Madeleine – DCI Nicola Wall update

When DCI Andy Redwood retired in December 2014, DCI Nicola Wall took over Operation Grange. At that time she had about 3.5 years to go before she clocked up 30 years as as police officer. That gives a retirement date of June 2018.

Some police officers clock up more than 30 years. DCI Clive Driscoll was in his 35^th year of service when he handed in his warrant card.

So what has DCI Nicola Wall been up to since she was passed the Operation Grange baton?

News reports are hard to come by. They get swamped by the Madeleine McCann case. The following is what I can assemble from available information sources.

Nashon Esbrand was heading for his parent’s home on 24 Aug 2017 when he was pursued by men on bicycles. He was nearly at his parent’s home, when the men caught up with him and stabbed him to death. Three men were caught and found guilty of murder.

On 25 June 2018, two of the men were sentenced to 21 years, while the third, a juvenile, received 12 years.

DCI Nicola Wall, in charge of the investigation, said “Today three young people have been jailed for murdering Nashon, a much loved son, brother and father.”

In another case, on 1 May 2018, Leon Maxwell was shot to death near Queensbury underground station. According to the police “The murder investigation is being led by Detective Chief Inspector Nicola Wall of the Homicide and Major Crime Command.”

By 28 Mar 2019, 7 people had been arrested, an 18 year old on suspicion of murder, and 6 more in connection with the crime. According to the police “DCI Katherine Goodwin, of the Met’s murder squad is leading the investigation.”

In a third case, Iuliana Tudos and Catherine Burke were murdered by Kasim Lewis, both by stabbing. Catherine was killed on 15 November 2017, while Iuliana was murdered 6 weeks later on 24 December 2017.

DCI Nicola Wall was tasked with heading up the Iuliana Tudos case and swiftly appealed to the public for assistance. When Lewis was arrested for her death, he quickly admitted his guilt. When asked if he had anything to say about her stabbing, he said “I did it”.

It appears DCI Katherine Goodwin had been assigned to the Catherine Burke case. At interview, Lewis was less helpful and replied “No comment” to every question.

Lewis was sentenced to 29 years for Iuliana Tudos and 40 years for Catherine Burke.

The Met chose to use DCI Katherine Goodwin for comments. “We still do not know why Lewis committed this horrific murder, or the murder of Iuliana, just under six weeks after he killed Cathy. He has never given any indication as to his motives.”

The cases above suggest that DCI Nicola Wall has retired, and her unsolved cases, including Operation Grange, have been passed to another DCI, quite possibly to DCI Katherine Goodwin. It will take some time to check the veracity of this.

In the meantime, here is a photo of DCI Katherine Goodwin.

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Madeleine – September 2019

My blog is quiet at the moment because there is no news about Madeleine McCann. While Madeleine is a staple of the red tops, they are currently sinking their teeth into Brexit, so media references to Madeleine have been suspended.

Here in Portelas, we are focused on the family front. Two senior members of the family have died within two days of each other, one in Madrid, one in the UK. So the thoughts of the adults are engaged with rather sombre events.

But life for the youngsters goes on much as before.

The family is keen to relocate to Spain, without a single clue as to where in Spain they would go, what they would do for money, and why life would be any better in Spain than in Portugal. I have decided that if they move to Spain, I will be taking Gonçalo to Italy. I am assessing the idea of living in a motorhome, so the pair of us can explore all around the Mediterranean.

As part of this grand proposal, I am teaching Spanish to my eight year old grandson. He already knows a fair bit of Portuguese. Spanish is different, but the guts are the same.

He is doing well, and the lessons are filled with play. He has a very large map of Spain, and a set of coloured sticky dots. We have located the top 10 cities in Spain. He likes football, so we are currently working through the 20 teams of La Liga, to show their home towns.

Gonçalo has become very jealous recently, and while we are working on the map, he cunningly finds a way to get up first onto a chair, then up onto the tabletop, so we often get a doggy guest as we play.

My grandson’s favourite word in Spanish is … pizza!

Gonçalo’s World Tour – New Zealand

Dogs in New Zealand are used by the authorities, police, customs and immigration, and border security (passengers and mail). This article focuses on police dogs in New Zealand.

Dog Patrol is and interesting series of TV programmes on CBS Reality. Unfortunately, in the UK/Portugal time zone, these programmes air on TV at around 4AM to 5AM.

