Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
One woman's body was found while other women continued to disappear. No one con-
nected the cases until it was too late. These were women whose lives had started to slip away
before they were murdered.
In early July 1988, a woman stopped her car along state Route 140 to pee in the nearby
scrubby brush. She discovered the first body. Debra Medeiros, twenty-eight, was spread-
eagled, her bra wrapped around her neck. She had been missing since late May. Later that
month, two motorcyclists also felt the call of nature and found Nancy Paiva, thirty-one. Paiva
was on her back, her feet pointed toward the westbound traffic on Interstate 195. Next, a
public works employee collecting cans on his lunch break found a third woman's remains:
Debbie DeMello's body was just off an I-195 onramp.
That was when the Bristol County district attorney's office contacted Andy Rebmann's su-
pervisor at the Connecticut State Police. By that time, Andy was working Lady's replacement,
Josie—another Fidelco dog who wasn't cut out for guide-dog work, just like Rufus and Lady.
Too much drive. She was cute, light on her feet, intense. Not that big for a shepherd and as
tightly articulated as a cat. Andy hadn't been working her long, but that didn't seem to matter.
She was a natural, cross-trained to find both live people and dead ones. She didn't care which
as long as she got her reward. She was the kind of dog who would dash two or three times
into and out of impenetrable brush to find Andy—to make sure he understood, hitting his
pocket with her nose. The ball. The ball. The ball. Jeez. Get it out already. Her first callout,
the day after she was certified, was for a suicidal person. It took her two minutes to find the
guy. Still alive.
“She was a lot of fun,” Andy said simply. “She was the easiest dog I had ever trained in my
life.”
The New Bedford highway search was not fun. It was dangerous and hard going. Dense
traffic on one side. Claustrophobic thorns, brush, pine, and dead animals on the other. Josie
worked for five hours that first day, searching the north side of Interstate 195. That may not
sound like a lot of time to people who punch in and out and get to play on the web for part
of the workday. But for a search dog spending all her time sniffing and quartering and leaping
over obstacles and getting caught up in dense brush, it's a brutal schedule.
Josie was young, though, three years old. And while Andy wasn't a spring chicken, he was
fit and experienced. Andy set up half-mile sectors and worked the shoulder. Then he'd go in
twenty-five yards and work inside the deer fence. Nothing. All that day.
Nothing the next morning, either. By midafternoon, Josie and Andy had worked their
way down to the ramp coming off Reed Road. The north side. They would have to do the
south side, but all in good time.
Search WWH ::




Custom Search