Dog Days of Murder is a true crime podcast where the animals aren’t just part of the story — they help solve it. Hosted by Paula Quintana and cohosted by Ein the corgi, each episode explores real cases where animals played a role in uncovering the truth.
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When police in New Lenox, Illinois, began investigating a man suspected of downloading child sexual abuse material, their search led them to Timothy Mol—and eventually to his home.
But investigators didn’t arrive alone.
With them was Boone, a three-year-old Labrador with the Cook County Sheriff’s Office and a nose trained to find the things people don’t want found.
What Boone discovered that day would take the investigation in an unexpected direction.
Trust the Dog.
OUR Rescue — “ESD K9 Boone,” May 13, 2024.
Chicago Sun-Times — reporting on Boone, Daniel Codd and the Cook County Sheriff’s Office electronic-storage-detection K9 program, including Boone’s training, early searches and work with the Internet Crimes Against Children Unit.
FOX 32 Chicago — reporting/interview with Daniel Codd on Boone’s work, training and case history, including his work throughout Illinois.
Patch / New Lenox — reporting on Timothy Mol’s February 2024 arrest and the search of his New Lenox home.
New Lenox Police Department — information regarding the investigation, search and charges involving Timothy Mol.
Will County booking records — Timothy Mol booking/charge information, including the March 2025 record.
Jordan Detection K9 — background on Todd Jordan, ESD K9 training, Bear, and the development of the electronic-storage-detection K9 program.
Reporting/background on ESD K9 Bear and the Jared Fogle investigation — regarding Bear’s role in locating electronic evidence during the search of Fogle’s home.
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) — terminology and information regarding child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
Illinois covert-recording/privacy-law resources — background regarding unauthorized recording and expectations of privacy, particularly in restrooms and when minors are involved.
OUR Rescue — organizational information regarding its mission and sponsorship/support of electronic-storage-detection K9s.
Help & Resources
If someone is in immediate danger, call 911 or your local emergency services.
Suspected child sexual exploitation or CSAM The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) operates the CyberTipline for reports of suspected online child sexual exploitation, including CSAM and child sex trafficking. Reports can be made through the CyberTipline or by calling 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678). NCMEC's call center is available 24 hours a day.
Suspected child abuse or neglect The Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline is available 24/7 for people experiencing, witnessing or concerned about child abuse. Call or text 1-800-422-4453; you can also use live chat through the website. Childhelp can provide support and help determine how and where to make an official report in your state.
If you believe you are being secretly recorded Recording and privacy laws vary by state and by the circumstances involved. If you believe someone is recording you without your consent in a place where you have a reasonable expectation of privacy, consider contacting local law enforcement or a qualified attorney for guidance about the laws and options available where you live.
Additional music by Dmitri Kolesnikov (The_Mountain)
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Music by Vibe Depot and Mircea Iancu
SPEAKER_00
Ayn, come over this way. What has your attention over there? Are you digging up a worm again? Wait, what is that? I I think it's an earbud. No, you can't eat it. It's a good find, though. Such a good corgi. Sometimes animals find what humans leave behind, and sometimes they find what humans think can't be found. This is Dog Days of Murder, where your love of animals meets your fascination with true crime. Hi friends, welcome back to Dog Days of Murder. Or welcome in if this is your first episode. I'm your host, Paula, and this is my co-host and our COO around here, Chief Cookie Officer, Ayn. If you haven't had a chance yet, please take a moment and go leave us a rating and a review. It's good for the show, and it would make one particular Corgi very happy. Okay, let's get to the show. Today's episode is called Trust the Dog. And really, why wouldn't you? As always, a quick heads up. This is a true crime podcast featuring real investigations and the animals connected to them. Today's episode deals with child exploitation. Listener discretion is advised. It may also include sleeping on your feet, unexpected licks across the face, and sniffing out more than the cat next door. You have been warned. I did some traveling to visit family earlier this month. Call me crazy, but I enjoy airports. Yes, even LAX. I get there early, grab a snack, wander around, and people watch. One thing I always make a point to do is to go to the bathroom before boarding. Some airport bathrooms are better than others. Some are cleaner, some are small, some have changing tables, some even have luxury soap products. But no matter what kind of bathroom it is, I wash my hands, walk out, and not once do I wonder if someone was watching me. Would you? In late 2023, police in New Lennox, Illinois received a tip about someone allegedly downloading child sexual abuse material, or CSAM, through a mobile app. Investigators began looking into it, and the information they gathered eventually led them to a forty-five year old New Lennox man named Timothy Mole. Now you may hear me use the term CSAM throughout this episode. That stands for child sexual abuse material. Some of the reporting in this case, and even in the criminal charges themselves, use the older term child pornography. But organizations, including the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, have moved away from that language for a very important reason. Pornography implies something created between consenting adults. Children cannot consent to their own sexual abuse. These images and videos document a crime committed against a child. So whenever possible, I'll call it what it is, child sexual abuse material. So once they were able to trace the activity to Mole, they monitored his online interactions. By February 2024, they had enough evidence to ask a judge for a warrant to search his home. The warrant was approved. On february twenty-one, officers with the new Lennox Police Department went to Mole's house, joined by investigators from the Cook County Sheriff's Office