Dog Patrol normally splits into the 3 strands listed above. There are occasional exceptions. The Department of Conservation uses Terriers to manage rat populations on some islands, and elsewhere duck dogs to check on ducks which have been tagged with a GPS transmitter (after humans have the approximate location from GPS).

A variety of dog breeds are used by the authorities but Alsatians and Spaniels predominate.

Here is a map of New Zealand. I have picked out in red the top 10 cities by population.

At this moment in time I only have evidence of police dogs from 2 locations, Wellington and Rotorua. Obviously there must be many more, because the police can’t cover the whole of New Zealand from just 2 locations. There was an instance in Australia where a patrol team could not find drugs in a car search. They wanted to call in a drug dog unit but couldn’t because it was 45 minutes away. The same car was stopped the next day and class B drugs were found.

The point is with police tracker dogs and police drug dogs a rapid response is essential. So shipping a team from Wellington to South Island is far too slow.

Dog units in New Zealand are called Delta Squads. Delta is NATO phonetic language for the letter D, so the title simply means Dog Squad.

There are 2 types of Police Delta Squad deployment featured in Dog Patrol. These are tracker dogs, used to trail people who have vacated the scene of a potential crime, and drug dogs, used to conduct sweeps of vehicles and houses.

The series has not featured a cadaver dog AKA Victim Recovery Dog. The reasons for this are fairly obvious. First, cadaver dogs are required much less frequently than either tracker dogs or drug dogs. Second, I would have thought showing cadaver dogs on a live deployment would be extremely insensitive.

There are incidences of non-alerts that result in a successful outcome.

For example, in one incident a suspect fled the scene, and a tracker dog was deployed. The dog immediately picked up a scent and followed it as fast as the handler could jog after it. After an extended hunt, the dog went into a cricket ground, where the trail petered out. Later, a man turned up at a police station, with bags packed ready to go to prison. When asked why he had turned himself in, he responded that he had got fed up with the dog chasing him.

In another case, police turned up at a van crash. Three men in the back of the van said the driver had run off, pointing out where he had gone. A tracker dog was deployed and conducted a search of the area, but was unable to locate a scent. This was reported back to the officer in command, and he decided to trust the dog. The driver was found to be one among the 3 men in the rear of the van. He was then tested, found to be exceeding the New Zealand alcohol limits, and dealt with accordingly.

Dog Patrol has clarified some conditions in the operational use of tracker dogs. These may have relevance to the deployment of GNR tracker dogs in the Madeleine McCann case.

In New Zealand, police tracker dogs are often not given an item from a suspect or victim to sniff. They simply find the strongest scent and barrel off in a hunt for that. This means there are two conditions for an optimal search. First is rapid deployment, so the scent is relatively fresh. Second is an uncontaminated trail, with no fresh pedestrian traffic over it. The GNR tracker dogs from Queluz in the Madeleine McCann case may have been challenged on both counts.

The rapid deployment and uncontaminated scene may also feature in the searches of Eddie and Keela. There was no rapid deployment and apartment 5A was definitely not uncontaminated.

Here’s a final thought for you. New Zealand has a major agricultural economy, so it has very strict regulations on what passengers at Auckland International Airport may bring into the country, to protect that industry. At the airport, Customs and Immigration has at least one fruit and foodstuffs dog, whose job is to screen incoming passengers for biosecurity risks. The dog alerted to one woman, who was then taken aside for a human search. The officer found a single apple, which is against import regulations. The woman was fined $400 for that one apple.

I suspect my dog Gonçalo would be useless as a fruit and foodstuffs dog. He is too keen on eating both! He likes nearly every kind of fruit, although he’s not keen on strawberries. His favourite is bananas!

A second major source for this article is the New Zealand police website, which features a page on its dog units.

https://www.police.govt.nz/about-us/structure/teams-units/dog-section

Let me see if I can pick out some of the highlights.

Most dog units are general purpose and are based widely across New Zealand. Specialist teams are based in large centres, and get called out as and when needed.

Dog handlers normally serve 5 years in the police force before joining a dog unit.

There is a dog breeding centre near Wellington which provides the bulk of dogs, Alsatians. These are trained for tracking and drugs.

A variety of breeds are used for drugs, firearms and explosives, and currency.

Unless it is hidden in the site above, I can see no mention of cadaver dogs, able to find minute traces of human remains in a murder enquiry.

