Animals Who Solved Murders

Not all heroes wear capes. Some don fur or feathers.

Let’s delve into the wonderful world of animal superheroes who solved their human’s murder.

Bud, the African Grey Parrot

A 20-year-old African Grey parrot named Bud solved the 2015 murder of his human dad, 45-year-old Martin Duram, who was found shot to death inside his Sand Lake, Michigan residence. In the weeks following the fatal shooting, Bud reenacted an argument between Martin and his wife, Glenna.

In the voice of his human dad, Bud screamed, “Don’t f**king shoot!” leading investigators to believe those were Martin’s last words.

Glenna shot her husband five times in front of Bud before turning the gun on herself in a failed suicide attempt. She suffered a head wound but survived.

Initially, police believed Glenna was another victim. But when Bud reenacted the murder, he revealed the truth of that fateful day.

After the murder, Bud went to live with Martin’s ex-wife, Christina Keller, who heard Bud’s squawks and mimicked speech.

“I felt it,” she said. “I literally felt what the bird was going through.”

African Grey parrots are extremely intelligent, expert mimics, and highly sensitive to traumatic events.

Martin’s mother said, “that bird picks up everything and anything, and it’s got the filthiest mouth around.” LOL

After an eight-hour jury deliberation, Glenna Duram was charged with first-degree murder in the killing of her husband. And Bud was the star witness at her trial. Way to go, Bud!

Pet Duck

In North Carolina, a pet duck led police to the decomposed body of missing 92-year-old grandmother Nellie Sullivan. Sgt. Mark Walker of the Buncombe County Sheriff’s office explained how the duck ran underneath the trailer at 11 Beady Eyed Lane, and as they were chasing after the pet duck, they found the container Nellie Sullivan was stuffed inside.

Beady Eyed Lane? Truth really is stranger than fiction!

Even before the grim discovery of the remains, Nellie’s granddaughter, Angela Wamsley, and her boyfriend, Mark Barnes, had been charged with concealing her death, along with charges of animal cruelty and drug possession.

Sgt. Walker described the initial search for Nellie as being “a wild goose chase.” Nothing turned up after multiple local searches, and Nellie’s neighbors had insisted she had, in fact, gone missing several years prior. Wamsley and Barnes had been collecting Nellie’s social security and retirement benefit check, as well as refilling her prescriptions in her absence.

“If I could give that duck a medal, I would.” — Sgt. Walker

 

Advances in animal DNA technology now stand at the forefront of forensic science. Enhanced testing techniques and ever-expanding databases are helping law enforcement agencies catch criminals. In recent years, the hair, fur, feathers, blood, and other bodily fluids from cats, dogs, birds, and other animals have helped solve countless violent crimes around the globe.

The next three animal involved homicides turned into landmark cases.

Bird, the White-Crested Cockatoo

In Texas, Kevin Butler was such a huge fan of NBA star Larry Bird that he named his White-Crested Cockatoo “Bird.” Friends described Bird as devoted to Kevin. After two men broke into Kevin’s Pleasant Grove residence on Christmas Eve 2001, Bird tried to defend his home and his dad. Unfortunately, the home invaders bound Kevin, brutally beat him, and stabbed him multiple times, causing his death. Sadly, Bird was also fatally wounded in the altercation—the scumbags stabbed him with a fork before fleeing the scene.

Regardless, Bird still provided investigators with the evidence they needed to solve the crime and secure a conviction.

Following the attack, DNA recovered from Bird’s beak and claws was matched to a man named Daniel Torres, a disgruntled former employee at Kevin’s pool company. Torres also wiped the blood off his head after being badly pecked by Bird and then touched a light switch, leaving trace evidence, which put him at the crime scene.

Faced with the evidence, Torres confessed to killing both Butler and Bird. He was eventually convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. They were also able to track down Torres’s accomplice, his half-brother Johnny Serna.

The prosecutor submitted to the court…

“Bird died valiantly. There were feathers scattered through the house, and he put up a fight, no doubt about that. Kevin’s family and co-workers have told me that you just didn’t mess with Kevin while that bird was around.”

Snowball, the Tomcat

On Canada’s Prince Edward Island in 1994, a 32-year-old mother of five, Shirley Duguay, vanished without a trace. Friends and family suspected her sometimes boyfriend, ex-con Douglas Beamish, was somehow involved in her disappearance.

Three days after she went missing, a blood-stained men’s jacket was found in a bag in the woods near Shirley’s home. The jacket also contained several white cat hairs. Constable Roger Savoie recalled seeing a white cat in Douglas Beamish’s home while investigating Shirley’s disappearance. Savoie sent the hairs for a DNA test, and the lab confirmed they belonged to the family pet, a white tomcat named Snowball.

This was in the early days of animal DNA testing. Constable Savoie even went catnapping (cat-borrowing?) in the neighborhood to collect blood samples from numerous strays, whose DNA profiles were all quite different. The chance of another cat having Snowball’s DNA was one in forty-five million.

