Wade neighbor too intimidated to talk

That, along with evidence from ATM and building surveillance tapes, bank records and tracking dog trails helped investigators get a warrant to search Wade's house, testified the detective, Pam Perrenoud.

Wade faces charges in federal court stemming from the murder of his neighbor, Mindy Schloss. All week, lawyers have been arguing about the use of bloodhound evidence to link him to her killing.

Perrenoud was the lead APD investigator after Schloss went missing Aug. 4, 2007. Schloss's body was discovered in a wooded area outside Wasilla the following month. She'd been shot to death and partially burned.

Part of Perrenoud's early investigation involved talking to neighbors. In the beginning, she didn't know that Wade -- who was acquitted of murdering another woman, Della Brown, in 2003 -- lived next door. The people who lived in the house with Wade at first weren't cooperative with investigators. An interview with a neighbor on the side of Wade's house opposite Schloss didn't turn up any leads, she said.

But then that neighbor called the detective asking to meet her outside the neighborhood. She was afraid of a man she knew only as "Josh" who lived next door, she said.

The neighbor told her Josh had warned her that police were interviewing people in the neighborhood. He asked her not to say that he lived there. When she asked him why, he seemed uncomfortable and said there was a warrant for his arrest.

While Perrenoud did her first interview with the neighbor, the woman looked across her yard and saw Wade watching them out the window. That's why she didn't say anything at first, she told the detective.

Then, late at night while the woman was studying alone in her house, she heard creaking outside on her porch. At first she thought it was her roommate, but no one appeared. She went to her front door as Wade was ringing her doorbell. She caught sight of him just before he walked off, Perrenoud said.

By then, investigators had learned Josh's last name. They showed the neighbor a picture of Wade. She identified him correctly.

Wade's lawyers have challenged the use of scent-tracking bloodhounds that linked him to ATMs where Schloss' card was used after her disappearance, her car abandoned near the airport, and to several locations in Kincaid Park. Prosecutors put Perrenoud on the stand today to show they had evidence to corroborate what the dogs had found before they got a warrant to search Wade's house.

Wade's lawyers tried to show that the dogs could have been following scents other than Wade's and that a dog handler who testified before a magistrate to get the warrant to search Wade's house didn't give enough information about bloodhounds' success rate and other issues with human scent tracking. If a judge agrees the dog evidence is invalid, the defense wants evidence found with the warrant thrown out. His lawyers also looked to discredit a vacuum device used by investigators to collect the scent samples dogs sniff before looking for a trail.

Government prosecutors interviewed a string of scientific experts in handling dogs, collecting scent samples and human scent detection. They argued that the dogs that picked up Wade's trail were part of an elite, well-trained group with the genetic ability to sniff out scent trails made up of skin cells that had been saturated with chemical compounds as unique as DNA. The dogs had a demonstrated ability to pick up scent days or weeks after the trails had been made. The dogs had perfect or near-perfect accuracy rates, according to their handlers.

Defense attorneys interviewed a bloodhound handler who did not use the scent vacuum and an expert on dogs' sense of smell who cautioned that there was no independent national certification process for human scent-tracking bloodhounds. Prosecutors challenged the defense scent expert because he wasn't an expert on human scent-tracking bloodhounds, and the judge said he would give that expert less weight.

The lawyers will make their closing arguments in writing. They are due today. Judge Ralph Beistline is expected to rule after that.

Wade's trial is scheduled to begin May 4 in Fairbanks. If found guilty in Schloss's death, he could face the death penalty.

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