She trailed actually to the suspects ours. She did go by a trash can. The victim's purse was in the trash can, which corroborated the trail, and then she went to the suspects house where he was being with his parents and did happen to be on parole as a violent sex offender.
The dog took you straight to the perpetrator and the police went through the door and arrested him. I'm Andrew Rule Business Life and Crimes. Today we have a very special guest on Life and Crimes Doctor to use her real title Kobe Webb and Doctor Kobe Webb is in Bend, Oregon, just north of California, where she has spent most of her working life. Doctor Webb, alias Captain Webb, was a senior police officer in the Riverside County Sheriff's Department for
more than twenty five years. She retired fairly recently, but she made her name in police work in various ways, but mostly as a trainer and handler of specialist sent dogs, dogs that can trail people or in fact trail anything I think, And although she nowadays trains many other dogs for other purposes. For many years she made her name in California by training bloodhounds to do wonderful things like find lost children, lost old people who might have dementia,
and also to trail fugitives and criminals. Welcome to life and Crimes, Kobe. We're going to call you Kobe rather than doctor Webb because we're fairly casual. Here. How's things in Bend, Oregon.
It's wonderful. It's a great place to retire. From California. It's a light slower peace.
Tell me, is that where you grew up? You came from Oregon originally?
Yes, I was born in Oregon and grew up in Oregon, and then I went down to southern California with my mom right and in high school and after graduating, I went into college there at the local community college before continuing my education, but I went into law enforcement.
I see. And you formed an attachment to dogs and learned about training dogs quite early in life. Is that right? From preps? Your grandfather?
My family, My grandfather worked dogs. My dad also had dogs. We've always and my mom we've always had dogs.
Right, So you grew up with dogs. And in the United States, quite a lot of people associated with hunting have variations on hound dogs, variations of the bloodhound breed, and you were familiar with those and with field labradors and others when you were young. Is that right?
Yeah, not the bloodhounds until later, yep. But I'm not in favor of only the bloodhound. I'm in favor of dogs with the drive.
Two hunts, that's the big thing. They're working instinct. Now, Kobe, you didn't join the Riverside Sheriff's Department immediately. You actually joined a local police force first, did you not.
Yes, I joined with Palm Springs Police Department first, and then I went to Riverside County Sheriff's Department, a larger department with the ultimate goal of always being a canine hamber.
I see. And how soon before you got to use dogs in your job as a deputy sheriff. Is that what your title was then?
Yes, So as a deputy first you have to know that job, that position, and then when you want a special team, then you tested, then you're selected, and then it usually takes about five years before you go to a special team.
And the early days, what sort of dogs were you handling at Riverside.
County At Riverside County I started the bloodhound program. However, I was a patrol dog handler. I worked malawized shepherds. I had four patrol docs out the department, and then also I started the department's bloodhound program, right.
And is it true to say that before your intervention or your innovation, that bloodhounds had not been used in California as much as they had in the Eastern States? And is it true that you went to the East and learned from older police who had used bloodhounds in the past in order to bring that knowledge back to California.
There were bloodhounds in California. Hammler's had owned the dogs. Were trying to start up programs and trying to get
their agent Seeds to be a full time position. I had the permission with my agency, which was great for Innovation to be supportive of me when I brought the proposal of adding a bloodhound due to all the missing people we were having in the desert area, which is a tourist area, Palm Desert, and that's where I proposed the bloodhound, which was sent specific to follow that one person sent to help our agency kind of lower some of the time we were searching for missing people especially
with dementia. And once I had that approval, I had to learn go find out about the bloodhounds, where to get a bloodhound, a working line, and then I have the support once I got it trained, and I did go back east. I went to Colorado and also back years.
And when I did that and brought back the dog with the foundation, the department said, prove that it's reliable in our set and needed and they gave me the calls, which was wonderful to show that the dog can meet those criterias and we were successful on that where now we had a full sorely full time bloodhound units.