As the DNA testing came in, a local fisherman discovered Shirley’s body. The constable arrested Beamish. While his defense attorney argued, “without the cat, the case falls flat,” a jury convicted Beamish of second-degree murder and sentenced him to life with no parole for 18 years.

This landmark case was the first to successfully use animal DNA to secure a conviction.

Chief, the Pitbull/Lab Mix

In 1998, a Seattle, Washington, couple, Raquel Rivera and Jay Johnson, were found slain with their pitbull/lab mix pup, Chief — all victims of a home invasion gone wrong. During the investigation, police found dog blood on the jackets and pants of Ken Leuluaialii and George Tuilefano. Forensic testing showed the blood belonged to Chief.

When prosecutors entered Chief’s DNA into evidence, the defense panicked.

In his opening statement, prosecutor Tim Bradshaw stated…

“The irony will be that the witness who could never speak, even when he was alive, will present the most eloquent of evidence.”

Evidently, after Johnson refused to sell marijuana to Tuilefano and Leuluaialii, they kicked in the front door and open fired. The scumbags shot Chief before killing the couple.

Pets should never pay for their human’s sins! Too bad the courts didn’t put the defendants in front of a firing squad. Oh, how I love karmic justice. 😉

Ahem. Anyway…

At the time, the forensic science of animal DNA wasn’t as reliable as human DNA. Joy Halverson, a senior scientist at PE AgGen, the company that tested the bloodstains, brought up the Canadian case of Snowball, the cat, (above) to show how animal DNA could secure a conviction. Testing revealed one chance in 350 million the blood did not belong to Chief.

Sure enough, the jury agreed. The defense appealed the guilty verdict. The Court of Appeals upheld the murder convictions and even ruled Tuilefano and Leuluaialii should be re-sentenced to a longer prison term.

The landmark case involving Snowball put cats on the map in Canada’s criminal courts. Chief did the same for dogs in the U.S.

Heera, the Parrot

In 2014, when Neelam Sharma was killed in her home in Agra, India, along with her dog, the local police had few leads to go on. Until a parrot named Heera provided them with a vital clue.

Heera was the only witness to Sharma’s murder, as the attacker had killed the family dog, who’d been barking throughout the struggle. Neelam’s grieving husband, Vijay Sharma, was also at a loss as to who could have perpetrated the crime. Then a family member noticed how Heera became highly agitated whenever his nephew, Ashutosh, visited or even when his name was mentioned in passing.

Convinced Heera witnessed the murder, Vijay informed the police of his suspicions. Ashutosh eventually confessed to the robbery-turned-murder of his aunt. Ashutosh and an accomplice had entered the house intending to steal cash and other valuables items. He stabbed his aunt to death when she caught them in the act.

Police later downplayed the bird’s participation in solving the crime, saying it was an unexplained bite mark on Ashutosh that made him the primary focus of the investigation. However, a local newspaper reported that when investigators spoke with Heera and read through a list of suspects, the bird squawked, “Usne maara, usne maara,” when they reached Ashutosh’s name. It translates to “he’s the killer, he’s the killer.” Incredible, right?

Grasshopper

According to forensic entomologist M. Lee Goff, the 1985 murder of a woman in Texas was ultimately solved by a dead, mangled grasshopper that had been found on the victim’s clothing. The insect was missing a limb, and a close investigation of one of the main suspects revealed he just so happened to have the severed hind leg of a grasshopper attached to the cuff of his pants. When Goff re-assembled the insect, the fracture lines lined up perfectly.

Although the defense argued in court “grasshoppers always break their legs like that,” the evidence was rock solid. It was impossible to deny the stray grasshopper leg on the suspect matched what was missing from the grasshopper recovered from the victim’s body. The jury agreed and convicted him of murder. Many consider this case to signify the birth of forensic entomology. Kinda cool, right?

The Real Scooby-Doo

A real-life Scooby-Doo created legal history in Paris, France, when he took to the witness stand to “testify” at his human mom’s murder trial. When Scooby’s owner was found hanging from the ceiling in her apartment, her death was initially presumed to be a suicide. However, the woman’s family persuaded the police to open a murder investigation. They identified a suspect, and the man was brought to court for a preliminary hearing to decide if there was enough sufficient evidence to launch a full murder inquiry.

As Scooby was in the apartment at the time of the alleged murder, he went to the witness box. When faced with the potential killer, he immediately reacted and “barked furiously.” A court clerk recorded Scooby’s barks and noted his “general behavior throughout the cross-examination.” After Scooby gave his “evidence,” Judge Thomas Cassuto praised him for his “exemplary behavior and invaluable assistance.”

While the prosecution welcomed the dog’s appearance in court, others doubted the dog’s behavior could be interpreted as legally binding, legitimate evidence. Some critics of the move pointed out the two-and-a-half years since the death of Scooby’s owner is the equivalent of approximately seventeen dog years.

“That’s a long time for a dog to remember what went on,” explained a legal source close to the case.

A spokesman for the Palais de Justice in Paris confirmed the case was the first time a dog had appeared as a witness in criminal proceedings in France. He said he was almost certain it was also a world first in legal history.