Detective David Lee Stephens joined the Scott County (Tenn.) Sheriff’s Office several months after the June 2022 disappearance of Darlene Chitwood. Her daughter told police the 50-year-old Scott County resident may have been disoriented due to high or low blood sugar when she walked away from Big Blue Tires, across the state line in Stearns, Ky.

Chitwood was last seen by residential surveillance cameras on East Appletree Road, then at a house several miles from the tire shop. No sign of her nor her belongings have been found.

As part of his investigation, in November, Stephens returned to the site to conduct a practical field test with Maggie, a 15-month-old bloodhound and K-9 trainee, and her handlers, Martina Gombalova and Peter Gesualdo.

“To recreate realistic conditions, I parked at the same business and walked the same route she was seen taking on video,” he said. “I followed the roadway, crossed from one side of the road multiple times, continued to the T-intersection at the end of the road, crossed the roadway, and proceeded onto nearby railroad tracks. I then walked along the tracks for a distance and exited down an embankment.”

The tracking team deployed four and a half hours later. Maggie had no trouble following every twist and turn in Stephens’s path — and proving his point.

“The results demonstrated that, under similar environmental conditions, a tracking canine was capable of detecting and following a human track several hours after it was made. This indicated that early canine deployment in a case like this could have provided valuable investigative direction and potentially identified her path of travel.”