Right, So tell us about that early time you had some success. I take it with finding old people who were lost and possibly children who were lost. And along the way, of course, your dogs were getting or your hounds were getting the sort of skills they needed to follow anybody that you set them after sent and therefore
they could be used to find fugitives. I think one of your early dogs, perhaps not quite your first one, but perhaps one of your more famous hounds was a bloodhoum bitch called Meggie Might.
That's correct. So even at the early stages, I did track criminals also, yep, it would not be like homicide suspects, but it was burglars, not as high profile crimes, just to be able to show that the dog was an asset and that it was reliable. And so we did do missing people and criminal trucks at the beginning. And then yes, Maggie was the one, the first bloodhoun I started.
She had an accident and passed away early, and I had Maggie in training, and Maggie was the one that really stepped up, and I was able to prove the need for the dogs, especially saving time in resources with direction to travel, and then we'd be able to locate missing persons or suspects. But it was just a tool. She's not the one thing that solves prime solely. It's a tool.
True, I think Maggie made, from what I've read, was instrumental in tracking in a fairly wonderful way a six killer. Early in those days, I think two and one or two thousand and two, a fellow called Jackson, Is that true? What was that story?
On that particular case? I was called upon. It was a subject that was accused of attacking elderly women and violently, and I was called upon to see if I could track him after he just committed another event, and they just wanted to know the direction of travel of him coming in and out of this neighborhood so that we could do a surveillance and get more investigative leads. And Maggie ended up trailing on that case. As she trailed actually to the suspect's house, she did go buy a
trash can. The victim's purse was in the trash can, which corroborated the trail, and then she went to the suspect's house where he was getting with his parents and did happen to be on parole as a violent sex offender. And the whole case opened up when we didn't even expect it to either. We truly thought we were just going to get how he's entering the neighborhood in exiting.
But the dog, in its wisdom or its noos, you better, took you straight to the perpetrata and the police went through the door and arrested him and away he went to jail.
Eventually, well there was evidence there he didn't have time to destroy. The last thing I think kind of expected was the dog to be showing up early in the morning and I think the big thing with the tracking dogs, we had no information where who our suspect was, where he was staying. Like I said, we were just trying to figure out how he entered the neighborhood and then we're out of house, which kind of surprised even us.
And that really kind of blew up the whole case in a sense, and a good way of having that evidence inside not destroyed and being able to go to trial.
Just to be clear, this offender, Jackson, he'd murdered one old lady and had riped at least one other. That's true, isn't it.
That's what he was accused of.
Yes, yeah, And I have.
Not the investigator. I was solely only the dog handler, which makes it unbiased. I just deployed the dog and work the dog and do not always know all the facts of the case because I don't want to be biased in the deployment of the dog.
Okay, Now, I think your success or Maggie May's success in that case meant that the FBI reached out to you, I think the following year, within a matter of months, because they had a very serious I think a kidnapping and they needed some help and they reached out to you and Maggie mate your dog, Maggie, I think you gave her the scent of the suspected perpetrator offender. Is that right?
We trailed from the house where the victim was kidnapped by the suspect. It was the victim's house, and we had a scent article of a potential suspect who I didn't know. They gave me the sen item and they said, we want to know if there's a trail from the house with this sen item, and that's where the dog did take a track and did go to the location of a cabin, and that's where we entered the cabin
under exigent circumstances, thinking the victim might possibly still be alive. Ye, and found evidence there in the cabin, such as there was duct tape, There was numerous other items in the cabin, and we gave Maggie break. We shut her down. A little bit later, we started her back up on the victim scent.
You switched scents, yep, Yes.
We changed scents and we gave her the victim scent in that area, and that's where she tracked down a hill and gave a proximity alert in that area, there was snow. We did not see our victim anywhere, and that's when FBI was later called and their dog did find the grave right underneath the snowpack, and that the deceased victim was inside there and identified.
