KANSAS CITY, Mo. - October 22, 2011
The affidavit, released Friday after being filed earlier this
week in support of a search warrant targeting the family's home,
also stated that the girl's mother, Deborah Bradley, "made the
statement she did not initially look for her baby behind the house
because she `was afraid of what she might find."'
Those details and others in the affidavit, publicly released for
the first time Friday, led to a daylong search Wednesday of the
family's home, where the parents say then-10-month-old Lisa Irwin
must have been snatched in the middle of the night as the mother
and two other boys slept. Bradley and the baby's father, Jeremy
Irwin, reported the girl missing on Oct. 4 and have denied any role
in the disappearance while insisting police have pointed the finger
at them.
The affidavit stated that an FBI cadaver dog taken into the
house Monday indicated a "positive `hit' for the scent of a
deceased human in an area of the floor of Bradley's bedroom near
the bed."
The FBI dogs, which often are used at both disaster and crime
scenes, are trained "specially to recognize the scent of decaying,
decomposing human flesh," retired FBI special agent Jeff Lanza
said Friday.
"That can be the scent of an actual body decomposing, or
residual scents after the body is no longer there," Lanza said.
Dr. Edward David, a deputy chief medical examiner for the state
of Maine and co-author of the "Cadaver Dog Handbook," said that
when a body is left in one spot for several hours, cells are left
behind. They continue to decompose and create an odor, giving the
dog scents to detect.
He said that while trained dogs may fail to detect the smell of
human decomposition about 30 percent of the time, they generally
don't alert when nothing is there. One exception is when human
waste is present.
Joe Tacopina, a New York lawyer hired by a benefactor he has not
identified to represent Bradley and Irwin, said the dog could have
detected "a dirty diaper or 10 other non-human-remains items."
But granting that cadaver dogs are trained chiefly to detect
decomposing flesh, "There's really no scenario where this baby,
God forbid she was dead, would have decomposed in that short a
period of time," Tacopina told The Associated Press in a telephone
interview Friday night.
The court document also indicated police felt they needed
handheld digging tools after an investigator noticed dirt in a
garden area behind the home appeared to have been "recently
disturbed or overturned." During Wednesday's search, investigators
could be seen digging behind a shed in the backyard. Among other
revelations in the affidavit:
-Officers searched all rooms in the house and the basement after
being called to the home Oct. 4. Officers sought evidence but
because the parents said the baby had been abducted, the only areas
extensively processed for DNA and fingerprints were the baby's
bedroom and possible entry points.
-The parents had told police that three cell phones were
missing. The affidavit said a phone had since been found in a desk
drawer, but that phone wasn't one of those reported missing. The
missing phones haven't been found.
-Interviews with people involved in the case revealed
"conflicting information for clear direction in the
investigation."
Another document released Friday revealed some of what police
recovered from the home during Wednesday's search: a comforter and
blanket, some clothes, rolls of tape and a tape dispenser. The
family's local lawyer, Cynthia Short, did not immediately return a
phone call seeking comment on the documents, and police declined to
discuss what they found.
But before the affidavit was released, a statement issued by
Short's office insisted the parents had no role in the
disappearance and disputed claims that the parents aren't
cooperating with police. The statement said the parents have
consented to "unfettered access" to their property and allowed
police to take hair and other samples.
"They have taken all calls from detectives, and answered
questions posed again and again," the statement read. "In the
initial hours of the investigation, they tolerated accusations,
volunteered to take polygraph examinations; continued to work with
detectives even after the interviews turned into pointed
accusations."
---
Associated Press writer Dana Fields contributed to this report.
Police: Cadaver dog had 'hit' at missing baby's home
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