Deep Dive
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I've learned a bunch of information since I first started this thing. It's been very easy to get things confused. I would tend to get caught up in the nitty-gritty details about a certain aspect in the case. Then I would lose sight of the bigger question. What does this have to do with Tara's disappearance? Today we're going to break down some stuff we already know, and decide why it may or may not be important to the bigger picture. This is called Case Evidence. The main topic for today is the fire on Snapdragon Road.
We went over this fire briefly in episode 4, but I wanted to reiterate why this fire has any significance at all in the case. We know that Tara went missing on October 22nd of 2005. On November 8th, a small house on Snapdragon Road, roughly 13 miles away from her residence, mysteriously burned to the ground. Around this time, the search for Tara was probably at its highest level.
The GBI, along with local police, were intensely combing the 200 square miles of Irwin County. So when authorities caught wind of a mysterious house fire, it immediately piqued their interest. The house was burned entirely to the ground. The only thing left standing was a brick chimney.
The police brought in their search teams and sent cadaver dogs in to investigate. Besides just the odd timing of the fire, the most important thing about this is the dogs made a hit. The cadaver dogs, on several occasions, alerted for the scent of human remains. During the entire 200 square mile search of Irwin County, this is the only time the dogs ever alerted to anything.
Back in episode 3, I interviewed a lady named Tracy Sargent, who was in charge of the K-9 unit that searched the area, and it was her dogs that alerted the investigators. She told me that after a thorough investigation of the area, the GBI ruled the dogs were hitting on a septic line, and not the scent of a human body. They found no bones or evidence of human remains, so that was pretty much it. The fire marshal, Vernon Singley, was one of the first people on the scene. It was his job to determine the cause of the fire.
When I got my copy of the Fire Marshal Report, it said the cause of fire was undetermined. On the top of the report, there's eight different causes of fire that you can check off. Arson, criminal attempt to commit arson, bombing, incendiary, natural, accidental, undetermined, and undetermined pending investigation.
But this was ruled undetermined. Case closed. No further investigation needed. That's actually what it says. It seemed like a pretty bold determination to me. How could they confidently say the dogs were not alerting humans sent, then turn around and say they have no idea what caused the fire? Those things don't make sense. If the fire is undetermined, shouldn't whatever the dogs were alerting be undetermined too? That's why I called and asked them myself in episode 4.
He basically told me the house was burned so badly that it's pretty much impossible to tell what caused it. I'm not a fire expert myself, but I can understand that. But when I asked about the dogs alerting at the house and it being rolled a septic line, he had no idea what I was talking about. The fire marshal himself was never once told about the septic line. He claims that when the dogs alerted, they told him it might be someone who cut their finger or bled somewhere, and that's what they were hitting on.
Those are two very different things. He seemed pretty confused by this. He did say, however, with 100% confidence, there were no human remains there. And that's probably true. But it doesn't mean that a body had never been there. You could speculate that maybe someone temporarily hid a body inside the house before they disposed of it. The homeowners were living in Florida at the time, and the house was sitting there empty for weeks and weeks.
And maybe they set the house on fire just to destroy the evidence. The other major red flag in this fire is the 2000 Ford Expedition they found behind the house. That's because it didn't belong to the homeowner. It belonged to a man named Michael Lankford. Why on earth was his car there?
Did he park it there and walk home? Did somebody pick him up? And where was he during this fire? Making things even more suspicious, when I asked the fire marshal about the car, he had no idea it belonged to somebody else. He thought it belonged to the homeowner. How did the GBI fail to mention this crucial detail during their investigation? After doing some research, it turns out there's actually another K-9 unit that searched that house too. These dogs also alerted in several different places. The man in charge was James Hanley, and I tracked him down for an interview today.
I went down there with my search dogs and I brought another one in. They spent many hours shifting the debris. I mean, like according to about 10 hours. First of all, if they didn't feel there was something there, are they going to do that? Spend that much time and work? Yes. My dog had interest at the building. Was it Tara? I cannot prove it. That's a, that's, that's, uh,
DNA and that. My dog's been, I just put her down after 14 and a half years, but she's been tested and tested and tested. Her nose was parts per quadrillion tested too. That's as high as you can get.
A dog is not like a person. A dog just does what it's trained to do. To my knowledge, which is best as I can do, she never falls indicated. Now you can, there is some chemical compositions that will trigger as the same as cadavering, which is what the dog is searching for. What she did at that house was,
I am 95% sure that it was cadaver. Was it Tara? Can't prove it, can't disprove it. If Tara was at that place and she laid there and then they moved her, whoever burned the house knew that this was going to destroy evidence. One of the things that they say is methane. Okay, methane comes from septic tank. If a dog hits on a sewer pipe, it
It can be methane, but methane is produced from active sewer. If it sits for eight months, the chemical reaction dies or doesn't produce as much. And this house hadn't been lived in, so some of the people were saying, oh, it's methane in this, and I'm throwing the BS flag on that one. I really, really threw it on that. I'm going to give you one thing. I do not think you're in the wrong direction.
I believe that place in my heart has everything involved with, I mean, it has everything to do with this case. Everything. The fire on Snapdragon Road had a brand new level of importance to me. I still have a bunch of unanswered questions, but it's going to stay on my radar.
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