and the Department of Homeland Security. They were looking for electronic devices that might contain evidence connected to the CSAM investigation. And if you're searching someone's home for electronic evidence, you might think you know what you're looking for. Computers, phones, tablets, maybe a hard drive or a thumb drive. The problem is, electronic evidence can be very, very small, and people who don't want you to find something generally don't leave it sitting conveniently on the kitchen counter. So the Cook County Sheriff's Office brought along an investigator who was particularly good at finding things people didn't want found. His name was Boone. Boone was a three-year-old English labrador and an electronic storage detection canine, trained to find phones, hard drives, thumb drives, memory cards, and other electronic storage devices by scent. If you've been with me for a while, you may remember Louis, the electronic detection dog in the UK. Louis found a mobile phone on the side of the road that had been ejected from a car during a collision. Boone does the same kind of work. What these dogs are actually smelling is a chemical called triphenylphosphine oxide, or TPPO, which is used in electronic devices to keep them from overheating. We can't smell it, but a dog like Boone can be trained to recognize that odor and follow it to its source. Which means that even if someone manages to hide an electronic device well enough that investigators can't see it, Boone doesn't necessarily need to see it either. That day, investigators seized several electronic devices from Mole's home. Police said those devices contained evidence of the crimes they were investigating. But Boone found something else. Something investigators apparently hadn't gone there looking for, and he found it in the bathroom. Before we get back to that bathroom, we need to properly meet the dog who was searching it. Boone joined the Cook County Sheriff's Office in November 2022, becoming the department's first electronic storage detection canine. He was about a year and a half old at the time, an English Labrador, and he was donated to the department by Operation Underground Railroad, now known as Our Rescue. Operation Underground Railroad, or OUR, OUR, is a nonprofit organization focused on combating child sexual exploitation and human trafficking. Its work includes supporting law enforcement investigations, providing resources and technology, and helping survivors with aftercare. One of the ways Our supports law enforcement is by sponsoring electronic storage detection dogs like Boone, giving agencies another tool to locate evidence that might otherwise remain hidden. After completing two weeks of specialized training in Indiana, Boone was partnered with Daniel Cod, an investigator with the Sheriff's Internet Crimes Against Children Unit. Cod quickly learned that working with Boone involved much more than simply pointing him toward a room and telling him to go find something. He had to learn how to read him. Boone has different ways of telling Cod when he's picked up the scent of electronics. Sometimes he'll let out a little puff. When he's close to the source, he'll stare at Cod and become still. But getting to that point can look very different depending on what Boone is smelling and where it's hidden. Cod compared learning to work with Boone to learning to dance with a partner. Sometimes Boone catches an odor and wants to move quickly, which means Cod has to keep up. Other times, Boone slows way down because he wants to pinpoint exactly where the scent is coming from. Either way, Cod has to pay attention to Boone's movements and make sure the two of them stay in sync. And Boone proved pretty quickly that he knew what he was doing. During one of his first searches, Boone gave a little puff near a television stand. Then he moved closer to the floor and led Cod underneath it, where investigators found a micro SD card that they had missed. The card contained information that was important to that case. And just to put Boone's nose into perspective, during training he found his cell phone submerged in a creek. In another exercise, someone hit a phone inside a refrigerator, presumably thinking that all those competing food smells might throw him off. And you know what? They did not. Which is impressive for any dog, but I think particularly impressive for one whose co-workers reported that he was rather fond of salmon. Boone is what's known as a food reward dog. So when he finds what he's supposed to find, Cod rewards him with food. That system also means working isn't something Boone has to be talked into doing. Finding electronics is how he earns his meals, and for Boone, going to work is essentially one very elaborate dinner game. But there was another reason Boone turned out to be particularly well suited to the Internet Crimes Against Children unit. The cases Cod and the other investigators handle can be incredibly difficult, not only for the children and families involved, but for the people who investigate them every day. Boone began sitting in on some victim interviews, where Cod said Boone's presence could bring the intensity down a little. Around the office, Boone could lift morale by doing something considerably less specialized, sleeping in his dog bed, snuggling against someone's feet, or occasionally licking Cod's face. So Boone had two very different jobs. One required a highly specialized nose capable of locating a memory card small enough for a human investigator to overlook. The other required him to be, well, a dog. By the time Boone walked into Timothy Mole's home in February 2024, he and Cod had been working together for more than a year. And somewhere inside that house was an electronic device no one had asked Boone to find. At some point during the search of Timothy Mole's home, Boone made his way into a bathroom, and he alerted. What he had detected was in a switchplate on the wall, the small plastic plate that surrounds a light switch. There appeared to be a screw in it, which wouldn't exactly be unusual. Except this particular screw wasn't a screw. It was a camera. Investigators say the tiny camera had been disguised to look like a screw and concealed in the bathroom switch plate. According to our rescue, Boone was the one who discovered it. The search had begun because police were investigating Mole for allegedly downloading child sexual abuse material. Now they had found something they hadn't been looking for at all. Investigators examined what had been recorded by the hidden camera and said it contained video of Mole's stepdaughter and other members of his family using the bathroom. Mole was arrested