Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Buster Now Has Over 200 Documented Recoveries of Buried Human Remains!

This just came out from Associated Press. Buster now has over 200 documented recoveries of buried human remains. We think that is a record for a cadaver dog.

How can he be wrong at the Barker Ranch?

To see our 2012 demonstration by Sgt. Dostie and Buster at Barker Ranch, click here.

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'Cadaver dog' work more accepted by cops, courts
By MARTHA IRVINE Oct. 21, 2014 9:26 AM EDT

In this Sept. 20, 2014, photo, Paul Dotsie holds a rubber bone as he and his dog, Buster, search an area near Bishop, Calif. As a cadaver dog Dostie said that Buster has helped find the remains of about 200 people. As a reward after indicating an “alert,”Dostie tosses Buster the toy. “Good boy,” he says. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

In this undated photo provided by The Scranton Times & Tribune, Army Lt. Robert G. Fenstermacher, of Scranton, Pa., looks out from the cockpit of his fighter plane during World War II. His plane was shot down in 1944, but his body was not recovered until 2012 with the help of volunteers for a nonprofit organization called History Flight Inc. The volunteers who helped find Fenstermacher's body included Paul Dostie, a retired police officer, and his cadaver dog Buster. (AP Photo/The Scranton Times & Tribune)

BENTON, Calif. (AP) — The burly Labrador retriever sticks out his wide snout to sniff the dirt and dusty air. He's clearly excited as he runs, yelping, through the high desert of California's Eastern Sierra region.

"Buster, go find!" Paul Dostie commands.

They are a team, the black Lab and the retired police officer. For years, they have worked together to unlock mysteries — to find the bodies of fighting men who fell long ago on foreign battlefields, or of victims of unsolved crimes or disappearances. In all, Dostie says that Buster's alerts have aided in the recovery of the remains of about 200 people.

"He's a one-in-a-million dog," Dostie says.

Maybe, but he's far from the only dog doing this kind of work. Increasingly, law enforcement investigators across the country are putting their faith in dogs like Buster to help find remains — bodies, bones and blood from the missing and the murdered. Cadaver dogs, as these specially trained canines are sometimes called, were used in searches after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and to help find victims of natural disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina.

More recently, these dogs have helped convict some murder suspects, even when no body is found. Trainers and some forensic scientists say the dogs can detect human residue that's been left behind in a trunk, or on a blanket or tarp, or a temporary grave of some sort. In some cases, the dogs also help pinpoint areas where air and soil can be tested with increasingly sophisticated detection devices — though these methods have not been without controversy.

Proving what these dogs know isn't easy.

"If only Buster could talk," Dostie quips, as he works his dog through a wide patch of scraggly brush, about 50 miles east of Yosemite National Park.

Near an old mine shaft, Buster eventually zeroes in on a spot, then stops and barks with more urgency. "Show me, Buster!" Dostie shouts.

In his younger days, Buster would lie down on a spot like this to indicate an "alert." But having lost a leg to cancer, the 12-year-old canine now prefers to poke his nose in the direction of a particular spot in the dirt, or at a rock, or whatever has set off his nose.

As a reward, Dostie tosses Buster a blue rubber toy he's been holding behind his back while the dog searches. "Good boy," he says.

To the untrained eye, it might seem that Buster is simply barking for that toy.

But this routine has helped unearth the remains of everyone from crime victims to missing Americans lost in World War II battles in Europe and on the south Pacific island of Tarawa. Dostie and Buster travel to former war zones with History Flight Inc., a nonprofit foundation whose mission includes finding the tens of thousands of fallen American veterans whose bodies were never recovered.

Among others, Buster helped find Lt. Robert Fenstermacher, an Army Air Corps pilot whose plane crashed in Belgium after being shot down in 1944. Last year, his family gathered as he was laid to rest, nearly 70 years later, in Arlington National Cemetery.

"(Now) we can finally say to Robert: 'Welcome home. You served your country and family with honor and made us proud,'" the pilot's great-nephew, Robert Fenstermacher Jr., said at the funeral, as he thanked Buster, Dostie and other search volunteers.

