Someone Knows Something - S1 Episode 6: The scent

Episode Date: April 3, 2016

The cadaver dogs continue their search for the scent of human remains in the Holmes Lake area. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sks/season1/someone-knows-something-season-1-adrien-mcnaughton-transcripts-listen-1.3846202

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You're listening to Someone Knows Something from CBC Radio. In 1972, five-year-old Adrian McNaughton vanished while on a fishing trip in eastern Ontario. Documentarian David Ridgen goes back to the small town dog search up here at Holmes Lake near Kalabogie in eastern Ontario. Yesterday we pounded through the bush with our GPSs and our amazing sniffer dogs, but found nothing related to the disappearance of five-year-old Adrienne McNaughton. The clouds are here in force today, temperature hovering around 5 degrees. I've arrived early and I'm heading back to the bush road to Holmes Lake when I see a well-used red tar paper shack at the roadside. It's one of the old hunt camps, green dotted on the map, and I stopped to take a look.

There's a little hunt camp here beside the road. Just a little red ramshackle building. Camp's alarmed and booby-trapped. Great. Can't really tell much. Just a hunting camp. I won't be able to tell much until the dogs get here. The dog teams behind me call ahead and say they'll cover the hunt camp and area on the

way. So I continue to the meeting place and start walking up the bush road towards Holmes Lake, like Chantelle McNaughton did the day before. And like her, I feel the need to be alone with my thoughts in these woods. Not many birds singing. It's December. I guess they'd be confused if they were here.

But it's not long before I hear the familiar sound of Kim Cooper's truck approaching. Good morning. Good morning, how are you? I'm good, I'm good. Morning. So did the other guys go to the cabin? Yeah, they've gone to the cabin at this point. Okay.

While we wait for Pauline and her dog Quinn, that's the new team joining us today, to arrive from the hunt cabin. Kim and I decide on the order of events for the morning. If you wanted to start going in the lakes there, it probably won't take long. Yeah, very quick. Yesterday's GPS tracks reveal that we missed a segment of the land between Holmes Lake and Centre Lake. So at the beginning of every day...

All right. Navigation by GPS. in Centre Lake. So at the beginning of every day... Alright, navigation by GPS. It's not going to take much actually from what we did yesterday. Two or three cuts through there and we've got it covered off. Which dog? So we'll cover that off before moving on to any of the other areas. Just going to steer us right into the holes from yesterday. Kim and I plunge back into the bush with Brief, the younger male dog.

Yeah, we hadn't actually gotten quite to this spot yesterday. We walk along the rugged shoreline of Holmes Lake, much closer to the water than yesterday, and into the area we did not cover. See, I was led to believe that this end of the lake was just too dense. No way anyone would ever walk here.

It's actually clearer than the other side. Yeah, it's that point over there where he was last seen, actually. Just right over there. If we go along here, we'll get to the... And then, brief the dog. Drinking out of the lake now. Checking out the water. Pretty attentive.

Does he seem interested in something? Or is it my imagination? Well, we have a small behavior change here. The longer we stand still here, the more I start convincing him that I'd like him to come here. I see. I'm going to move him along. Kind of fulfilled the prophecy a little bit. Yeah. He did seem very attentive there. Grief clearly, at least to my untrained eyes, made changes in his body posture. He walked down to the shoreline, stood on a rock, and looked out sniffing toward the lake. Supremely quiet, at attention

and still, concentrating. What's with the drinking and stuff? Is that like trying to get more scent into his nose? Yeah, that's pretty astute that you noticed. He doesn't swim and drink. He's biting the water, he's tasting the water. So they can, licking at the water, biting at the water is a way of trying to pick up more of what's out there. So do you make anything of that, or is it just kind of? He certainly didn't indicate, but he changed his own path a couple of times.

