Madeleine McCann: Eddie The Dog, Haut de la Garenne And A Coconut

MADDYWATCH - Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann - with Eddie the death dog, Haut de la Garenne and scent of a coconut.

REMEMBER Eddie The Morbid, the sniffer dog who found the scent of death in the McCanns holiday apartment in Praia da Luz?

Scent of death was a phrases first introduced to reasders in September 2007, when the Daily Star reported:

“TOY HOLDS CLUE. British sniffer dogs found the scent of death on Madeleine’s favourite soft toy Cuddlecat, it was revealed.”

We later learnt that sniffer dogs can be “unreliable”, but the media had gone to work and scent of death was now a phrase with buzz.

The leaked report said a “cadaver dog”, trained to sniff out dead bodies, picked up a scent in the McCanns’ apartment and on clothes belonging to Mrs McCann and Madeleine. The animal also apparently scented death on the key of the Renault Scenic hire car rented by the McCanns 24 days after the little girl went missing.

Now the Mail reports:

Eddie the sniffer dog - the animal that had supposedly found the ’scent of death’ in the Portuguese flat where Madeleine McCann disappeared - no longer had a licence for UK police forensic work when Harper started using him in Jersey. Eddie, whose owner, Martin Grime, was paid £93,600 for less than five months’ work, triggered the first excavations by barking at a spot where Harper’s team then unearthed what was claimed to be part of a child’s skull. In fact, as a Kew Gardens expert has now confirmed, it was a piece of coconut shell.

The scent of sun cream was first reported in May 2008, which means the Mail on Sunday’s scoop is something Eddie may pass over as too dead:

Jersey’s “controversial deputy police chief, Lenny Harper, who is heading the investigation, has found something that looks like human bone. His murder inquiry began when Eddie, an “enhanced victim recovery dog”, began barking in the cellar of Haut de la Garenne – the sign, according to its handler, that he had detected the scent of human remains.

By coincidence, the dog, from South Yorkshire Police, is the same animal that supposedly picked up “the scent of death” in the apartment where Madeleine McCann was last seen in Praia de Luz in Portugal.

Coincidence? Not in the media, where links are easily made: “Shannon Matthews, Haut De La Garenne Paedophiles And Madeleine McCann.”

In the maw of the Our Maddie feeding frenzy, Eddie was making news.  Anorak looked at the lift of Cadaver Dogs in “Madeleine McCann, Shannon Matthews, Sniffer Dogs And Leona Lewis“:

Deputy police chief Lenny Harper… said that Eddie, the specialist sniffer dog also used in the case of Madeleine McCann, had shown an ‘extremely strong reaction’ when sent into a bricked-up room in the building’s cellar. His response was akin to that shown before a child’s skull was found on Saturday.

As many will have heard in the news recently, the police are deploying the skills of specially trained dogs in the hunt for human remains at a former children’s home on the island of Jersey. Dogs have also been used in the recent high profile searches for missing girl Madeleine McCann and West Yorkshire schoolgirl Shannon Matthews.

You may recall that Our Shannon was found at a relatives flat, detected not by small but by noise. No bodies were found in the Jersey carehome. And the Sun delivered us this in September 2008:

Eddie is first to be taken into the two-bed apartment and spends nearly 30 minutes sniffing around. He barks twice — once in a bedroom and once at a spot behind a sofa underneath a living room window.

Woof! Woof!

Martin says: “As soon as I came in the dog is very excited. From his body language it would appear he has picked up a scent that he recognises. There is enough scent there for him to give me a bark indication.”

Woof!

After Eddie leaves the apartment, Martin takes in Keela. She can be seen freezing — a sign she has found something — underneath the window where Eddie had earlier barked.

And..?

Martin says on camera: “The crime scene dog has given me a positive indication. That indicates to me there is some human blood there. She will detect blood that is very old and find anybody’s blood.”

Madeleine McCann is missing - still missing. The dog who barked at the parents, it would seem, still gets work. And it’s nice work if you can get it…

Note: We do not hear of cases in the media where Eddie has solved crimes and sniffed out bodies - surely he must have. Eddie is used as a just tool for more speculation in high-profile cases…

Anorak

Posted: 4th, October 2009 | In: Key Posts, Media Comments (5) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink