The 12 Connecticut State Police K9 Search and Rescue teams have been working around the clock for more than two weeks as the search for a missing New Canaan mother marks its 20th day.
“It’s very widespread, there really hasn’t been much of a comparison this is a very involved case,” Sgt. Anthony Guiliano said.
Guiliano is in charge of the State Police K9 unit and has led the state police’s K9 search operations in the Jennifer Dulos case.
“These dogs are trained at a different tracking method and a different search methodology,” Giuliano said.
We’ve seen the K9 teams at Waveny Park in New Canaan. Then we saw the K9 teams searching Albany Avenue in Hartford, where city surveillance cameras captured a man who police say matched the appearance of Fotis Dulos throwing away bags of garbage the day Jennifer Dulos disappeared.
The teams have spent a bulk of their time investigating at the MIRA trash facility. Guiliano told NBC Connecticut the K9 teams were back there searching Wednesday.
“They’re not necessarily looking for just one person, they’re looking for any human odor,” Guiliano said.
The K9 teams are also working to track down electronics.
“Our electronic storage detection dogs they can detect any electronic storage devices, there’s a certain chemical that every mass storage device has, cell phones, thumb drives, hard drives and they can detect that odor and that’s what we use for detecting these devices,” Guiliano said.
Tuesday the search for the missing mother took K9 teams to a pond on Old Farms Road in Avon where K9 teams were seen searching along the shoreline.
Volunteer K9 Search and Rescue Handler Lindsey Taylor, who is not involved in the investigation, says search and rescue dogs even have the ability to pick up an odor that’s coming from under water.
“You have to be able to articulate that based on the wind’s direction and based on the currents of the water it can also be the temperature of the water affecting that,” Taylor said.
For these teams, it’s a tireless search but one this trooper says his teams will take to time as long as it takes.
“They are completely dedicated to doing what they have to do to make sure this case comes to an end,” Guiliano said.