An astonishing tile of a tile of two dogs, two hounds. But Maggie May was certainly one of your better bloodhounds, but not the only one. You handled several and you trained many more, I believe, and then you showed other people how to train bloodhounds to do do this important work and other important work. Well, can you recall some of the cases that stick in your memory and some of the jobs you have helped with, both in California and elsewhere. I think you went overseas at one time.
Yes, I have started up programs and other agencies. As for Maggie Alan, yes, she was wonderful. She worked other kidnapping. She also worked Samantha running kidnapping, which is very dear to my heart because it was a very difficult trail. And she did help with direction of travel and where we were able to gather more evidence, just for providing that was significant. Where I'm still in contact with the mother of Samantha that was kidnapped and murder things like that,
so you definitely get that relationship. And then yes, I have traveled internationally working bloodhounds. However, I still have to say it's not the breed. I have to always reinforce that it's since specific. It's really the driver of the dog, and that the dogs hunt skill to want to be able to track and understand since specific. So I just happened to be known for the bloodhounds. I was successful with the bloodhounds, and now that's where I still train them. But I do work with all breeds.
And within every breed, tell me if this is right. With every breed, you will find individuals that are good at certain tasks and many other individuals that are not. And I think anybody that breeds sheep dogs or race
horses or anything else will agree with that proposition. Do you find that in your experience you've found certain bloodlines of bloodhounds and other breeds that are particularly good because they are well focused on the job, they want to work, they want to please the handler, and perhaps there are other bloodlines that are not as successful as those ones.
Yes, I do have working line breeders that I do work with when I'm looking for the dogs, do do their past success and the success of the prior letter meads that I watch and that I get to. Now I do favor them because the genetics I kind of know what I'm dealing with, so I do have that that I do prefer.
Hypothetically, if someone from overseas, from Australia or New Zealand, or Switzerland or Greenland came to you and said, we really like what you're doing, we need to get track of dogs to do exactly what you do with them in the States, you could point to two or three breeders in the States with genetics that would be superior.
Well, it's just been more of success rate. That's really what I look at is that the dog success where the dog's been deployed, the other dogs related and that success. So we actually almost fight behind the list for the dog to be pick of the litter. And yes, that is what I do. Still to this day. I get very picky. I want I want to be the number one to pick the best pub that I believe with what I'm seeing to be that working dog. So yes, I did work with New York State Place, Maryland State Place,
many years of using the since specific filling dogs. They do both use the bloodhounds, and I did follow their models.
We'll put a hypothetical to you. The LAPD. We've all heard of it. It's a famous police force, Los Angeles Police Department. It now has its own unit or track a dog unit, and I think you might have helped set that up. Is that right?
Yes, I did help them start their program, help them start with their breeders. They did the same methods as I do, and they've been very, very successful. I actually feel more like Grandma now when I get to watch all these dogs and handlers doing excellent work with their dogs and finding individuals. I do like when they find the missing. That's my favorite. And then also I do like the suspects being captured because a lot of times it's closure for families.
Yes, indeed, finding lost children must be especially wonderful.
The children. A lot of times, if they're autistic anything like that, they're not even aware that they're lost. It's very heartwarming, gratifying to know that they're safe and back home, and the bloodhounds not intimidating. But you know that that's the nice thing. In the United States, we have McGrath, which is our crime fighter dog and it's a bloodhound. So you put that together where there's cartoons and everything with McGrath, and it's nice when the dog finds that
missing child. But I'm still gonna say again reinforcing you know, some of the best dogs I've seen. One of the best dogs truly was a Melwaw, one of the best trailing dogs I saw. So I always have to go back to it's more about being sent specific and training with that and that drive of that dog been necessarily
the breed. Even though we've been successful with that breed, it still goes down to that dog's dry that determines everything, because you know, just because you see a bloodhound, I've seen some that just want a hacking chair and hang out. So it really goes back to that dog's drive. That is number one. If I have that, we are.
