A Fort Bend County Sheriff’s deputy and bloodhound trainer defended the work he did in a Victoria murder case – which since has resulted in a lawsuit.
Keith Pikett, whose bloodhounds have provided evidence in numerous cases in Fort Bend and surrounding counties, was named among several defendants in a June lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court.
“I don’t expect it to go anyplace,” Pikett said Thursday, “but I’m frustrated about it.”
The suit stems from the death of Sally Blackwell, a 53-year-old Texas Child Protective Services worker who was abducted from her Victoria home and murdered on March 15, 2006.
A 25-year-old Victoria man, Jeffrey Grinsinger, pleaded guilty to kidnapping and killing the woman.
But before Grinsinger’s confession, former Victoria County Sheriff’s Capt. Michael Buchanek was one of at least two people named in local news reports as a “person of interest” in the case.
In June, Victoria attorney Rex Easley Jr. filed a federal lawsuit saying Buchanek’s constitutional rights had been violated.
Easley said in the suit that “improbable cause and factual assertions” in a search warrant were used by Victoria County law enforcement officers, who then “began a course of harassment, distress and terror” upon Buchanek.
Seeking unspecified damages, the suit names as defendants the Victoria County Sheriff’s Department, Sheriff Michael O’Connor, the City of Victoria and several individual law enforcement officials, including Pikett.
Easley contended earlier this week that Pikett acted with Victoria law enforcement officers to “lead” his bloodhounds from where Blackwell’s body was found to a neighborhood near Buchanek’s house, over a winding 5.5-mile route.
Easley indicated it wasn’t possible for Pikett’s bloodhounds to have covered that route on their own because it would have meant trailing people inside a moving car.
Pikett countered on Thursday that trained bloodhounds do that all the time.
In fact, Pikett said, his dogs have been working a capital murder case in Harris County “where we trailed a car for 38 miles – and we’ve already got two convictions.”
The sheriff’s deputy said Victoria County officials asked for his help in the Blackwell case because he and his dogs had provided assistance in a murder and sexual assault case in Victoria in the past.
“The people I talked to down there did not tell me anything before I trailed,” Pikett said.
Then, a police officer riding with Pikett during the trailing said of the murder victim “she was dating a lot of people, some from the Internet and some from Victoria,” Pikett said. “And that’s the only thing they told me.”
During the trailing, “the dogs did what the dogs did,” he said, adding, “The reason the dogs have a lot of credibility is because I don’t listen to anybody. We’re not ever going to make something come out the way you want it to come out.”
Pikett said when he uses his bloodhounds in a scent lineup, or for trailing in a criminal case, he always uses at least two “for reliability – to verify each other.”
He also said the dogs have no incentive to find a false trail is there isn’t one. If he gives them something on which to find a scent, and they get out of his truck and don’t detect that scent, they just stand there, thus “they tell me there’s no trail.”
If that happens, Pikett said, he praises the dogs, gives them a food treat and puts them back in the truck.
