Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
knowledge that would help forensic anthropologists understand the patterns of cadaver-dog
alerts around clandestine burials.
Bernie Hatch, despite being suspected of killing a total of seven women and children, was
convicted only of Turner's murder after a seventy-day trial, the most expensive in the history
of Oneida County. He is still in prison in Auburn and says he is innocent. Jim and his two
body dogs, despite months of careful effort, never did locate additional buried victims. Lor-
raine Zinicola and her three young sons were never found.
While Jim Suffolk and his dogs didn't find more bodies in connection with the Hatch
case, his contribution to the history of working dogs was significant: the first fully recorded
occasion when body dogs were used in the United States.
That was only the beginning for Jim Suffolk, who worked with Pearl and Baron for years.
He used “the real stuff” to keep their training up: Bodies lying out in the woods tend to
produce good training material. Jim retired from the state police in 1986 and is now in his
early eighties. Despite recently losing a leg to circulation problems, and repeated shoulder
surgeries as a result of holding on to harnessed bloodhounds running up and down hills in
the Adirondacks, he is a local town justice. He and his wife, Sally, live in a house overlooking
Canadarago Lake.
I couldn't resist asking Suffolk the obvious question: Did he consider using bloodhounds?
I knew he would admit that shepherds and Labradors were better suited for cadaver work.
“Use the bloodhounds for cadaver?” he responded with horror. “Heck no! That was a co-
lossal waste of a nose.” On the other hand, he admitted upon reflection, while he believes
bloodhounds have the Cadillac of noses, they aren't great at hopping around and getting into
tight corners. Then his voice got wistful. “I've always wondered if I could train a cadaver cat.”
The army and SwRI researchers, ever optimistic and open-minded, had already been there
and tried that. Cats didn't care to communicate with the researchers about whether bombs
were close by. “Cats were excluded from the final programs because of their demonstrated
refusal to cooperate consistently in joint ventures with man.”
• • •
I wasn't qualified until I said the two magic words, “Andy Rebmann,” and they said, “My God, you
trained with Andy Rebmann? You can search.”
—Edward David, deputy chief medical examiner, Maine, 2011
It would be inaccurate to say that the cadaver-dog world was empty and void before Andy
Rebmann arrived on the scene. Other people came before him: Nick Montanarelli, the re-
searchers at SwRI, and, of course, Jim Suffolk. That same decade, William D. Tolhurst, a
