Good morning. Wanted to give you a little update and talk about some of the things that we've been working on with this case. As far as evidentiary value, there's not much other information that I can talk about at this time, but I do want to talk about some of the resources that we have here. Behind me I have Mr. John Harris from the Team Adam consultant. This is from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The capacity for the national center is to call in additional resources; both analytical and support resources, for us to use. On the first day of this investigation, they immediately came into action and distributed approximately 1,800 informational fliers on Isabel to a 50 square mile radius around the site. A lot of comments have been made about why not Amber alert and I've discussed that earlier that we do not use Amber Alert unless we have definitive information about an abduction. There (are) certain protocols that we must follow and this case doesn't meet those protocols. But the National Center's Adam Walsh protocol is probably the next best thing that we could do in that regard because they distribute that information immediately, they get it out to locations around here and it gets us out here so that people can be on the lookout and contact us if they have information. We're going to be expanding that capacity and ultimately we'll end up with probably about 10,000 fliers that go out to a variety of entities, convenience stores and that sort.
The website for the National Center for Missing Children is
www.missingkids.com. Immediately this case was placed upon that website, and also in talking with Mr. Harris, this is the highest profile case in the nation currently being worked by the national center. So they are making all resources available to us. On that website also will be a tip-line which comes back to TPD, which also will connect to 88-CRIME and they will list it by area code 520-88-CRIME so that information can be brought directly to our investigators through that crime tip-line. In regards to 88-CRIME there is a reward currently at $6,000.00 that is being offered through 88-CRIME for information that helps lead to the successful resolution of this investigation. Ms. Susie Dupnik, the director of 88-CRIME can be contacted at 520-740-5617 for further information about their entity and that reward.
We've also talked a little bit about the canines that have been brought in by the FBI. We've used a variety of dogs during this investigation. On the first day, originally, we used canines from the DOC. Those are dogs that are trained on trying to follow the victim's odor and see if we can find a direction of travel there. The specialized dogs brought in by the FBI actually work in a different method. They try and identify and locate offender odor, possible offender odor, and give us a direction of travel or some information on what that is. So that's the specialized training that they partake in. Also we had a victim recovery dog and I, we commonly call them cadaver dogs, but that's not necessarily the case. They are trained to detect the odor of human decomposition. That doesn't necessarily mean a death or dead body. There's the chemical odor that's emitted by the human body, or secretions from the human body, very soon after they leave the body and so that's what that dog is trained for. So I just wanted to clarify a little bit of that information.
Are there further questions that you may have that I can answer at this point?
Q: (Why is there so much attentions focused on this case from the NCMEC when there are so many missing children now?)
A: I will get an information and an answer for you. I don't know what their caseload is like. The protocol for the center personnel and we will be contacting them and they need to go through their national center for approval to come forward and be a spokesperson kind of thing, and I don't know if that will occur or not.
Q: You don't know why all this attention, why...
I guess I would refer that back to you. Why are you here? You know this is a big deal. We have a six-year old child that is missing, we have suspicious circumstances and we're going to do everything possible to locate that child. As far as comparison to all these across the country, I don't have an answer for that and I'll try to get that for you because that's a fair question and I'll try to get you that as to why this one is the top of the line.
Q: inaudible
A: Sure and I don't know. I don't set their criteria as to how to rank that. I just felt like that was a good thing for us because that means that all the resources that they can bring to bear on this situation, we'll take advantage of. Because we don't want to leave anything unturned.
Q: inaudible
A: All three types of dogs have provided us investigative information that we've had to follow up on.
Q: inaudible
A: And that's something that I'm not going to talk about right now, I understand, but that's something I'm not going to talk about. But all three dogs did provide us information that we needed to follow up on.
Q: Without a break in the case how long (inaudible)
A: We've been having those discussions since yesterday and also this morning. Once we feel that our presence here is really not being fruitful and is not required for us to follow up on the information then we will break that down. We're not quite there yet. There's still things we're checking out and each time we get a (video ends)
