I just got this in email from Monica @ Cue for the Missing, no link provided.
Search called off for mom who went missing in 1986
Four trained cadaver dogs and ground-penetrating radar indicated the presence of human remains in a backyard, but blood, sweat and tears proved unfruitful in the search for Sheri Lynn Swims.
Miami-Dade homicide detectives dug up a yard in the Redland on Tuesday, searching for a missing Homestead mother feared murdered in 1986.
But after hours of digging with a backhoe, the search was called off. No remains were found.
Police obtained consent to search for the remains of Sheri Lynn Swims from the owner of the dome-shaped house after four specially trained cadaver dogs indicated the presence of human remains in his backyard near a man-made waterfall.
An engineering company hired by police to perform a study of the property also detected ''some voids in the soil pattern,'' according to Miami-Dade police.
Sgt. Charles McCully, of Miami-Dade's cold-case squad, said investigators haven't ruled out that a body is buried there, but have no plans to dig further.
''We dug where [the dogs] alerted,'' he said. ``We can't tear up the man's whole house.''
The current homeowner, residential real estate investor Emilio Mantecon, didn't live there when Swims vanished at age 23.
CONVINCED OF A BODY
The woman who organized the team of volunteer dog handlers that found evidence of human remains on Monday -- working at the request of Swims' family -- is still convinced a body is buried there.
''Our dogs have found human remains before,'' said Monica Caison, founder of the Cue Center for Missing Persons in Wilmington, N.C. ``There is no doubt in my mind that human remains are there.''
Two police dogs and ground-penetrating radar confirmed the findings of Monday's private search.
The police dig on Tuesday focused on a spot on a sloping mound next to the waterfall, where each of the dogs alerted to the scent of human remains. Police dug mostly on the downside of the slope. No digging was done within about 12 feet of the waterfall.
''Scent flows down,'' said Caison, who is credited by police elsewhere with finding buried bodies. ``I wouldn't have gone below the spot where the dogs alerted. I would have gone above it.''
Swims' stepsister, Angie Halsey, who came to watch Tuesday's dig, said police should try again.
''They didn't dig the whole thing up,'' she said.
Police have said in court papers that a second murder victim, an unidentified man, also could be buried there.
This is not the first police search of the property at 23595 SW 170th Ct.
Last December, The Miami Herald reported that a search warrant was issued in December 2003 and that detectives later went to the scene to check out the waterfall after taking a statement from an informant who corroborated earlier information given to police about Swims.
No digging was done at that time, and no dogs were used in a search.
Lawyers for informant Michael Scott Segal said police told them then it would be too costly.
Swims, a waitress with a 6-month-old son, vanished on Aug. 19, 1986, hours after leaving Homestead's DoubleHeader Bar and Grill with a man who has long been a suspect in her disappearance.
Segal, hoping for leniency in an attempted-murder case, told police in 2003 that the suspect once admitted to him he had killed Swims and put her body under the coral rock waterfall at the Redland house with a friend's help.
The 2003 search warrant application said another witness named the same suspect as Swims' killer in 1989.
SECRET DOCKETS
Details of Swims' case have emerged as part of The Miami Herald's investigation of the veiling of hundreds of court cases in Broward and Miami-Dade counties by the use of secret dockets.
News of the aborted search in 2003 and Segal's murder allegations were suppressed for three years by extreme court secrecy that included planting false information in Segal's public court record to shield his cooperation with prosecutors in other matters.
In Florida, it is illegal for anyone to falsify court records. The state Supreme Court is now looking into the practice that prosecutors in Miami-Dade have said went on for two decades.