Set because all dogs, virtually all dogs have the wonderful nose, the old factory senses that can be used to trail, you know, pick up sense of anything, trail people, trail animals, find truffles, do anything. Really providing you can channel that ability the way that you can channel it, there is some differences they're not between bloodhounds and some other breeds. The bloodhound is specifically a scent animal and will not be distracted by seeing something. Is that true.
Yeah, we do use the bloodhounds more in the States because we have noticed some of our other dogs will go visual when they see somebody running, compared to if the bloodhound's down, their noses down, they're tracking, They're focused on that track and that's the only thing that they care about. And we've seen where they can go a little bit of a longer distance and a little bit on an more of an age trail. But once again,
it still goes by the dark foundation. It is the dark trained for since specific that is the foundation of the training.
Kobe, You've worked in the shop end of policing. You've worked on homicides, assisting the coroner's office at Riverside County, which of course is out of Los Angeles. It's a very big, busy place. There's plenty of crime, plenty of murders. Over here in little Old Australia. We've had our share
of crime recently. One of the more notorious incidents of the last year is that an offender shot dead two policemen to police officers who were attempting to arrest him up in a mountainous country district, not unlike your Oregon, to be honest, very similar, high mountain snow, all that stuff. This offender, having allegedly shot to police officers dead and wounding a third, bolted into the bush, into the woods
as you might say, and vanished. And although there was a massive search conducted by hundreds of officers, helicopters, all the technology over many weeks after that, they did not find any sight of him. Now I think they're now satisfied that probably he has taken his own life, but they have never been able to find his body, and I think with every passing day it becomes less likely
that they will find his body. Taken those circumstances as I've of at London, this was in late winter hea last August, so it was cool, it was damp, it was up in the hills. If someone like yourself with your dog or dog's hounds had been called into that scene that same day. This happened at ten thirty in the morning, if you'd turned up there mid afternoon that day, what is it do you think a good track of dog could have done? At that scene.
Well, I'm not familiar with the case, no, and I
was not there. The first thing I would have done is looked around to see if I could find a shoe track or a sin it down that belonged to the suspect, and as our agency deploys, would have been one of the first resources out there so the scene isn't trampled on, so that the scent is preserved, and try to locate the trail leaving that scene and give direction of travels so that we could put drones or helicopter or something in the direction from that scene to
leap frog and be ahead of us. And our ultimate goal is to track locating the subject. If the subject got in a car, we would have been done. We can't track behind the car, but we could least still give direction to travel and know if a car west park therea we could give you the area where the tire tracks are or other evidence. You just don't know. But it is a tool, just one more tool to be used. But it has to be one of the first tools. It cannot be days later. It can't, it
would not work at all. It's just one more resource to be called upon.
It's seems that over here. We throw everything at it except dogs, because we don't really have the dogs that are good enough to trial anybody much the more general purpose dogs, and they tend to be attack dogs. What they do do after about a month usually is bring in cadava dogs to see if they can find a body, and they do have those here by then you know, it's all a bit late to be catching anyone alive
and kicking. But as you explain it, you could at least point investigators towards one sector to look at and eliminate others. You could say, well, this scent went in that direction, up that track and headed due north or whatever it might be, and it didn't go southeast or west. This is what you can do at a crime scene, or your dogs can do all.
That's our goal. Now, it's how we deploy them. We don't always need the finish. We need them to do the trail. Sometimes it's just to locate evidence. Sometimes it's just direction of travel, and if the dog is locked on the trail, we'll keep going. But we do so resources up ahead above the dog because it is that team work.
Yep. Another case, it's a real case, two years ago exactly a woman here in a provincial city, on the outskirts of a provincial city, went for a jog on a Sunday morning into the countryside. She did not come home. She vanished. No one knew what, No one knew really where she was or where she'd gone exactly. The searches were mounted for her, but not using any sort of track of dogs, because again we don't really have them,
and if they do exist, they don't use them. There are volunteer dogs, but the police choose not to use them. So you know, dozens and hundreds of people go looking and tracking through the bush and creating five hundred different scent trails, and they found precisely nothing. Again, hypothetically, had one of your dogs and handle have been brought into that scene on that same Sunday morning, this lady goes
missing at seven am. If a dog had got there by eleven or twelve that day, what scenario could have unfolded. The woman's husband could say, well, she always ran that way down that road and this is a pair of her shoes, so he's a scent A hound could do what in those circumstances, Well.
