Networked Knowledge
The use of canines in fire and murder investigations

Page set up by Dr Robert N Moles

Expert Advisers homepage
Article on Australian miscarriage of justice cases
Article on UK miscarriage of justice cases
Article on USA miscarriage of justice cases

Further information from TC Forensic

An ABC Four Corners program on the issue

Article from LaTrobe Valley

The Case of Margaret Rudin

The Inter-fire web site

Letter to the Editor - Advertiser 16 January 2007 - Dogs May Have Fire Role

There has been much discussion on methods of detecting or deterring firebugs (The Advertiser, yesterday).
However, I have not seen anything about the use of canines to detect either the accelerants which may be used or the people involved with these activities. Yet it seems that this is an important part of fire investigations in other places.

Perhpas this is something which the fire and police authorities could give consideration to.

Bob Moles, Coromandel Valley

See the discussion of this in the Madeleine McCann case

Sniffing out the Work of Arsonists.

'When only the nose knows.' By Janet Crease[References from Tony Cafe and Warren Day]

[Janet Crease has been a real pioneer in this area of canine detection. She was the first person in Australia to train and use dogs successfully for these tasks. She is also the guiding hand in the development of these web based materials, in this attempt to share her knowledge with others]

When was the last time you asked your canine companion, 'what would you like to do today?’  I personally feel this is a question we should ask our dogs a couple of times a week, after all, they have a life too.

My canine companion was Lesal (a Weimaraner) and she was getting bored. She is pictured with Janet at the conference of the International Association of Arson Investigators. She was then 9 years old. I had successfully competed with her in obedience trials. We had also participated in “search and rescue” training, and tracking. Everything that we did together was related to scent-specific work. In our spare time we went to the lake and Lesal swam. We bush walked and generally always enjoyed ourselves, and each others company, no matter what we were doing or where we were. 

I had read an article in an American magazine on “sniffer-dogs” that sniffed out termites and some others that had sniffed out accelerants. I decided to see if I could train Lesal to be an arson / fraud investigator. All of our work and training together over the previous few years had involved different forms of scent discrimination. Arson and fraud was just another aspect of this discipline. 

Lesal and I got to work. I contacted people in the USA and got as much information and as many videos as I could. These introduced us both of us to the world of fire investigation and arson related fraud. At first, this involved Lesal sniffing out petrol, diesel, turpentine, kerosene and a few other accelerants. It was important to train Lesal so that she could not only sniff out the accelerant itself, but also its vapors after it had been burned. We played hide and seek with her toys (which carried the target scent) and not a day went by when we didn't play / train.  After about 3 months, Lesal was extremely proficient in finding any article, debris or fragments of soil, concrete or timber that carried the target scent we were working on at that particular time. She enjoyed every minute of this new game. She was 9 years old - still a pup mentally, but not quite physically.  She was a little arthritic in the back end, but, that didn't stop her eagerness, playfulness and enthusiasm. The reward at the end of a training session is an enjoyable game of ‘fetch’ and lots of hugs and cuddles. 

Sniffer dogs are used for the detection of drugs, explosives, dead human bodies, termites, contraband food and for tracking missing persons. Dogs have a sense of smell which is much more sensitive than that of humans. Dogs smell parts per billion. Humans can only smell parts per million. The dogs also have much greater discriminatory powers and can therefore respond much more quickly to target scents. Their physical abilities and their desire to please enable dogs to thoroughly scan a large area at a fire scene in a relatively short time.

Dogs sample the headspace above the fire debris with their olfactory senses and use their discriminatory powers to determine if the detected hydrocarbons originated from an accelerant.  Their discriminatory powers are finely tuned through the training procedure.