So he's moving forward with a certain rate of speed and then all of a sudden he hooks back on himself. He does seem to be kind of going back. Well now we're not getting the hook back. He's just running now. So it's a sudden jerk back. Yeah you're moving in a certain direction and then for no apparent reason they change direction. It's just a hook. All of a sudden they hook. Now that could be that there's a dead raccoon in there and they're going to hook back because it's different. But they're not going to tell us there's something there. They're just going to hook back out of sheer curiosity. So any number of things can make the dog hook back on itself. But yeah that's why I say it's nice to have a second dog and see if we get a similar behavior change up there with the second dog. How do the dogs know it's a human bone? We still don't know enough about it for me to

absolutely answer that question but forensic anthropologists are certainly studying the odor of decomposition and there's a definite difference between animal odors and human odors. There's some 500 chemicals that are involved overall and there's a small set of maybe maybe 10 or 15 that are unique to human. But we certainly know through training we put out our human bones, our training aids, and the dogs will burn right past deer bone, coyote bone, any other bone, pay no attention to it whatsoever and zoom right in on the human bone only. So they know there's a difference. And they can tell what it is. It's easy to believe the narrative you want versus the truth you're in.

Grief's actions are different here and it's the first time in the two days he has acted this way that we have seen. But what do these actions really mean? He's specifically trained to react to the smell of human decay only. But underwater? Luckily, we have two other dogs here, and we can bring them into this same situation to see what they think. Back at the cars, we meet Pauline, who has arrived with her dog, the beautiful and very personable Quinn.

Hello. I'm David. Nice to meet you. I'll shake your elbow. Nice to see you. So we had a little interesting moment over there. Just a little. Kim tells Pauline about Grief's findings. Kim's cautious by nature and rightly careful not to overblow anything. He showed a behavior change by this lake. Just enough that he hooked into the lake a couple of times.

He didn't indicate or anything like that, so I'll just bring Breeze up. To maximize our time together, Pauline and Quinn are detailed to search out the bush road coming in from the Kalabogie side to see if they can locate any remains of older hunt camps. Their search of the camp I found on the way in turned up nothing. Meanwhile, Kim and I take Breeze, the more experienced female dog, back up to the lake. Kim's moving pretty quick here. At this point, it's one dog, almost nothing.

A whisper of something nameless. But still, everyone wants confirmation. We had a small change in behavior from my other dog close to the lake shore. So we're just going to bring a second dog up and see if we get, again, a change in behavior from a second dog. We had two dogs showing change. Starts to become more interesting. Maybe there's something that needs to be looked at here. But this is definitely less than a perfect scenario

to come in on a search 42 years afterwards. That'll do. We approach the area where Grief made his actions once again. Kim is very careful not to lead Breeze into any kind of expected behavior, following behind her evenly, continuing to move, ever watchful of the dog's every action. Interesting. Started to bark.

That's interesting. Maggie, we're standing still here, so she's going, why do you want to have a look at this spot? She is looking in the same place. Alright, come show me. Ready? Okay, break. Go find it. Sook. Barking. Barking at the water. Kim's trying to get her to go. OK, break.

Good girl. So it looks like a strong positive. If you don't know the dog, she likes to bark. She likes her ball. I would say we have some subtle signs here. As much as it looks dramatic, the actual body language of sniffing is fairly subtle. So I consider her to be the better dog of the two. He actually gave more body language than she did. And we spent a lot of time standing still here. So what do I know? I know I'd like to have a look at the lake.

I know I'd like to bring the third dog down, and I know I'd probably even bring her back in here a couple hours from now. To me, it seemed like it wasn't just us standing here. She actually looked in exactly the same direction. It's something I'd want to look at closer, of course, and a limitation we have with water is this is as much as we can do with the dog short of getting a boat and going out on the water in a boat but if you're gonna make that effort you might as well just drag some divers up and have them

going. Now two dogs have made intriguing actions at the same spot. The accuracy of cadaver dogs according to my research at least, on land, even with remains many feet underground, is in the 90th percentile and up. But while some of the dogs' actions point to the shoreline area here, many more of them point towards the water. The water of Holmes Lake. There is precedent, such as in the fairly well publicized account from Priest Lake, Idaho, with dogs detecting a body 15 to 20 years after death in 350 feet of water. And all the handlers I've spoken to agree that dogs under the right conditions can sniff out molecules of decay from remains under bodies of water. When we get back to the trucks, we have to wait for Pauline and Quinn to return

