| POLICE DOGS & HANDLERS February 25, 2004 A broken trail of scents led police dogs from a storage room where Scott Peterson kept afishing boat to the end of a San Francisco Bay pier near where prosecutors allege he dumped his pregnant wife's body, the dog's handler testified Wednesday. The handler, whose Labrador retriever tracked Laci Peterson's scent in the days after she disappeared, testified the dog picked up the smell at the Berkeley Marina on Dec. 28, 2002. Scott Peterson said that's where he launched for a brief fishing trip four days earlier -- the day Laci Peterson vanished. Prosecutors want to use testimony from handler Eloise Anderson and a second dog trainer to help establish their theory that Scott Peterson took his wife's body from their Modesto home to the warehouse to retrieve his boat and then to the bay, where he allegedly weighted it down and tossed it overboard. Defense lawyers claim the trail is too patchy and the dogs are unreliable. Judge Alfred A. Delucchi will decide whether jurors hear the potentially damaging dog testimony. Anderson testified that one of her dogs, Trimble, followed Laci Peterson's scent to a pylon at the end of a pier at the Berkeley Marina where boats are moored. The way the dog tracked the scent indicated that Laci Peterson did not actually walk on the pier, Anderson said. A second dog that specializes in finding cadavers also picked up traces of Laci Peterson's scent, this time along the boat's rim, Anderson said. Laci Peterson's family has claimed she never knew her husband purchased the 14-foot aluminum boat. Defense lawyers seized on Anderson's testimony that a strong odor of fertilizer made a definitive scent impossible to establish. Peterson worked as a fertilizer salesman before his arrest. Throughout the day, defense lawyers picked apart Anderson's testimony, saying there were too many opportunities for the dogs to make mistakes -- as they had many times during their training. A second handler, whose bloodhound was summoned to find Laci Peterson after her disappearance testified previously that her dog acted as if Laci Peterson had been driven from the couple's Modesto home. The dog ran from the home to the middle of the road-- instead of on the sidewalk where a person would walk. Investigators later brought the dog to the warehouse where Peterson told police he stopped Christmas Eve morning before going fishing. The dog picked up a path to Interstate 580 -- one route from Modesto to the area where the bodies of Laci Peterson and their unborn son surfaced in April. HEROIC DOGS TRIAL INDEX HOME INDEX LACI SCOTT EVIDENCE-NEWS COURT INFO |
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| LACI & CONNER Pray For Justice |
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