Pair of Special Police Dogs Turn Up No Murder Clues

Pair Of Special Police Dogs Turn Up No Murder Clues

By William B. Tre ml

(News Police Reporter)

A pair of crack police dogs which has played
key roles in the capture of eight killers in vari-
ous parts of the country failed to turn up a clue
in the Dawn Basom murder yesterday.

The husky German Shepherd dogs and their
handler arrived here from Philadelphia, Pa., two
nights ago and Sheriff Douglas J. Harvey and
Prosecuting Attorney William F. Delhey agreed
to accept the handler's offer of assistance in the
local case. The assistance is being given on a vol-
untary basis without cost to the county, it was
learned.

The dogs were taken yesterday to the area
on Gale Rd. near Vreeland Rd. in Superior Town-
^h'l- ",-here the body of Dawn Basom was found

» ago today. Later the animals were trans-
put i,cd to the burned-out farm house on LeForge

Rd. south of Geddes Rd. where it is believed the
13-year-old junior high school girl was murdered.
However the animals were unable to track scents
which might be helpful in the case, it was learned.
i Heavy rains in the area may have destroyed
'evidence which normally would be available to
the dogs, one source said.

; The dogs were used several years ago in the
'manhunt in the Pennsylvania hills for a recluse
who killed an FBI agent and kidnaped a teen-
age girl and have been called on frequently by
police agencies to track murder suspects. In eight
specific instances the dogs were credited with
leading police search parties to the murder sus-
pect.

One of the dogs bears scars from bullet
wounds received in a gun battle during one of
the hunts.

Although yesterday's visit to the Basom
murder area was unsuccessful for the dogs, they
and their handler are still in the Ann Arbor area
and it is possible they may be used again today.

Harvey and Delhey had previously declined
to release news of the arrival of the two dogs
here at the specific request of the handler. They
had called the dogs a "crime detection device"
which would be used in the murder probes.

Meanwhile the investigation of the Basom
slaying and the four murders which preceded it
slowed to a walk for the five police agencies in-
volved with the flood of tips from alarmed citi-
zens slowing to a trickle.

"We're still' out all day and most of the
night, still checking out people and information,"
Harvey said today. "But things have slowed
down."

One report that a "final" pathology report
that Dawn Basom had been criminally assaulted
by her killer could not be confirmed. A prelimi-
nary medical report had indicated she had not
been attacked.

Police Chief Walter E. Krasny and Harvey
were awaiting today the arrival of two Wiscon-
sin detectives who were en route here to discuss
the murder in their state of a college coed last
May.

Madison City Police Detective Charles Lul-
ling and Dane County Sheriff's Detective Sgt.
Richard Josephson were scheduled to confer with
Chief Krasny and Sheriff Harvey later today.
Lulling and Josephson are two of a score of po-
lice officers in the Madison area which have
spent the last 11 months unsuccessfully seeking
the killer of 19-year-old Christine Rothchild. Miss

Rothchild was stabbed numerous times and her
body dumped into a clump of bushes near Ster-
ling Hall, a classroom building, on the Universi-
ty of Wisconsin campus in Madison last May 26.

Campus police and municipal authorities
who investigated the case said she had not been
raped. No arrests have been made in that case.

At the time the second local victim was found
last July 5, Krasny was in contact with Univer-
sity of Wisconsin Police Chief Ralph Hanson
about the case. Krasny and Hanson, who have
known each other professionally for a number of
years, agreed at the time vague similarities ex-
isted between the murder of Miss Rothchild and
that of Joan E. Schell, the Eastern Michigan
University coed. However no definite link be-
tween the killings was ever established.