My training generally involves a series of exercises utilizing the dogs aggressive ‘prey’ drive, where the dog routinely retrieves a hidden favorite toy which carries one drop of the target scent. Upon successfully retrieving the toy, the dog is rewarded with affection or a play with the toy. I can tell when the dog has found the target scent by the change in their ‘body language’. The training then progresses to the toys carrying a microlitre of the target scent, which is generally unidentifiable to the human olfactory system. These toys are then are aged, exposing them to all manner of environmental conditions, harsh sun, rain and wind and contaminates such as dirt, soot, food odors, and other non toxic chemicals. Lesal could discriminate between accelerant vapors and vapors such as those coming from burned plastics, burned rubber-backed carpet and paints. The difficult thing is, of course, that she must reliably perform this task amongst a background composed of thousands of different chemicals originating from burnt furniture and building materials.

Today, my dogs are Molly and Skye; again, both Weimaraners and they have been trained in this way as successfully as Lesal. They have been rated by forensic experts at suspicious fire scenes. These forensic experts then take samples of the debris where the dog has indicated a target and they then analyse it using a portable gas chromatograph.  These machines indicate if there are accelerants present in the debris and if so, what chemicals and to what degree. 

This was the case in our first suspicious fire scene. It was a large commercial building with considerable structural damage. Lesal dealt with the fact that there were gaping cavities in the floor and debris that had to be climbed over. There was also the remnants of wiring that she kept getting caught up in, but she took in her stride as it was all a big game to her. When the areas of debris indicated by Lesal had been analysed by a forensic scientist it proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that there had been an introduced accelerant to start the fire. Lesal also indicated the point of entry and the arsonist’s movements throughout the building, three weeks after the fire.

A couple of weeks after that fire, we were called upon to investigate another suspicious fire scene at an uncompleted building at an upper class harbor side suburb. Upon arrival, it was difficult to see that a fire had occurred. It was a mansion, two stories high, on the edge of Sydney Harbor. Builders had been there that morning and built a scaffold so that Lesal and I could access the top story. There was no internal staircase. Lesal thought this was great and ran backwards and forwards up and down the narrow plank that led up to the first floor. On the other hand, there was no way that I could have walked across that narrow gangplank. The investigator eventually managed to get me a ladder up to the mezzanine level. Once up there, Lesal proceeded to work, sniffing and climbing around the piles of building materials. Then she discovered the bathroom, and proceeded to climb the walls via the enormous spa bath, 'it's up there' she kept telling me, 'up there'. The spa was full of debris that had fallen down from the ceiling, but this did not deter Lesal. She dug, climbed and scratched - a very excited Lesal.  She told us very clearly of the arsonist’s movements.

Merely introducing the dogs to fire scenes does not of course mean that arson was the cause. The dogs are just as useful in ruling out the possibility of arson. When this happens, it means that the investigators can focus their efforts on other possible scenarios.

The work of Cadaver dogs

Human remains detection with canines is not an exact science. However, these skills come quite naturally and are invariably reliable for the dog.  As with all species of canines, jackal, fox and the wolf, they are unconstrained scavengers. In recognising and being aware of this, the method of preparation for administrational use of a canine / handler team, hinges on the ability and relationship with the canine to harness these inherent and primal drives to suit training and operational procedures.  Scent discrimination is a survival skill all canines posses, and therefore, can be structured and manipulated to suit whatever form of scent discrimination training / education is being aimed for: cadaver detection, accelerant detection and also, search and rescue.

Utilising motivation training / educational techniques that promote the canines aggressive play drive, I find produces the most positive and reliable indications in any field of scent discrimination preparation and instruction. Utilizing the Pavlov method of training (food reward for example) can, in some canines, promote false positives due to anticipation of reward. Voice projection accompanied by body language and then utilized with motivational training techniques will enable the handler to prepare and educate a participating, reliable, effervescent, efficient and capable working canine partner.

Decomposition of the human body commences upon death, and will usually be well advanced within a day or two after death especially where the body has been left in the open. Putrefaction is caused by bacteria and much of this activity involves bacteria which migrate from the intestines and spread throughout the body by way of the blood vessels. Dogs being scavengers, this bacteria is of great interest to the them. The trainer needs only to train the dogs on this target scent and  also encourage, control and reward the dogs upon their discovery of the target scent.

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