In November 2012, Mark Redwin and his 13-year-old son came to a cottage near the San Juan National Forest in southwest Colorado for Thanksgiving, where he went shopping in a nearby town and left his son alone in a log cabin, but when he returned, his son disappeared.
More than 6 months later, hikers found some skeletal remains in the desert about 16 kilometers from Mark Redwin's hut, and forensic and DNA testing determined that the bones belonged to the skeleton of his son. Since the body had become white bone, the forensic doctor could not determine the cause of death.
Just as the police investigation was at an impasse, the case was suddenly illuminated by the appearance of a dog named Jasmine, a trained police dog used by the police specifically to find bodies and skeletons, provided by investigators, and three contained the clothes that Mark Redwin allegedly wore when his son disappeared. Police ordered Molly to search. This time the dog walked up to the bag, sniffed deeply, and sat down next to two of them. Because Molly sat down when she found the smell of human remains, these "signs" suggested that jeans, sneakers and work shirts left the smell of corpses.
Next, the police team sent the police dog Jasmine to Mark Redwin's cabin, which was temporarily uninhabited, and Jasmine sat down in a nearby creek, before she saw her dog looking up at the window. An investigator climbed into the room and opened the door for Molly. Inside, the dog was sitting near the wooden stove, in the bedroom, on the brown sofa, next to the washing machine and elsewhere. In February 2014, police let Molly sniff Redwin's Dodge pickup truck. The dog again spotted the smell of human remains more than a year after the boy disappeared. Nearly 4 years later, police approached Mark Redwin and arrested him on suspicion of killing his youngest son. Colorado state prosecutors persuaded the jury to prosecute Mark Redwin for child abuse and second-degree murder on the worst charges.
Dogs have tens of thousands of times the sensitivity of smell as humans. With the launch of the K-9 training program by the U.S. police, this domesticated dog has been transformed into an important companion for police in the fight against crime, using dogs to track down fugitives and find missing persons, obtain evidence and clues (i.e., obtain the legal basis for a search warrant), and find illegal items to obtain drugs, etc. Agencies use trained police dogs to collect evidence or suspects or bodies from crime scenes. The testimony of a growing number of dog trainers has also become direct evidence of guilt.
A 2018 study published in International Criminal Science rejected the use of dogs as evidence to convict suspects. In their long-term trials and studies, the dog's sense of smell is only eighty percent correct.
On the 11th day of the Redwin trial, prosecutors asked Molly to find 12 locations around the suspect's wooden house where there were victim bones. Jasmine did it right,
Mark Redwin's defense team argued that the dog sniffing evidence lacked scientific evidence, and that dogs reflected explicit bias that jurors simply didn't see that way.
In addition, there is indirect evidence that Redwin murdered his son. The deceased's brother hinted at other possible motives for the killing, saying the deceased had confronted Redwin, saying the deceased had photographed Redwin eating feces from a diaper. Prosecutors claim that fetish photos led to the Colorado father killing his teenage son.
In late July, after more than six hours of deliberation, the jury found Redwin guilty, setting a precedent for convicting suspects with a dog's sense of smell as important evidence.