For the benefit of the uninformed, ie. me, could someone please offer their views on the evidence collected by the dogs?
It is cited as being a major piece of evidence, in the case against the McCanns. Would be nice to hear it debated.
I think the best place to start is with the summary by the dog handler himself in his own report.
"SUMMARY
The tasking for this operation was as per my normal Standard Operating
Procedures. The dogs are deployed as search assets to secure evidence and
locate human remains or Human blood.
The dogs only alerted to property associated with the McCann family. The dog
alert indications MUST be corroborated if to establish their findings as
evidence.
Therefore in this particular case, as no human remains were located, the only
alert indications that may become corroborated are those that the CSI dog
indicated by forensic laboratory analysis.
My professional opinion as regards to the EVRD's alert indications is that it is
suggestive that this is 'cadaver scent' contaminant. This does not however
suggest a motive or suspect as cross contamination could be as a result of a
number of given scenarios and in any event no evidential or intelligence
reliability can be made from these alerts unless they can be confirmed with
corroborating evidence."
He does not even claim for certain that there was cadaver scent, never mind that it was definitely related to Madeleine McCann.
The point made earlier by another poster that an alert is meaningless unless corroborated by forensics is very important. The example given was a dog alerting when searching for a bomb but no bomb is found. Should that building be permanently under suspicion? Should the McCanns be permanently under suspicion based on uncorroborated alerts?
