BLOOD HOUND
Madeleine McCann Netflix documentary shows moment sniffer dog signals ‘scent of blood’ in Praia Da Luz apartment
Footage shows Eddie the sniffer spaniel searching the apartment living room and bedroom before letting out an urgent bark
THIS is the chilling moment a sniffer dog trained to smell blood "alerts" his handler inside the apartment where Maddie McCann went missing.
The footage, featured in the new Netflix documentary The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann, shows police spaniel Eddie signalling the detection of blood in her parents' bedroom.
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Eddie and Keela, another sniffer spaniel, travelled to Portugal with their handler Martin Grime to see if they could pick up the scent of blood and corpse odour at the Praia Da Luz resort.
The highly trained hounds were brought in to collect evidence inside apartment 5a, where parents Gerry and Kate McCann were staying with their family in 2003.
Gerry and Kate are not under suspicion and the evidence, which was collected months after Maddie vanished, did not lead anywhere.
Eddie, who was taught to smell traces of human corpses, was sent in first with Martin and ran through the whole apartment.
Footage shows him scouring every corner of the pad, sniffing under the sofa in the living room before going into the adult bedroom to smell under the beds.
Eddie's behaviour changed the moment he came through the door of the apartment. He became tense and aware.
Investigative journalist Robbyn Swan
His nose then leads him to the wardrobe, at which point he turns around and barks urgently at his handler.
Investigative journalist Robbyn Swan tells the documentary makers: "Eddie's behaviour changed the moment he came through the door of the apartment.
"He became tense and aware.
"The dog handler said Eddie didn't alert in any other situation except when he scented that which he was seeking: the scent of a human cadaver."
Keela was also taken to the apartment, stopping at some of the same spots Eddie had flagged to indicate she could smell blood.
Both spaniels were later brought to a silver Renault Scenic which had been hired by the McCanns during their holiday.
When the dog indicates in the field, it will either be human decomposition or human blood.
Handler Martin Grime
They signalled human blood and corpse odour inside the boot and outside the driver's door.
Handler Martin said the dogs' sensitive noses could have been picking scents from long before the McCanns stayed at the apartment or used the car.
He says in the documentary: "When the dog indicates in the field, it will either be human decomposition or human blood.
"The human decomposition is very persistent, very pungent to the point where we've been able to locate, in blind searches, graves 40 years after the body has been removed and the body was only there for a short period of time.
"With blood, crime scene investigators have been to the house and somebody has cleaned the blood up to the point you can no longer see it.
"That doesn't mean there isn't any there to find.
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"It might drip through the gap and run round the back of the floorboard, but odour will still be coming through the gap in the floorboards and the dog will pick it up and respond to it."
Martin adds: "He would work very well in large area searches, and his response to finding was to bark."
When asked about the dogs' results in 2008, dad Gerry said: "I can tell you that we've obviously looked at the evidence about cadaver dogs and they're incredibly unreliable."
Portuguese police named both parents as arguido - persons of interest - days after the dogs were brought in, but that status was lifted in 2008 when the case was archived.
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Madeleine McCann - Key places of importance at the Portugal holiday apartment where the three-year-old was last seen before her disappearance
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