History Flight volunteers also use ground-penetrating radar, historical records and witness accounts to pinpoint remains. The method has led to the recovery of 13,000 bones on Tarawa alone, most of them not yet identified, says Mark Noah, founder of History Flight.

Other searches are often much simpler — just the handlers and dogs, walking on foot, mile after mile to find a body. That was how Deborah Palman, now a retired specialist with the Maine Warden Service, and her German shepherd, Alex, found the body of a Canadian woman named Maria Tanasichuk in 2003. Police later determined she'd been shot in the head execution-style by her husband David Tanasichuk.

"We had worked so long for so many days — a lot of long, hard searches," Palman says. "You've sort of thrown yourself into numbness, and you convince yourself you're not going to find what you're looking for."

Then, during another long day trekking through a forest outside Miramichi, New Brunswick, Palman recalls how Alex ran to her as if to say, "Hey, come look at this. Follow me!"

Palman pulled back some brush and saw green fabric, and signs that a body was underneath.

"My pulse must have shot up over 200," she says.

That find was the break in the case that led to David Tanasichuk's conviction.

Local police departments have been reluctant to use the cadaver dogs for searches because their trainers are volunteers, but that's been changing, as the dogs' training has become more standardized in the last decade — and as they've helped solve more cases.

Labs and German shepherds are the most common breeds used for cadaver work. Like most of the dogs, Buster started young, though Dostie concedes that he ignored the pudgy puppy when his wife brought him home 12 years ago. She'd begged her husband to let her keep Buster — and then Dostie started noticing what a good nose the dog had.

The dogs are often trained at cemeteries and at specialized "body farms" that have decomposing bodies at various stages.

While humans, when alive, have individual scents, chemical reactions from decomposition are basically the same in every human, though those reactions — and the scent — change over time, forensic experts say.

When more than one dog has alerted independently in the same spot, some judges have been persuaded to allow cadaver dog evidence and testimony from the dogs' handlers, even if investigators haven't found the body.

In February, for instance, cadaver dog evidence helped convict a suburban Chicago man, Aurelio Montano, of killing his wife. She disappeared in 1990, and although her body was never found, investigators got a tip, years later, and dug up a rug at a horse farm on which more than one cadaver dog alerted. They contended that Montano had wrapped the body in the rug — also identified by his daughter as having once been in their home — and buried it. Those same investigators said Montano later exhumed his wife's remains and disposed of them in an unknown location.

The dogs' alerts on the rug, coupled with witness testimony, proved to be enough to convict Montano.

That sort of testimony has been less than effective in other cases, though.

In the high-profile 2011 Florida trial of Casey Anthony — accused of killing her young daughter — more than one cadaver dog alerted on the trunk of Anthony's car. Arpad Vass, then a senior research scientist with the Oak Ridge National Lab, testified that using air samples from the trunk, he had found high levels of chloroform, which can be found when a body breaks down. However, that finding was questioned by other witnesses and pundits, who said the science wasn't ready for primetime. And unlike Montano, Anthony was freed.

Cadaver dogs "are an incredible investigatory tool — no question about it," says Lawrence Kobilinsky, professor and chairman of the department of sciences at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. Certainly, he says, they can help uncover valuable evidence in criminal cases — a body, or bones or maybe clothing.

But he is among those who doesn't think the dogs' alerts and subsequent tests of soil and air where should be admissible in court, at least not yet.

"What we need to do is strengthen the science," Kobilinksy says.

And even in investigations, dogs alerting is often just the first step in what can be a lengthy, sometimes fruitless endeavor.

"Everybody thinks, you just dig a hole, but it's not always that obvious," says Vass, who is continuing to develop technology to help locate clandestine graves and to evaluate chemical markers associated with human decomposition. Often, he says, buried bodies create a "chemical plume" that runs downhill from a grave, making it difficult to find.

"Dogs," Vass says, "are just one tool in the toolbox."

Cost also can be a factor.

