Mantrailing: Missing Person Searches | Locating Stolen Property Using Tracking Dogs

Kurtz Detective Agency Hamburg investigates cases involving missing persons: runaway children, missing heirs, lost relatives as well as maintenance obligors who have disappeared into thin air. The more information you can provide, the higher our chances of success.

It is by no means uncommon for children, and especially teenagers, to leave their parental home on their own initiative. In such cases, our Hamburg private detectives initially conduct discreet enquiries within the missing person’s social environment. Often, hints about their plans have been shared with a classmate or another friend. Our private investigators at Kurtz Investigations Hamburg follow up on these leads in order to locate and return your child as quickly as possible: +49 40 2320 5053.

Runaway or Abducted?

Missing children and teenagers are not always runaways. Child abduction by third parties and parental child abduction are issues whose media relevance never diminishes, as even uninvolved parents tend to empathise with those affected. Child abduction and parental child removal are every parent’s worst nightmare, especially when – often in relationships with different ethnic backgrounds – the child is taken abroad. Here too, our detectives from Hamburg can operate across borders in an unconventional and effective manner: kontakt@kurtz-detektei-hamburg.de.

Recovery of Stolen Property by Our Detectives

Our detectives also investigate cases involving missing property and stolen goods or misappropriated cash. These are usually cases of pickpocketing or burglary. Using various methods of forensic investigation, our Hamburg detectives are often able to reconstruct the course of events, trace the perpetrator and recover the missing property.

Mantrailing – An Effective Method for Locating Missing Persons

From a fundamental perspective, the use of tracking dogs is a long-established method of forensic investigation. Even Sherlock Holmes relied on the services of his mongrel Toby. However, as a method of criminal investigation, tracking dogs have fallen somewhat out of favour in recent decades. Their fields of application were largely “limited” to rescue operations. Yet so-called mantrailing – the search for individuals using specialised tracking dogs – opens up new, sometimes spectacular possibilities in criminal investigation.

Mantrailing dogs are capable of detecting the scent molecules that every individual emits and of following that scent trail over considerable distances and periods of time (odour analysis). The capabilities of mantrailing dogs vary significantly depending on breed and training. There are reports of mantrailing dogs reliably following trails even years later – including across motorways and even through rivers. However, when estimating the capabilities of mantrailing dogs, police assessments tend to be far more conservative, often referring to a maximum of three weeks, and sometimes only a few days.

Kurtz Detective Agency Hamburg works closely with highly skilled mantrailer handlers and is thus able to achieve remarkable investigative successes in certain cases. You are welcome to contact us for further information: +49 40 2320 5053.