Wade's jail diary laced with violent details

Wade faces federal charges related to the 2007 killing of Mindy Schloss, a nurse practitioner who lived next door to him in South Anchorage.

Someone forced Schloss out of bed between 1:30 and 6 a.m. on the morning of Aug. 4, investigators believe. Her body was found near Wasilla in September.

"I am being ripped from my bed and tossed to the ground," wrote Wade in his jailhouse diary after an arrest for using Schloss' ATM cards.

"Arms stretched behind my back and legs pulled up behind me so oddly angled I thought they'd snap and then the burning pain from the zip ties being put on way too tight."

Schloss was found lying on her back, with her legs bent at the knees, according to court documents. She appeared to have a gag in her mouth secured with tape. Her body had been partially burned. Her wrists were bound with zip ties and it's likely her feet were too, investigators said.

Pieces of zip ties were found next to Schloss's bed and in Wade's house.

The warrant for the notebook was unsealed in the lead-up to a court fight over the use of evidence from bloodhounds, a hearing that began Monday in Anchorage federal court.

The dispute at that hearing: can a dog, even a trained bloodhound, really pick up a scent and track a man across town weeks after he made the trip -- some of it on a bicycle?

Federal prosecutors claim that's what happened -- that a couple of dogs tracked Joshua Wade's scent, picked up in Schloss's car, from the banks where he used Schloss' ATM card after he killed her.

Wade's lawyers are trying to convince a judge that dogs can't do that, and prosecutors should not be allowed to claim to a jury that they can. Experts are testifying for both sides, videotapes are being offered and the debate over the scientific validity of a dog's tracking prowess will probably continue for several days.

Investigators used the dog evidence, which linked Wade to the ATMs, Schloss' house and her car found near the airport, to get a search warrant for Wade's house. That search turned up important evidence, including zip ties and a jacket with an ATM receipt from Schloss' account.

Wade's lawyers say the search warrant shouldn't have been issued on the strength of the dog-tracking and all that evidence must be thrown out too.

The dog handlers use a questionable scent vacuum, called the STU-100, which sucks up odors and deposits them on a gauze pad, the defense said. Dogs smell the pad and then look for a scent trail. The method has been the subject of several court challenges.

Wade's lawyers said handlers may influence dogs. The machines are hard to clean, and the dogs might smell more than one scent. Then it would be difficult to know which person a dog was tracking.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Retta-Rae Randall spent the morning questioning Rex Stockham, the Virgina-based supervisor of the FBI's human scent evidence team, who works with the dogs that tracked Wade.

The dogs are trained to pick up human scent trails made of odor and sluffed skin cells, Stockham explained. They can find trails made by people in cars because the car ventilation system blows out odors. They can also pick up trails of people traveling by bike, he said.

Human scent dogs are different than tracking dogs used to find criminals on the run. Those track from footprint to footprint. They're also different than dogs used to find bombs, blood or cadavers. Those dogs are trained to find a specific smell.

A body scent trail is more diffuse than footprints. It's like dust that settles on surfaces along a trail. The wind can disturb it, pushing it against walls and into cracks, while humidity makes it stick, Stockham explained. The trails can last weeks or even months, though they diminish over time. Dogs can also detect specific scents on surfaces that have been submerged in water.

Dog evidence is used mainly to link people to places and things, it doesn't prove guilt or innocence.

Randall played a series of short videos demonstrating how the dogs work. In one, a dog picked up the scent of a bicyclist. In another, three people put their scents on one pad then walked different trails. The dog was given the pad to sniff, then commanded to exclude the scents of two of the people and follow the third.

The dog found the third trail successfully.

The scent vacuum has been tested and used for years. Dogs working with it made few mistakes, Stockham said.

Defense attorney Gilbert Levy said he didn't dispute that the dogs could pick up human scent. But, he said, the tests of their accuracy were done under controlled circumstances. Their success rate in the field is harder to gauge.

The hearing continues today.

Find Julia O'Malley online at adn.com/contact/jomalley or call 257-4591.