicated another turning point. Sometimes, the body entered a field, walked on for twenty yards, then backtracked for another fifty yards and took a different course. But I never knew exactly where the body was hiding. I relied on the markers to guide me while carefully reading Lucy’s body language and watching how she behaved at every turning point. Sometimes, I asked the person laying the trail to park a car at the bottom of a mountain to allow Lucy to take scent from it and to begin her search from there. Other times, I laid a track from one point to another, usually starting at the Bishopstown end on the outskirts of Cork city. The body would stand at a door of Dunnes Stores in Bishopstown, walk out a few miles beyond the viaduct, and mark the exact finishing point. A few days later, the body would drive to that marker, park the car there, and wait. I would then give Lucy a scented article, and leave her to track from the door of Dunnes Stores out to where the body was hiding in a spot close to the car.

  Lucy was only ten months old when she became involved in her first ever real-life water search. At the time, she was far from being fully trained, and at least a year away from qualifying as a mission-ready dog. But the gardaí decided to try her, along with Noel Murphy’s dog Holly, as we had no other search dogs available on the night. Richard Cotter also came on board, and headed for east Cork with Áine, Noel and the dogs. The missing elderly man was last seen around midnight several nights before as he left a pub in the village of Castlelyons. Searchers – including other dog units and three different diving teams – had already trawled through the surrounding fields and nearby river but had found nothing.

  Water holds scents better than land
. It has a magnetic pull. As a flow of air always follows the current, scent can become distorted, and this can cause it to lodge underneath river banks, on grass or weeds. A pillowcase from the missing man’s bedroom was produced as a scent article. As the dogs began their search, Lucy tracked the scent from the pub and trailed swiftly downhill through the village until she came to Bride’s Bridge. She overshot the gate on the bridge. Then she seemed to lose the scent and doubled back. She went through an iron gate – an opening in the wall of an old manor house – then crossed over to the edge of the river bank and immediately began to give tongue, which is one of the vocal sounds a bloodhound makes. She became excited and tried to jump into the river. Áine had a long line on Lucy, and happened to look back up at the bridge. At that very moment, she saw a little old man standing on the bridge. He took off his hat, blessed himself, and walked away, almost as if he fully trusted the dog’s instinct. Áine suggested they concentrate their efforts on the river. Within only a matter of hours, they found the body of the missing man in the water.

  Lucy also indicated correctly at Doneraile Park during a search for a missing man. She gave a strong indication in a stream leading to a lake, despite the protestations of a sub-aqua volunteer group that there was no way there was a body in the water. Áine was adamant. Her hands were blistered from trying to hold Lucy, and her knees were bruised from Lucy dragging her through the stream that connected up with the lake. Weeks later, while a girl was boating on the lake – which was crystal clear that day – she saw the body of the missing man in the lake.

  At a very young age, Lucy had proved her worth as a search-and-rescue dog. Now she was about to play a part in one of the most high-profile searches ever to take place in Ireland: the search for a young boy from Midleton, County Cork.

  The Missing Schoolboy

  The town of Midleton in east Cork changed forever on 4 January 2005 when a young boy was reported missing. A massive search got underway, and only hours later Noel Murphy rang me. He happened to be a friend of the boy’s family. His message was brief: ‘Be on standby.’ He reminded me that I had met the lad once, when Noel had brought him along with his own son – the two boys were pals – to one of our training days in The Vee.

  Around midnight, the shout came. Áine and I drove to Midleton with our air-scenting dogs, Zak and Bob. We headed for the golf club, where the gardaí had set up the base for the search, and we signed in with the garda controller at his desk in a corner of the lounge. Then we listened to a briefing, which covered details about the eleven-year-old schoolboy, such as a description of his clothing, the fact that he was afraid of the dark, and that he suffered from ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). When it came to selecting local guides for us, the missing boy’s next-door neighbour and friend, a twenty-year-old engineering student, was asked by the gardaí to accompany Áine. His brother was teamed up with me. Áine was given the golf course and river as her search areas. I was asked to search the Ballyedmond countryside around the missing child’s home.

  Beginning our search around 1 a.m. suited us as air-scenting dogs work best in the dark and most of the other searchers had already gone home, which eliminated their scent from the scene. Our starting point with Bob focused on areas close to the boy’s house, which was situated in a row of large houses. The family home of the two brothers who were our guides was next door. A laneway separated the two houses, which were about sixty yards apart.

  In the quiet black of night, we combed through play areas used by the eleven-year-old and other local children, including a tree house built for the child by Áine’s guide, the twenty-year-old student. We examined outbuildings and farmlands. We scoured our way through ditches, fields and woodlands. As we searched on through the early hours, I kept calling the boy’s name aloud. We always work under the assumption that the missing person is lying injured somewhere. Even if missing persons can’t answer back, they become reassured that at least someone is out looking for them. My guide kept on calling the child’s name, too. Other than that, he said very little. Even when we stopped to rest, he rarely spoke.