Police dogs are trained from puppies to 18 months old at this centre near Wellington. Successful dogs live with their handler, and retire at about 8 years old.

The dogs wear the equivalent of a stab vest, so they have some protection from knife wounds.

If you didn’t click the police.govt.nz link above, please click this one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwrOunNdk_I&feature=youtu.be It is truly hilarious. It also rolls onto another interesting youtube video, about a public demonstration of NZ police dog skills in 2011, which you might also enjoy.

The final major source is simply what a Google search throws up for the use of cadaver dogs in New Zealand. Thankfully, this is actually quite small.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10660179

This is the case of a 32 year old woman, Carmen Thomas, who went missing around 1 July 2010. This case illustrates the difficulties facing the police in a missing person enquiry.

The last activity on Carmen’s bank account was on 27 June. Her car was found near Hamilton (see map) on 5 July. Carmen was reported missing on 13 July. When the search operation started or how her car was found are not clarified.

Ms Thomas was working as an escort. Hamilton has around 100 bars. So one line of enquiry was to attempt to retrieve as much CCTV from these as possible. Police were under no illusions that much of the CCTV footage had been overwritten by the time enquiries were made.

Police deployed search and rescue teams around the area where Ms Thomas lived, on 20 July. As part of that operation, two cadaver dogs were used to check out the Orakei Basin, a volcanic crater that has evolved into a sea-water lagoon. The officer in charge called them cadaver dogs, but I’m wary.

Perhaps New Zealand did indeed have two cadaver dogs at the time. But the Orakei Basin is the type of location to use tracker dogs or search and rescue dogs, rather than cadaver dogs.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10677498

The link above is an update on the case. Carmen’s ex-boyfriend, Brad Callaghan, had been charged with her murder. Acting on information, police conducted a two day search in a rugged area of west Auckland, and found human remains. Police allege that Carmen was killed in her home and dismembered on 29 June.

Here’s a key question. Why would police ‘deploy’ cadaver dogs outside of Carmen’s house, rather than inside? The only answer I can think of is that a forensics team had already established Carmen was murdered in her home, but couldn’t find a body or body parts, so the area around her home had to be searched.

Brad Callaghan plead guilty to murder, and was sentenced to life with a minimum of 13 years 8 months without parole.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=9003228

This must be the shortest ‘news’ report I have ever read, so I am padding it out a bit.

The police base is Matamata on North Island. Matamata has a claim to fame due to the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit films. The population is currently about 8,000.

The news report says a cadaver dog was being deployed from Matamata, so immediately two red flags go up. Cadaver dogs are used when police have intelligence that a body is located within a quite small, known area, but cannot find a body. While news outlets find the term ‘cadaver dog’ more sensationalist than tracker dog, victim recovery dog, or search and rescue dog. I doubt very much that Matamata had a specialist cadaver dog unit. Without being disrespectful to Matamata police in any way, I doubt the dog used was a specialist in any way, rather than an all-rounder police dog.

53-year-old Te Paewhenua Roberts had gone missing around the start of December 2004. Please bear in mind that is summer in New Zealand. He was missing in the Kaimai Range, an area of steep inclines with lots of bush. A search with a team including a dog a week after his disappearance had failed to find him. Another week on and 5 officers and a dog were going to have a second attempt.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/102748406/coroner-rules-bay-of-plenty-man-likely-dead-after-13year-mystery

The missing man had not been found 13 years later. His bank account had not been used. Thinking was that either the man had chosen to disappear, or his body was never found in the bush.

On a much lighter note, it it time to spot a Cocker in New Zealand. Is this Gonçalo?

No! This is Joe Daniel (JD), reproduced by kind permission of his owner. Her nearest city is Hamilton (see map), on North Island. You can see JD is working really hard to enjoy his life in New Zealand!

For me to get Gonçalo into New Zealand, I would have to go through so much time and energy consuming bureaucracy, I wouldn’t even start.

That is why New Zealand needs its own elite dog training centre. And that is why I am trying to get through to Wellington’s dog centre to find out more about it. If I get feedback, I’ll let you know.

Moving on, Gonçalo is now packing his bags, ready to head off to Australia!

Gonçalo’s Cadaver Dog World Tour

I intend writing a series of articles about police dogs around the world, trying to tease out, if I can, what is known about the use of cadaver dogs in each country on this World Tour.