There's a couple of hurdles there. One of course is making sure the syn item is good because even as you said, the husband gave the syn items something like that as an example, it's now contaminated. So we do always try to find a sn item that is the individual solely.
That's a given that we're looking for yep, of course.
And yeah, and not as many people searching and looking because as you said, it disrupts the scene.
Yep.
So if we had a good scent item, we do try to track the freshest track leaving the scene. Do you remember if she continuously runs in this area and does various turns from a track, the dog has a difficult time because it's specific. So it's what I always say. If you're at home and you're leaving your home, you go and you check your mouth, you go to your car, you go to your neighbors, you're leaving trails all different locations,
and it's very difficult for the dog. Compared to we've been more successful when it's a suspect breaks into a home and flees. We have one scent, then one sent in, one sent out. It's not contaminated. So if she was running in an area that she doesn't run all the time, or runs a different path, it's easier for the dog. But either way, we have had cases like that. We did have one down in San Diego, California, and we did use the trailing dogs. It's how quick can you
call upon the dark? That's number one, sooner the batter, and that's sen item and no matter why, you have nothing to lose if you call upon right away, and if that dark can help it, there's no negative to it.
That's a very interesting point you make about contamination of the sense. If someone's running in the same area continually, I guess if they weren't running daily, it might be easier because the older sense would have faded a little, I imagine, But the dog presumably would be able to stop at
the point at which the scent stops. The beauty of the dog stopping at a particular point, I imagine is that then expert forensic officers can look at that small area, a relatively tiny area, and look for signs of a struggle, look for drops of blood, look for fragments of clothing, and perhaps even tire marks or something like that.
I would already assume that the agency already did those things. I really do that you have a missing runner those things. I guarantee they were already looking for those resources and evidence to corroborate that. But we would still in our area if we don't know for sure, we do still call the dogs, because once again we have nothing to lose, to call the dog and to see what we can get.
Yes, good point. In another case, here, very recent case, a small boy light last year, a small boy on an outback sheep station. Now, this is a vast area of many square miles of empty country. It's fairly very dry and sparse. There's no trees. There's just rocks and sand and a few shrubs and salt bush, the sort of territory that you would have in the States, perhaps in Arizona maybe. And this little boy, four year old boy, he vanished from his family's sheep station or sheep ranch
as you might call it. And for many weeks they spent a lot of time and effort searching a vast area looking for this child, without really knowing him what direction he might have gone, if indeed he had gone anywhere. Could a scent dog have done anything in that situation to guide the search by perhaps showing that child's scent was not outside the perimeter of the garden, not even outside the perimeter of the farmyard. Is that a real thing? Or am I just get up there?
Well, there's a couple of things. One, it depends on the temperature that that environment is going to be. Number one when it comes to the dog. If it's too hot and there's extreme weather, wind, heavy wind, anything, because I don't know that area, that would definitely not allow a dog to work. We have used dogs to see if a person's been within a perimeter or exited a perimeter, so that we don't keep resources up on that perimeter
thinking that the subject's still inside. If the dog breaks it, then we know that the person's not in that perimeter. If a dog doesn't leave, then we know to call in other like area search dogs, or we'll call in other dogs that can pinpoint. So we do use multiple discipline dogs working together. We even do that with apprehension dogs. If we're thrilling somebody armed, we'll use a patrol dog behind our hound because they have two different jobs, so
it's the same thing. In a search area, we will try to use the hound to give us direction to travel or let us know if that person is still within or exit it a perimeter and then we'll use the other dogs to pinpoint.
