Craig was the 1st person to train a cadaver dog in Australia and then to be utilised by 5 states police on dozens of murder investigations. On his 1st official search Craig and his dog located the oldest recorded bone find in history by a cadaver dog. This bone was located in a mangrove area opposite a treatment works plant about half to 1 meter deep. It was carbon dated and pronounced to be between 300 and one thousand  years old. On his second job which was in South Australia he also had success,  finding a very old burial ground with bone fragments and teeth as hard proof of our success.

 

In 1993 the extremely successful television show Australia's most wanted screened a large storey on my cadaver dog and not long after this he was approached by the NSW police operation snowy which was in charge of the infamous backpacker murder investigations. They wanted him to attend the Belanglo Forrest and assist in the gruesome task of searching for many missing backpackers. When Craig arrived he met all the chief investigators including Inspector Clive Small whom was in charge. He was given a briefing of the situation and of his role and responsibilities in working on this high profile case. At the time it was the largest ever investigation held in Australia and probably still is.

 

Craig can still remember arriving at the search HQ to see dozens of busses parked in a paddock and a satellite city of tents and moveable buildings with an endless stream of police cars and vehicles of all types, not to mention the many helicopters both landed and often in the Skye's above. He had never in his wildest dreams believed he would experience anything like this and the scale was totally unbelievable. Craig was teamed up with 2 specialist search and rescue officers and finally got sent out to commence searching with Narcs his black Labrador Cadaver dog. On day 3 of searchingin the late morning his dog began to show behaviour signs that he was getting something, so he reported to his officers that we were starting a positive response.

 

Craig worked his dog for a distance and he alerted on an area under a big rounded rock and started to give an indication, he rewarded him and stoped him so he would not disturb any evidence. Then he heard his officer call on the radio to base that the dog and handler have identified the grave site of Joanne Walters whom was one of the English girls whom had been murdered. He was so happy to get hard proof that all his hard work training Narcs had not been in vain. He resumed searching and a while later also located her friend Caroline Clark's grave site.

 

When you would return back to the HQ there would be hundreds of police first thing in the morning or last thing at night it was an amazing sight to experience. Craig had now proven to the powers to be that Australias 1st cadaver recovery dog was in fact an awesome search tool and could greatly assist in the search of the Belanglo Forrest which is a massive area. He was at Belanglo for about 2 and a half week and his dog was housed in a jail cell at the Bowral police station for security and safety purposes, the worlds media was chasing him around to try and secure stories and inside info.

 

On his last day he had been given the task of clearing areas that were possibilities of being hide sites and he located a Red glasses hard case with gold embossing SS which was logged and handed in late that afternoon when we returned back to HQ. Craig was then sent home and it was great to be over the crazy but great situation. The next morning he was dropping his daughter to kindy and heard breaking news that Simone Smidlle's body had been located and he told Tracey I am certainly going back to Belanglo as he located her glasses case the previous day. the call came and Craig had to fly to Sydney and appear on the Ray Martin Show and then would be transported to Bowral urgently to resume searching for another long stint. Whilst there more evidence and grave sites were found and Ivan Milat was the number one suspect and finally arrested and convicted of the backpacker murders and other crimes. 

 

After this experience Craig was very regularly on planes to do searches in other states for police and we have had some amazing experiences and seen things normal people  could never even imagine. Craig has worked on dozens of search and rescue and cadaver operations in most states and never has he cleared an area and had them not located a body or even evidence so I am very proud of my dogs and the standards we have adopted and upheld. We have hundreds of newspaper and electronic media articles to back up our stories.