  According to Áine, his brother was the total opposite. He chatted non-stop, and told Áine that the boy had come off his medication for ADHD. When Áine said, ‘You were the last person to see him alive,’ he answered, ‘Yeah.’ He seemed to become jittery and upset then, but Áine took no notice as her focus was on finding the missing boy. When they rested, he showed great interest in how the dogs worked. He asked about a tracking dog’s ability, and wanted to know if the scent of a missing person could be detected in a car or in a river. Although Áine had constantly called out the child’s name, her guide never joined in.

  At around 5 a.m. Áine fell and twisted her ankle. At that stage, our two search teams were about half a mile apart. As Áine could do no more, she headed back to the van with Zak, while her guide contacted his brother to find out our whereabouts. He joined up with us while we were searching a farmyard, and stayed with us for the rest of the search. Any time we stopped, he chatted and asked questions about the dogs. He seemed especially interested in the possible use of bloodhounds, and his questions were questions that any person with a genuine interest in dogs and the search would ask. He told me that the missing boy was highly strung, and said he had probably fallen into the river.

  He had a theory about the child’s missing bicycle. There had been no sign of his new, silver BMX, which he had left outside his next-door neighbour’s house. Then, after word spread that he was missing, a father and son notified the gardaí that they had found the bike earlier that evening, lying against a ditch at the side of the road several hundred yards from the missing child’s house in the direction of the golf course. However, the student told me that he believed the bike had probably not been left there by the missing boy, and that it had more than likely been stolen from outside the student’s gate, where the child had parked it. He was convinced that when news spread that the boy was missing, panic set in and the bike was returned.

  To me, the student seemed a very nice, pleasant guy, and he appeared calm and cool. Nothing about him suggested that he could possibly have anything to do with the disappearance of the young boy. He had been searching with us for about two hours when his mother phoned him to ask how he and his brother were doing and to find out their location. At this stage, we were only a few minutes’ walk from their house. All three of us were wet and tired. I decided we should call it a day as we needed a rest and other searchers would be arriving soon. We walked together to the brothers’ gate, and the two young men went in home.

  Before I headed away for a few hours’ sleep, I reported back to the gardaí at base on how the search had gone. I told them about the student’s theory regarding the bike, but they did not comment as they never say anything to hamper any future investigations. When we got home, Áine kept saying that there was something strange about her guide. I thought she was tired, and told her to get some sleep.

  Around midday Áine and I returned to Midleton as the controller had asked us to continue with the search. At the base, we joined the queues of people waiting to be told where to go, and to get a briefing. In some cases, especially where teams were involved, team leaders were selected and a general briefing was given to them by one of the gardaí. In such a search, where the number of searchers reached well over a thousand, briefing everyone individually was out of the question.

  Áine was now accompanied by her young bloodhound Lucy. While air-scenting dogs are trained to sniff out any human smell, Lucy was trained to search for one specific scent. Usually, the strongest scents of all can be found in a person’s bedroom. To avoid contamination, the item chosen for scenting purposes must be taken up with a pair of tongs, placed in a sealed plastic bag, and then put into a second sealed container. Lucy took the missing schoolboy’s scent from a pillowcase belonging to him. When Lucy was taken to the spot where the child’s bike had allegedly been left, she failed to pick up his scent. The student’s theory about
the bike seemed to add up. On the other hand, the bike might actually have been found there as, earlier, grass and briars had been cut away from the ditch in an effort to find clues, and the scent could thereby have been ruined. A question mark hung over it.

  Working without a guide, Áine continued with Lucy further along the golf-course road. At a sharp bend on the road, they came to the gate of a field, which Áine wanted to enter. When she couldn’t open the gate, she noticed several youngsters a few yards away, the student among them. Áine asked him to open the gate, and was amazed when he paid no attention to her, especially as they had worked together only hours before. Eventually, he came over and opened it. Once they were inside the field, Lucy body-banged him; she jumped right up on him. Áine still didn’t suspect a thing, but she should have. We had been training Lucy to compete in bloodhound trials in the UK, and this required that the dog, on completion of the trial, should acknowledge the trail-layers by picking them out from within a group of people and identifying them by jumping on them. Lucy howled all the way down the field, which led as the crow flies to East Cork Oil, with the river close by. Still nothing clicked with Áine. A Coast Guard helicopter was flying overhead, and there were loads of other searchers in the area, but Lucy wasn’t bothered – she got on with the search.