Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Rufus, Andy's stocky, dark German shepherd patrol dog, had started out as a potential
guide dog for the blind at the Fidelco Guide Dog Foundation in Bloomfield, Connecticut.
Rufus had flunked out of the program because he wasn't suited to calmly and gently guide
anyone. He was a fine patrol dog, but Andy also started training him on a combination of
cadaverine and putrescine but also with the dirt harvested underneath bodies that contained
fluids and adipocere (the waxy fat that persists in some environments). That was in 1977, the
same year Andy's other dog, Clem, a bloodhound, won the award for being the best man-
trailer in the nation. As long as people were alive, Clem was happy to find them. If they were
assumed to be dead? Rufus took over. It was a sweet deal for both dogs.
By 1980, Andy was starting to use Rufus and his nose for increasingly challenging work.
Clandestine burials are the worst cases to work. They involve shovels and bulldozers and
sometimes jackhammers. If you are off by more than thirty feet, a body might as well be a
mile away. No one likes to dig to find bodies. Especially without a lot of corroborating evid-
ence.
Everything looked perfect and orderly at the neat, raised-level, shingle-sided ranch house
in Monroe, Connecticut. It had a manicured lawn, a round swimming pool in the backyard,
and a new patio next to the pool. Robin Oppel, twenty-eight, had disappeared. Her husband,
Kent Oppel, a twenty-nine-year-old self-employed businessman, had given the police permis-
sion to search the premises without a warrant.
Robin's car had been found abandoned twenty-five miles away nearly a month after she
disappeared. Inside the car was a broken-off portion of an owl key ring but no sign of Robin.
She was seen last on September 19, 1980. At first Andy thought he might start one of his
bloodhounds to see if the dog, even after all that time, could pick up a trail and give them a
direction of travel. That was a stretch, and he knew it. By then, detectives working the case
had a hypothesis.
Rufus had been working as a body dog for three years when he and Andy arrived at the
Monroe house to search. While Kent Oppel watched, Andy started Rufus on the front lawn,
then down the side of the house and to the rear of the lawn. Rufus walked along the fence
toward the swimming pool, stuck his nose in the dirt next to the newly laid concrete patio,
and started digging. That was it. Andy walked him away and shrugged casually. He could
hear Oppel telling bystanders that the dog obviously hadn't found a thing.
For long terrifying minutes, Andy thought perhaps Rufus had screwed up. Investigators
jackhammered the concrete next to where Rufus had indicated, dug down a foot, and ran
into electrical wires. Andy brought the dog's nose back in. Rufus, Andy recalled, started “dig-
ging to China.” Investigators kept shoveling. Just a little farther down, they saw a small object
in the hole: the other half of the plastic owl key ring found in Robin's abandoned car. They