from their run down to the old hunt camp areas. So Kim decides to show me something. She reaches into the back of her truck and pulls out what looks like a small orange plastic cooler. All right, so we're just going to set out a bit of a motivational problem for the dogs. They've been going a couple of days without finding anything. So this just gives them a chance to actually earn the ball that they've been desperately seeking. So I'm just getting my safety gloves on. And the dog is fairly aware of what's happening. He's getting a little excited. Just go into my cadaver box here and we'll pull out a vertebrae. Kim's decided to show me how the dogs react to real human bones.

Where do you get this stuff? Believe it or not, you can order it online. Bones can be bought through the internet. Other materials we can obtain legally, like things like placenta or ground, where if someone has died and not been discovered for several days, the ground will be saturated with odours that we can use. So there's nothing, there's no feet, there's no hands in our cadaver boxes. There's nothing that can be identified. So I've got a vertebrae, single human vertebrae. You wouldn't think there's a whole lot of odour on this,

but there's plenty. The dog will have no trouble picking up on this one vertebrae. And we're gonna go stick this out in the woods and then we'll come back and let the dog have a go and have a chance to earn his reward. You can see how hard that is to see. So if the dog finds it, he's definitely finding it because he smells it, not because he sees it. I'm going to go back and get a dog. I'll stay over here.

The dogs know they will soon be finding a bone, but they don't know where it is. And I'd say it's at least 100 meters away from where they are on the truck cab right now. Good boy. Good boy. Sweeping in a zigzag pattern, Grief finds the human vertebrae within probably 15

seconds, all by using his nose. It's amazing to behold. Pauline and Quinn have arrived back so we're anxious to see what Quinn makes of the area the other two dogs have been interested in. We'll just follow you, won't tell you anything and let you do it and then. And then if you get nothing on the way back, we'll just sort of say, maybe check this area a little more closely and see if something happens. We don't tell Pauline where on the lake to look, and obviously Quinn has no idea. We follow along silently behind them and watch. Not quite a double-blind test, but as close as we can get,

with neither party knowing where the site is. So we're just going to have Pauline have have a check of the the shore of the lake here we've had some behavior changes from two dogs but they're not they're far from definitive so we're going to have her have a check she has no clue where our dogs had behavior changes so this is a totally honest view with the third dog. Right, so should we follow? Yep. Interesting. So what do you think? I'd love to have some divers come in. Interesting. So what do you think? I'd love to have some divers come in.

What did you see him do? He started sniffing more rapidly and at the same time closed in his ranging and tightened it up. There was definitely a change in body carriage there. Do you want to stop for that? I'm going to tilt a little tiny bit more. It was very obvious there was something different there. Yeah. Interesting, huh?

Three separate dogs, three identical reactions in exactly the same place. Holy fuck. This brand new series created by Visit Mississauga celebrates a city 50 years in the making, paying homage to Ontario's vibrant, diverse and dynamic third largest city. Tune in to Visit Mississauga's brand new podcast, We Built This City, to learn more. Available now on CBZ Listen. Oh, that coffee smells good. Can you pass me the sugar when you're finished? Whoa, whoa, whoa. What are you doing? That's salt, not sugar. Let's get you another coffee. Feeling distracted? You're not alone.

Many Canadians are finding it hard to focus with mortgage payments on their minds. If you're struggling with your payments, speak to your bank. The earlier they understand your situation, the more options and relief measures could be available to you. Learn more at Canada.ca slash it pays to know. A message from the Government of Canada. So in case there's any doubt, it's all happening in the same

spot. His change almost to the foot happened where it happened with grief and breeze. The change was clear and it was exact. If you want to go back through it and spend a little more time and see what happens, we already have what we want, what we need. I asked Pauline what she noticed.

