Kate Clark Flora - Death Dealer. How Cops and Cadaver Dogs Brought a Killer to Justice

Copyright 2014 by Kate Clark Flora

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever, including electronic, mechanical or any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher.

Requests for permission should be addressed to:

New Horizon Press

P. O. Box 669

Far Hills, NJ 07931

Kate Clark Flora

Death Dealer: How Cops and Cadaver Dogs Brought a Killer to Justice

Cover design: Wendy Bass

Interior design: Scribe Inc.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014930465

ISBN-13 (eBook): 978-0-88282-477-2

New Horizon Press

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Dedication

To the brave officers who stand between us and evil and to Marias courageous family and friends

Authors Note

T his book is based on the authors experiences and reflects her perception of past, present and future. The personalities, events, actions and conversations portrayed within this story have been taken from interviews, research, court documents, letters, personal papers, press accounts and the memories of some participants.

In an effort to safeguard the privacy of certain people, some individuals names and identifying characteristics have been changed. Events involving the characters happened as described. Only minor details may have been altered.

Acknowledgments

M aine Warden Service Lieutenant Pat Dorians comments that I might find this story interesting led me to Miramichi, New Brunswick. This book would not have been possible without the generosity of the Miramichi police, especially Deputy Chief Brian Cummings, Chief Paul Fiander, Constable Dewey Gillespie, Sergeant Jody Whyte, Retired Chief Earl Campbell and Greg Scott. Maria Tanasichuks family and friends were invaluable in helping me understand her, especially her sister, Sharon Carroll, and dear friends Darlene Gertley and Cindy Richardson.

I have also had the privilege of learning about search and rescue dogs and cadaver dog training from the Maine Warden Service, especially from Specialist Deb Palman and Warden Roger Guay, and about mapping from Lieutenant Kevin Adam. Maine Search and Rescue Dogs (MESARD) volunteers, including Cindy Attwood, Jennifer Fisk, Michele Fleury, Spencer Fuller, Leslie Howe and Nancy Troubh, were kind enough to invite me to observe their training, as was the Warden Service K-9 unit.

I have been well advised.

Table of Contents

S udden light from outside, triggered by motion sensors, stabbed through the blinds and roused the detective from fitful sleep. In an instant, he was fully awake and on his feet, sweeping up his gun from the head of the bed. Keeping a loaded gun by the bed is against all police training, as is keeping a loaded gun anywhere in a house with small children. But when a vicious killer may be stalking your family, all the rules change.

In the shadowy kitchen, he shoved his feet into waiting winter boots, felt for the step and let himself quietly out of the sleeping house. Outside, he found an unlit corner of the deck and stood staring out into his snowy yard, holding his breath and listening for anything that varied from the usual night sounds. He was a hunter as well as a cop. He knew about listening. He knew what the night should sound like.

There were no streetlights in the quiet neighborhood. Beyond his security lights, the black was absolute. He was in his underwear and without gloves, but pumping adrenaline kept the cold at bay as he moved off the deck to check around the garage and the cars. His gun was up and ready. Checking. Listening. Checking. Something moving triggered those lights and he had reason to believe it could be more than a wandering animal.

The clear night was silent but for the occasional damp plop of snow knocked from a branch by the light wind and the crackle of a few dry leaves that hadnt fallen yet. Across the neighborhood, an animal gave a single sharp cry and a dog barked in response. Out on the highway, a truck engine roared as it crossed the Miramichi bridge, up-shifting as it labored uphill and headed away toward Moncton. The hair on his neck prickled as he searched the dark shrubbery for a human shadows different darkness, then scanned the perimeter of his house for something that didnt belong by turning his head slightly to let his peripheral vision detect movement. He waited and watched as the cold lifted his skin into goose bumps.

Only a few weeks into the investigation into Maria Tanasichuks mysterious disappearance, he wasnt sleeping much. It was supposed to be a relaxing night. At home for once, instead of on surveillance, and in bed not long after midnight. Able, for a short time, to silence the lists and what-ifs that plagued his mind, the constant second-guessing that hounded any complex investigation. But their suspect was a seasoned hunter. A gun nut. Deft with a bow and arrow. And he was nocturnalas comfortable moving through the night as any sly and dangerous predator.

Their intelligence was that the suspect had become explosively angry at having the focus of the investigation so relentlessly turned on him, frustrated that his superior intelligence and the framework of lies he had spun had failed to divert the police from their constant concentration on his movements and their pressure on his friends. They had heard that he planned to retaliate against their families. It was information they had to take seriously.

They were trying to watch him so they would know where he was, but continuous surveillance by such a small police department in a quaint, quiet city, especially during the brutal cold of a Canadian winter, was difficult. Doubly hard when he was as likely to be traveling the hundreds of miles of hiking and snowmobile trails on foot or his three-wheel ATV through the surrounding woods as on the city streets.