This is no easy challenge.

There are several TV programmes about the use of specialist dogs around the world, but most of the are about customs and immigration use. Those include drug dogs, tobacco dogs, firearms/explosives dogs, fruit/foodstuffs dogs and cash dogs. Those programmes are interesting and informative, but they are about customs and immigration use, not police use, although police do use some of these doggie skills.

There are several TV programmes featuring police dog units. Nearly all are about two types of dog, tracker dogs used to follow suspects fleeing from the scene of a crime, and drug dogs used in drug busts.

I have never seen a programme that featured police cadaver dogs, or even had a single clip thereof. This could be due to several reasons, so it’s pointless me speculating.

The following is extracted from a Mark Harrison statement in the case of Madeleine McCann.

“Currently only costs for the EVRD and CSI are available.

The daily rate for this dog team is 1000 Euros. Flight travel costs for handler and dogs could be 2750 Euros. Veterinary costs: U.K. and Portugal to comply with Pet Passports scheme 450 Euros. Accommodation, subsistence and vehicle transportation would incur extra charge.

Costs for a VRD dog team to conduct the open area search are not available at the time of writing. Such a team could be sourced from several countries within Europe or USA that have this capability including the UK. However the UK is limited to those teams whose dogs have “pet passports” due to UK quarantine restrictions.”

This shows up a few of the potential issues of deploying a dog team abroad – costs and quarantine.

There are many further issues to be included in Gonçalo’s World Tour. So I’m going to start with New Zealand, which may be as close to the UK experience as one gets. Or does it?

The language is English, so that’s a good start.

NZ Customs and Immigration bans a wide range of food imports, so upon landing, Gonçalo’s handler would be heading off to a supermarket to pick up kibble, fresh eggs, fresh milk, olive oil, raw chicken, raw pork and minced beef, and a couple of plastic bowls, one for for his breakfast and supper, one for his water. He’s not fussy, so tap water will do fine. Then there’s accoutrements to deal with his pees and poos.

Then there’s culture. From what I’ve seen, though the UK and NZ share a common language, NZ culture is significantly different to that of the UK.

Now we move on to legal systems. NZ may drive on the left, but it uses kph for it’s roads, not mph. My wife got an 80€ on the spot fine for this mistake in Lagos. She was driving on a 2 lanes-per-side road and thought 80 kph was OK, it’s only 50 mph. The police officer explained that 50 kph is the default in all towns.

There’s more, but that’s enough for starters.

Gonçalo is starting his World Tour in New Zealand. Wish him luck!

She’s leaving home, bye bye

Thursday morning at 6 o’clock, as the day begins. Quietly closing her bedroom door…

Our eldest granddaughter has become the first fledgling to fly from our Portuguese roost. She has headed off to Manchester.

A family feast was prepared on the day before she departed, but it was a most fraught affair.

Her mother was basically in bits all day. This is despite the fact that Mum and daughter fought like cats and dogs.

My granddaughter came down and we chatted for about 15 minutes. Gonçalo was jumping over her the whole time. At the end, my grandchild and I had a great big hug. Gonçalo got jealous and decided he wanted to join in, so it turned into a group hug.

My wife came downstairs after the family meal was over, and went to her bedroom. There she burst into floods of tears and loud sobbing. I went through to console her, and we too had a big hug. Gonçalo got jealous again, so it soon became another threesome.

My grandkid had to leave at 6 AM to get to Faro airport on time. I was up, but I did not hear her leave. Quietly closing her bedroom door?

She made the flight to Manchester OK. She is staying with a family she has met and befriended before.

She had stacked up several interviews for jobs before she left Portugal. An interview with a care home manager was passed with flying colours. But now she has to go through a practical, where she ‘shadows’ employees to see if she can hack it. That’s today, Saturday, and tomorrow, Sunday.

It’s not my cup of tea, but she wants to crack on, get her head down, earn some money, before she thinks about other jobs.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

She’s leaving home, bye bye.

Gonçalo got stoned

Yesterday, I took Gonçalo out for his evening walk in the garden and campo.

He was in good humour, and went off to say hello to the two littlies for a minute or so.

Then we proceeded down the garden and on to our campo.

I have a wooden patio chair parked down there, so that I can sit while Gonçalo can sniff to his heart’s content.

Gonçalo came and sat beside me for a couple of minutes. And he seemed perfectly happy and normal.