What did you notice back there? Well, a lot of sniffing. Something had his attention down towards the water. And he was more concentrated in that area instead of just passing on. It was obvious, yep, very obvious. And both Breeze and Grief got on one rock, the same rock, and stood facing straight out into the water. It's pretty hardcore.

It is hardcore, and now we're certainly less hesitant in our excitement. Then Quinn actually barks at Pauline when she isn't looking at him. In other words, clearly a voluntary bark, something the dogs do when indicating. Tell me about the indication and what happened here. He narrowed it down to one spot and he came back and alerted. And that's a bark? Yeah, he barked. He thinks there's something there.

It just makes so much sense to me. It doesn't make sense finding it 43 years later. But the storyline that, you know, he's last seen 100 meters away, he's five years old, it's secret. He went in the water. Yeah. But I mean it doesn't look like a deep leg and it should warm up really quite nicely in the summertime, which means it should turn over and things should come up. So parts of it make a lot of sense. It's a very simple explanation for what happened. But the science of it is very questionable.

The science of human bodies in water is that, over time, natural decay leads to the production of gas, which lifts the body to the surface. After rising, the body can then drift, but often releases the gas and then sinks to the bottom for good. If Adrian did fall into the lake, was his body too small to generate enough gas to rise to the top? And if he did surface, would it have been during the time of the search? A shallow lake like this one might make surfacing more likely. Just more unknowns to add to our day. That's the same rock. Yeah, that's the rock where the other two stood standing and staring.

Breeze indicated there. Reef didn't indicate, but he hooked into there three times. So yeah, but something's happening here. Something's happening here. We don't know exactly what. When we're talking about this area, are the dogs indicating because of a scent? All that they are telling us is that they are detecting an odour here. Where would it be coming from? It's coming on the wind. That's all we know. Is the odour right there? Is it 50 feet out? Is it across the lake?

We don't know. This is as far as they can go without swimming. So they say, at this spot, there's enough odor present for me to say that you're probably interested in this. And we've worked in some scenarios where someone's been buried for weeks, and sometimes the dogs indicate 100 meters away from where the person's actually buried, but they're adamant that this is where the odor is. So where the odor is and where the person is are sometimes not the same place. I wonder what's going on here. It's so enticing and interesting and intriguing. Yeah, you certainly hope it's going to lead to something. I mean, like you say, something's going on here.

It's all fascinating and kind of chilling somehow. Each of the three dogs stood on exactly the same rock, looked in the same direction, and gave a quietly dramatic sniffing pause. Two of the dogs taste-smelled the water. It's interesting at the same time. I'd say it's far from definitive and far from clear as to what's happening. But then again, we've never worked a 43 year old case before. Yeah. So we got no frame of reference.

What do I tell the family? Are the dogs accurate? Are there bones here? Are they Adrian's bones? We don't know until we find them. If we do. But I will eventually have to tell them something. Cut ahead another week, and I'm back at Holmes Lake again with yet another cadaver dog named Zappa,

and Zappa's handler, Susan Reed, who's driven here from Lindsay, Ontario. I am with Georgian Bay Search and Rescue, but I live just outside of Lindsay. Susan's a schoolteacher most of the time but like Kim Cooper is passionate about search and rescue. It consumes your whole life. If you're not training then you're training. With Susan and Zappa here now I'll have had access to the best trained amateur cadaver dogs and handlers in Ontario. Susan, tell me about your dog Zappa. Zappa is two and a half years old, soon to be three, Malinois, male.

He is a goof, but he is high drive, good focus, not as intense as I'd like him to be, but he knows how to turn it on when it's when it's time to work. We strike out on the same path as Adrian and his family and 43 years later the three cadaver dogs who indicated further up the lake. Sue has no idea where we were and has never been to the lake before. Zappa is the fourth cadaver dog. If I had to wager a guess I would say this must be where the other dogs hit.