Ah, that is very interesting. And when you say an area search dog, these are the dogs that can sniff the air around them at head heart and soon deduce whether the target person target scent is anywhere in that area that can quickly eliminatee rather large search area. Is that right correct?
So we'll use the dog to tell us where to search. So for example, that one where I had the kidnapp being and I had a proximity alert that my person was right there, while the hound cauldnot source it. The person was buried. It was a the person was deceased. The dog did not know how to pinpoint, so we had to use a dog trade for that skill. So we work together and that I think that's the key to solving anything is using the resources of what dog
is best for that environment. But we will use a dog to tell us a trailing dog that's sent specific to tell us where to deploy the other resources.
Right now, doctor captain, you've got a lot of honorifics. It's wonderful. What is your doctorate in?
As a matter of interest, organizational leadership? I focused on officer stressors and lowering those stressors. So with my dissertation focused on that, then with my dog background, I now work with support canines and using the dogs to help victims lower their stress when they come in to report a crime or if they've been a victim of an assault. Now we use dogs to help with those interviews and engagement and imprint them with cortisol odor so that they
can really help people. So I really enjoy enjoyed that. But even yesterday I was training Riverside Counties Trailing Dog Team and then today I was working the support canines. AH, that a variety.
So you five years ago, I think you retired from active police work to do to go from the shop end of police work to the other end, and that he's producing dogs that help victims, which must be lovely stuff. But still they call on you to train dogs for the shop end. It does speak highly of your ability.
I'm just appreciative that I'm allowed to go and work with the dogs, and I really inspected what all the handlers are doing and if I can contribute anything, I'm more than willing. So for me, even though retired, it is always giving back is what I believe in, because crime doesn't stop. Missing people don't stop. Just because you retire doesn't mean that I should just be sitting on my behind receiving my retirement check. I need to keep contributing.
Good on you. And if there's one message you gave us early in the pace, and it's probably worth repeating, it is that if you can get dogs involved in detecting lost people or fugitives or bad people, the main thing is to get them there quickly, early in the case. Is that right?
That's number one. Most of the agencies, the bloodhounds that I work with in California, they're full time handlers, and that is their job is to be available and to be one of the first responders on scene.
Do you find it hard to believe that a country like Australia in the anglosphere tuned into what other countries like America and Canada and so on, what they do, that none of our state police forces or our federal police appear to have anything like highly trained track of dogs, specific specialist track of dogs. Is a surprise to you.
I don't know, so I can't give an opinion. I don't know the dogs that are there, I don't know the skill set I truly don't know, so I can't give an opinion on that. I am familiar with great dog work in Australia, so I don't know about the trailing dogs the.
Dog work in Australia by law enforcement or by other groups.
I have heard about the law enforcement patrol dogs. Yeah, I know a mutual trainer that goes there, and I have a respectim and the information he has shared is always very impressive.
Oh that's good. So that we have good police dogs here that good at catching bad guys, but not so good at finding children. I think perhaps I don't know.
I have to be fair. I have to be fair because I don't.
Know fair enough. We've got a fair idea. There don't seem to be any that can find people that are lost, which is extraordinary. Really well, this has been a most illuminating discussion, and we're very lucky to track you down so to speak, and to get you to talk to us. You're very generous. It's quite late where you are and you're probably now looking to have your dinner, and so we should leave you alone. The listeners of Life and Crimes here in Melbourne, Australia. I'm sure delighted to hear
from you. Thank you, doctor Kobe Webb, former captain in the Riverside County Sheriff's Department and one of the pioneers on the West coast of the USA of using highly trained bloodhounds to do sophisticated police work. Thank you so much, Thank you, thanks for listening. Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun production for true crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns, features and more, go to Heroldsun dot com dot au, forward slash andrew rule
one word. For advertising inquiries, go to news podcasts sold at news dot com dot au. That is all one word news podcasts sold And if you want further information about this episode, links are in the description.