We set off on the return trip, and when we got back Gonçalo appeared to act a little oddly. The littlies were still out, but Gonk showed next to no interest in his chums. He indicated he wanted to get home.

When we got back inside, Gonçalo started to scratch at his right ear, and began to shake his head vigorously. He wasn’t wagging his tail as he normally does. He wasn’t interested in being friendly with my beloved, as he always does.

There was something wrong with him!

The ear scratching, head shaking and quiet demeanour continued, so we got tooled up for a visit to the vet early today. Gonçalo was continuously monitored during the night.

He arrived at the vet as soon as the practice opened. And quickly, he got sedated. They wanted to examine his inner ear, so Gonçalo got zonked.

The vet pulled out a 1.5 inch length of campo from his right ear. Gonçalo then came back home, still totally out of it. We have three mini-steps from our lounge to or kitchen/diner, and when Gonçalo tried those, his legs buckled and he went face down onto the tiles.

This is a photo of what Gonk looks like when he is stoned.

The drugs seem to be wearing off slowly.

I hope they were to his enjoyment, because we were charged €97 for his treatment.

PS Gonçalo has learned to hate going to the vet. When he recognised the location in Lagos, he peed outside the vet’s, then he peed inside!

Madeleine – Gonçalos cadaver adventures

When we came back from our holiday in January 2019, Gonçalo alerted to his first cadaver.

I had seen this on the day before, when it appeared to be still alive. 24 hours later on Gonçalo’s early morning walk it was definitely a corpse. And that was when Gonçalo alerted. He had bagged his first cadaver!

The cadaver is a European hedgehog. I knew it was getting close to the end, because when I saw it on 6^th January it did not scamper away or roll into a ball, but it was still moving. Gonçalo alerted to it the next day, when it had definitely expired.

I left the hedgehog in situ, because I wanted to study how it decomposed. There are supposedly 5 stages in natural human decomposition. However, Gonçalo’s European hedgehog showed little inclination in following such a pattern.

This is Gonçalo beside the cadaver on January 10^th.

The hedgehog seemed remarkably intact. There was no sign of insect activity. Gonçalo had ceased to alert to it the day after he had found it. The cadaver, having been identified, was no longer of real interest to him.

This is the hedgehog on January 19^th, some 12 days after it had died.

There was still little sign on decomposition, even in the Algarve sun. The mouth had a rictus of death, and it looked less hydrated than on January 7^th, but little else had changed. There was still no insect activity. There was no sign of predator scavenging. We get visits from our neighbour’s cats regularly, and from one of his dogs occasionally, but nothing was happening to the corpse.

A few days later, the hedgehog mysteriously disappeared, so my study came to an end. I wondered where the body had gone.

A few more days went by and I found out the answer. The eldest grandson who lives here had moved and ‘buried’ the corpse. When he was very young, he had a bad encounter with a dead hedgehog in England. So he had moved the body and covered it over with branches and leaves, to protect his young brothers.

I was able to find the surface deposition site, and the corpse was still not attracting insects or larger predators.

Another few days clocked by. Then on another walk, Gonçalo alerted strongly around our neighbour’s wire-mesh fence. I went over to see what he was looking at. It turned out to be a dead bird, perhaps the size of a starling.

I couldn’t get a photo. The bird was brown, on a brown earth background, behind a 2m high wire-mesh fence.

While I was trying to figure out how to solve this challenge, someone or something removed the dead bird. I still don’t know who the ‘culprit’ is.

Before I move on to conclusions, I need to raise the issue of Martin Grime, who was the handler of Eddie and Keela in the Madeleine McCann case.

Fairly recently, he has co-written a paper for a UK university. Before I continue, let me make it clear that I have not yet read it. In this white paper, Mr Grime apparently alludes that all dogs will find cadavers, but a fully-trained cadaver dog is on a higher level.

This is a view about which I am extremely cautious, but I need to read the paper before I make my mind up.

IN CONCLUSION.

My dog finds cadavers. This makes me believe that most dogs would find cadavers. If true, anywhere that dogs go walkies gets ruled out of a body on or near the surface.

The hedgehog corpse did not not appear to attract insects or larger predators. It wasn’t cold on the Algarve in January, so while there is a difference to May, particularly with ant activity, the two situations are broadly comparable.

Assuming this is correct, woke and wandered has become a tad less likely.