Totally. Yeah. Exactly where they hit. Yeah. I notice Zappa on his hind legs, pawing at tree trunks and smelling upwards. So now you can see he's climbing the trees here, and that's where he was getting the strongest. Now he's certainly not indicating, he's just alerting to me. If there's something blowing off the water it could get all caught up here.

Apparently trees can act like catcher's mitts, collecting molecules of scent that may be coming off the water. As Zappa moves along, he takes a keen interest in the shoreline area adjacent to the indication spot. The other dogs also showed interest in this area, but Zappa is extra interested. He crawls out onto a log that overhangs the water and smells outward. All the dogs have shown a frustration, as if they're not quite able to figure out the source of the scent ahead of them in all cases out towards the water well he certainly had a change in body language at that first spot that i said you could see an interest but this one absolutely he would like to have

investigated it more to me the fact that he crawled out onto that that downed log tells me something good stuff good stuff my boy be tough to get a boat out in that wouldn't it well I should have brought my dive gear I do you have dive gear too? I do. Wouldn't it be cool if you could do it with the dogs? Oh, this is great. How deep is this water? So four cadaver dogs have now made intriguing indications at the same spot and shoreline area. I need to find some divers with experience in this kind of thing. But most importantly, I need to tell the family.

That's the thing that kind of gives you goosebumps. We're not just talking one dog. We're not talking two dogs. Every single dog went into that scenario and none of them knew what the previous dog had done. So for all four dogs to hit on that one shoreline to me is is quite significant. This is what draws people like Kim and Pauline and myself to doing cadaver work. It's families such as this, they deserve closure and after 43 years this poor family deserves to be able to put their little boy to rest. It's a cold night in Armprior and the McNaughton family

is gathered in front of me on their couches and Barb's in her motorized chair. They know something different is coming and as I start to speak about the four cadaver dogs and the interest in a dive, they draw closer together and to me, sitting forward in silence with their mouths open. I try to tune the message to be as accurate but understated as possible. All it means is that we want to just do some more checking. There's nothing confirmed.

We don't know. There's very few cases where we have reports of dogs finding bones underwater, but there are publications. A huge percentage of finds are on land. Far fewer proven on water. So this, if there is any findings, whether these are Adrian's remains or not, or if they're anything, would be precedent setting. So that's how little the chances are. But I do think, I think it's significant enough that we should look with a

diarist. If we find Adrian alive, But I do think, I think it's significant enough that we should look with a diverse. Sure. Definitely. If we find Adrian alive, that's great. If we find that he's not, we finally got closure. Then when anybody asks me about it, I'm okay with that. But until there is something definitive, I don't want to be asked every day what's going on. And I think we all feel that way. I have great faith that God is going to give me an answer before he takes me home. It is him that has carried us through the whole thing. This almost seems as though this is just almost a movie.

Surreal. Do you know that? It almost seems like something that it hasn't happened to us. On the next episode of Someone Knows Something... So the lake is just down the road here, 50 meters. Oh, okay. Let's go take a look. There we go. I mean, it's water here. This is tea-colored.

That reduces your visibility considerably. I could swim past you and not see you. Visit cbc.ca slash sks and click on this week's episode to find more information about how cadaver dogs work. To listen from the beginning, go to cbc.ca slash sks or download the podcast from iTunes or your favorite app. Someone Knows Something is hosted, written, and produced by David Ridgen. The show is also produced by Ashley Walters, Sandra Bartlett,

Steph Kampf, and executive producer Arif Noorani. The music is by Bob Wiseman, vocals by Mary Margaret O'Hara and Jess Reimer. I will never stop my love I will never sleep Something here is precious Memory I keep I will never stop my love

I will never sleep All I want's an answer for this mystery I keep I will Maybe one day we will look out at the sun and know a light that shines to our loved ones. I will never stop my love I will never sleep Something here is precious A memory I keep I will never, never stop my love I will never, never stop my love I will never sleep

All I want is an answer For this mystery we keep Maybe one day we will all look out on the sun And know a light that shines the truth on our love Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.