In Plumas County, California, Buster and two other dogs have alerted on an outdoor well on separate occasions. The well is near the home where 13-year-old Mark Wilson was living when he disappeared in 1967. Wilson was never found.

Plumas County Sheriff Greg Hagwood can't be sure the boy's body is in that well. But he thinks it's worth investigating, so much so that he asked for assistance from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has offered a forensics team.

The sheriff's department, however, still must foot the estimated $96,474 bill to excavate and restore the site, which is in the front yard of a home. That's no small amount of money in a county, once a busy logging and lumber hub, that's been hit by economic hard times.

With the funding turned down by the county board, the sheriff says he'll seek help from foundations or other sources.

"How can I justify not pursuing this?" he asks. "Well, you can't."

Buster, meanwhile, is still at work and may make another long trip to Tarawa. Noah, of History Flight, paid for the dog's cancer surgery, out of gratitude and to keep Buster's nose in the field.

"As long as he wants to work, he gets to work," Dostie says. "It's up to him."


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19 comments:

Robert Hendrickson said...

WOW ! What can you say. A dog has done more to find fallen soldiers than the President of the United States.

I have been following "Buster's Story" for quite awhile. Personally, I tested my own dog's ability to sniff-out OLD blood stains on dirty clothing. Stains that you could never identify visually. He can do it every time. Dogs have the ability to detect the different elements individually, where a human can only smell the composite order. A dog and many animals have a memory sense that makes humans pale in comparison.

The Inyo County Sheriff calling OFF the Barker Ranch search for bodies was simply a "nimrods" way off showing just how lame cop mentality can really be. The fact is: Buster's wonderful ability is based on awareness technology and the significant ISSUE wasn't really about finding bodies, because the Manson Family may have been involved - BUT because the completed results may have aided in a faster "recovery" of American SOLDIERS, especially in far-off lands like Europe and Vietnam.

Thank you Sgt. Dostie and Buster, you really are a man's BEST friend.

crash said...

I am training mine to sniff out weed. That way everyone who visits me has to share!
I wont forget when that arpad vaass was on the stand in the Casey Anthony trial and the defence attorney asked him if he used divining rods and if he put leashes on flies. That was the end of his credibility especially with witnesses admitting there was no control car for the dog as there usually should be.

Matt said...

crash, one control used at Barker Ranch was to use 2 separate dogs. Both dogs alerted to the same spots.

crash said...

That helps Matt, thanks. But there doesnt have to be a body for the dog to alert.
The george hodell guy who thinks his dad was the killer of the black dahlia brought that dog to the house he said she was killed at. The dog alerted in the basement. Elizabeth short is buried in Mountain View cemetery.
If she was killed there, I guess the dogs alert to old blood too, unless there is another body buried there.
I would think Barker, at its age and remote location, has a few dead bodies buried that have nothing to do with anything Manson related and i guess maybe there could be a few that do. Or maybe somebody just bled a lot years ago or buried some birthing clothes and stuff.
Time to dig deeper. Get your shovel White Rabbit.

Anonymous said...

Why would they work so hard to bury victims 6 feet down next to their hideout when they are located in middle of thousands of square miles of desert wilderness?

ColScott said...

This is the same cop and dog who went with that lunatic Hodel to the house on Franklin claiming the Dahlia was killed there.

This is all nonsense.

Anonymous said...

Did anybody tell Officer Dostie or Buster about White Rabbit and Bill Nelson?

AustinAnn74 said...

That's what I have always thought. Why on earth, out of thousands of acres would they have buried a body right in the vicinity of the actual ranch house? There are miles upon miles of desert to just throw a body out for the buzzards. Plus, it would be damn hard to dig a hole in that rocky, dry terrain, wouldn't it? Did they kill anyone else? A high possibility, but burying a corpse right by the house? No way. No offense to Buster, or his owner, I just don't think they buried a body right on Barker ranch.

Matt said...

I think some of you are missing an important point. To believe that Buster is in err because “he says there are murder victims at Barker” would be giving the dog way too much credit. The dog doesn’t know what murder is, he just knows how to alert when he smells volatile organic compounds (VOC’s).

