Bay Area Recovery Canines (BARC) is a volunteer canine search and recovery organization dedicated to providing agencies with with highly trained canines and handlers to assist in the recovery of missing persons.
NCMEC - New York Search May 2009
In May 2009, BARC responded to New York with NCMEC's Team Adam to assist the local police in their continued efforts to locate a missing boy. The search efforts were mentioned in the media.
Police use boats to search the Batten Kill for 12-year-old Jaliek Rainwalker. Investigators say cadaver dogs zeroed in on parts of the Batten Kill two weekends ago. (Photographer: Barry N. Sanders)
New Search Efforts for Jaliek Rainwalker
Reported by: Paul Merrill Email: paulmerrill@fox23news.com
Videographer: B. Sanders Last Update: 5/13 8:14 pm
Police use boats to search the Batten Kill for 12-year-old Jaliek Rainwalker. Investigators say cadaver dogs zeroed in on parts of the Batten Kill two weekends ago. (Photographer: Barry N. Sanders)
Police are back in the Batten Kill looking for Jaliek Rainwalker, the 12-year-old Washington County boy who has been missing for more than a year and a half now.
About 30 law enforcement officials dove in the water and scoured the banks of the creek for hours on Wednesday but, by the end of the day, they had found no signs of Rainwalker.
The day's efforts focused on an area near an old, abandoned paper mill.
"It's an area - what I call a catacombs - underneath this mill and the current naturally runs underneath it and collects debris and that's where we're at right now," explains Cambridge-Greenwich Police Chief George Bell.
Two cadaver dogs zeroed in on the area two weekends ago.
Police have searched the Batten Kill before but never as thoroughly as they did on Wednesday, according to Chief Bell who adds that the dogs are the reason his team is back in the water.
"These are dogs that supposedly have expertise in finding human remains from way back in the Vietnam War," he says.
Lee Manning from search group Team Adam says it's not unheard of for these cadaver dogs to help find human remains that have been decaying in the wilderness for years.
Manning tells us, "The dogs that we brought in here a couple of weeks ago are very very effective. I've used them in the past and had recoveries from using them."
Police have called Rainwalker's adoptive father Stephen Kerr a person of interest in this case.
Chief Bells says neither Kerr, Rainwalker's adoptive mother Jocelyn McDonald, nor their attorney Jeffrey McCmorris has contacted him in about a year.
Police will be back on the Batten Kill starting at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday.
http://www.wten.com/Global/story.asp?S=10358763
Search for Jaliek Rainwalker resumes
Posted: May 13, 2009 08:52 PM EDT
A year-and-a-half after his disappearance, searchers went back out in Washington County to look for Jaliek Rainwalker.
It has been more than eighteen months since police have conducted an active search for the boy, but on Wednesday they were back out on the Batten Kill in Greenwich, looking for any clues on his disappearance.
From morning into late afternoon, New York State forest rangers combed the Batten Kill shoreline while investigators plucked waterlogged debris from the underbelly of a huge mill.
Inside sources tell NEWS10 that this most recent search comes after a visit two weeks ago by a nationally recognized handler and her cadaver dogs.
At one point on the Batten Kill is a swirling bulge in the water; a spot that locals have dubbed "the hellhole". Police say Rainwalker and his adoptive father, Stephen Kerr, were very familiar with this location.
"Stephen (Kerr) had mentioned early on that this is, was an area that they came to, and that's why our focus here coupled with the dog alerts in the area," Greenwich Police Chief George Bell told NEWS10.
After hours of sifting thru muck and debris, however, police seemed to come up empty handed.
"We continue to get tips and we are going to continue to keep doing it," Chief Bell said, "The interest has not died off, we still want to find Jaliek."
The media attention around the investigation has also kept the spotlight on the case, which has seen teams from as far away as Texas come to Greenwich to aid in the search.
Rainwalker's maternal grandmother Barbara Reeley raced to Greenwich after hearing of the renewed interest in the case.
"I don't want anyone to get hurt, I don't want anyone to be harmed, but if Jaliek's there, I want Jaliek to be found," she said.
Noticeably absent from the Wednesday search were Jaliek's adoptive parents, Stephen Kerr and Jocelyn McDonald. NEWS10 spoke to their attorney. He said over the phone that the couple still believes their son ran away and they are doing their own searches for Jaliek on the internet.
Rainwalker was reported missing by his adoptive parents on November 2nd, 2007. A couple of months later, in January, his adoptive father Kerr was named a person of interest in the disappearance.
Police did search his house, but he has never been arrested.
It was back in March that police announced they were continuing the search, despite a lack of new evidence.
Police say they will be out searching again Thursday.