If crash’s weed dog alerts that he smells weed on the guy on the couch he isn’t capable of knowing whether or not the guy has weed in his pocket, he only knows that his job is to alert where he smells weed, so he gives crash the signal that “hey, I smell weed on this guy…” and “can I have my treat now?”. Then it’s up to crash to make the judgements. If crash demands now that they guy share with everybody but it turns out that the guy did have some in his pocket an hour ago - but left it home before he came to visit - then crash gets egg on his face, and by proxy (and unfairly) the dog too.

Did the dog say that they guy on the couch had weed in his pocket? No. Crash made that extrapolation himself. The dog did his job. Give him his treat.

Did Buster or Sgt. Dostie say that the Black Dahlia was murdered in that basement in LA? No. If anyone did, it was Hodel. Buster said, “I smell that stuff over here. Can I have my toy now?”. Dostie says, “Hodel, Buster has alerted for VOC’s in that corner.” Then Hodel (perhaps) extrapolates that for his own purposes by saying, “See I told you, the Black Dahlia was murdered in this basement!”.

At Barker, Buster has alerted to what he was trained to alert for. Sgt. Dostie has made the judgement that he believes there are VOC’s at four places around the ranch. The rest of us make the speculations as to what it means. Personally I don’t know whether or not the Manson Family buried bodies up there, but I think it’s worth a meaningful dig to put the issue to rest once and for all.


AustinAnn74 said...

Me too. It wouldn't hurt to dig deeper.

Robert Hendrickson said...

Matt has entered the "blog" building. Lets give him a big hand (HE did the research and THINKING for us) OR is HE a SPOILER?

WHY would THEY bury a body near the Barker ranch house? How many want someone else to answer that question for YOU and how many want to "THINK" of the answer on their own ?

I was discussing some "educational" issues with a VERY educated THINKER the other day. I'm sure most of you are aware, to some degree, that America has just suffered a financial meltdown - not unlike the GREAT Depression. HE has a degree in "business and mathematics." He said that in his entire formal education experience, the mortgage lending process was never explained. Like "what is an interest rate, etc." There was a pause, as I thought, and then I too realized that I was never taught ANYTHING about buying a house.

Then he explained that when Legos were originally sold and for some time thereafter, there were NO instructions included in the box. But NOW there are. His point was that developing the "creative" thought process - THINKING - in humans is NO longer a needed / desired purpose.

Do YOU want me to tell YOU where this is all going OR do YOU want to THINK it out on your own.

I'm thinking, Buster is THINKING: "How come a dog like me has to do the THINKING for them, so THEY can do the "digging."

stoner van houten said...

i'll be a barker soon ...ill dig up a body and bring it back for everyone...LMAO!!...I GOT NEW pick-axe and shovel...hahahahahha!!..

ColScott said...

Matt

You would waste money on a dig because a stupid dog wanted a toy? That's what I understand. Meanwhile drug dealers and child killers go free. Christ

Matt said...

I fail to see where the expense lies. You divert one ranger who is currently counting the wild burro population for a few days to observe. The rest is private money.

crash said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
crash said...

oops, sorry about the deleted comment, I screwed up here due to the fact my dog found some more weed and I couldn't hold back.
My dog knows his weed. Thanks matt, that was good.

CrisPOA said...

Stoner, bring those bodies to everybody! I loved your sense of humour! Very good...hahahahhhh

Patty is Dead said...

Jeep willing, Stone Man!

BARKERS OR DEATH

Robert Hendrickson said...

Even IF old body(s) were recovered from the soil of Barker Ranch, proving WHO committed the Crime would be next to impossible - NOW.

So what is to be gained?

Well, what IF such technology (discovering "dead" bodies) could lead to the revealing of the "brain dead" LIVING. Just THINK - a better way to select a President, a Police Chief, or any Politician.

Of course, that would only work IF you weeded-out the "brain-dead" voters. Ah shucks, maybe Obama is right - one National Socialist Party it's got to be.