and the discovery in the bathroom resulted in additional allegations involving unauthorized video recording. The records we found list charges for both possession of child sexual abuse material and unauthorized videotaping involving a victim under the age of 18. The camera itself raised another question. During my research, I was telling a friend about this case, and when I explained what Boone had found, she asked me something I hadn't really thought about. How does someone even get their hands on something like that? So I looked. And the answer was considerably less exotic than I expected. Covert recording devices are commercially available, and miniature cameras can be disguised or concealed in objects that don't immediately look like cameras. I'm deliberately not going to tell you where I found them, what they cost or all the different forms they can take, because this is dog days of murder, not shopping for creeps. But just because these cameras are so easy to buy doesn't mean you can put one anywhere you want. Under Illinois law, it's illegal to knowingly record someone without their consent in a restroom, a changing room, a locker room, or other place where that person would reasonably expect privacy. The law also provides more serious penalties when the person being recorded is under eighteen. And according to investigators, the camera Boone found wasn't hidden just anywhere. It was in a bathroom, and the recordings included Mole's stepdaughter and other members of his family. The availability of such devices helps explain the problem investigators face. Something capable of recording or storing evidence may be sitting right in front of you without looking anything like an electronic device. But Boone doesn't care what it looks like. He's looking for what it smells like. And in Timothy Mole's bathroom? That distinction made all the difference. Boone's ability to find that camera didn't happen by accident. His training can be traced back to a man named Todd Jordan, whose work with electronic storage detection dogs began with a black Labrador named Bair. And Baer had quite the resume. In 2015, Baer was brought in to assist investigators searching the home of former Subway spokesperson Jared Vogel. Do you guys remember Jared the Subway guy? He was the guy who became famous when he claimed to have lost over 200 pounds by only eating subway food. The company made him their spokesperson and he quickly gained worldwide fame. When allegations were made, investigators searched Vogel's house, but Baer was able to locate electronic storage devices they had missed, including a thumb drive that became important evidence in this case. Vogel pleaded guilty that year to charges involving child sexual abuse material and traveling to engage in commercial sex with a minor. He was sentenced to more than 15 years in federal prison. Bear also worked on the investigation of Marvin Sharp, a USA gymnastics coach who was facing charges involving child sexual abuse material and allegations that he had sexually abused young gymnasts. Those cases helped demonstrate just how useful an electronic storage detection dog could be, particularly when investigators were dealing with devices designed to hold enormous amounts of information while being small enough to hide almost anywhere. Jordan went on to establish Jordan Detection Canine in Indiana, where dogs were trained specifically to detect electronic storage devices. According to the company, Jordan has trained more than 200 ESD canines for law enforcement agencies associated with internet crimes against children task forces across the country. Boone was one of them. His training involved learning to recognize the odor associated with electronic storage devices and then locating that odor in increasingly difficult environments. But training the dog is only half of the equation. The handler also has to learn how to work with the dog, which is why Daniel Cod was required to go through training alongside Boone before the two of them began working cases together. And once they did, the kinds of cases Boone could help with began to expand. Although he works with Cod in the Internet Crimes Against Children Unit, Boone's nose isn't interested in what kind of investigation is underway. An electronic device smells like an electronic device, whether it contains evidence of child exploitation, financial crimes, a homicide, a burglary, or a missing person's case. By September 2024, Boone had already assisted with 35 cases that year. And by early 2026, Cod said Boone had participated in more than 140 searches, with criminal charges resulting from 120 of them. More importantly, Cod said some of the devices Boone located contained evidence that allowed investigators to identify children who were being abused. Investigators could then interview those children, get them help, and pursue charges against the people responsible. That's the part of Boone's job that can get lost when we marvel at a dog finding a micro SD card under a television stand or a camera disguised as a crew. He isn't just finding electronics. He's finding evidence. And sometimes that evidence leads investigators to a child who needs someone to find them. Timothy Mole was arrested following the February 2024 search of his home. At the time, police announced charges involving possession of child sexual abuse material and unauthorized video recording. A Will County booking record from March 2025 lists charges for possession of child sexual abuse material and unauthorized videotaping involving a victim under the age of 18. The record does not identify the victim. As of this recording, I have not found a trial, guilty plea, or conviction in Mole's case, so the charges against him remain allegations. For Boone, the search of Mole's home was one case in a job that has taken him well beyond Cook County. Boone and Cod are called to assist law enforcement agencies across Illinois when investigators need help finding electronic evidence that someone may have tried to hide. And the people who work with Boone have developed quite a bit of confidence in him. Sergeant James Draz told the Chicago Sun Times that when Boone alerts, investigators don't wonder whether something is there. The question becomes where is it? Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart has said the need for dogs like Boone has grown along with the number of investigations involving electronic evidence. Phones, memory cards, and other devices can contain the evidence investigators need to build a case, but first they have to find them. According to Dart, bringing Boone into those searches has changed the department's ability to do exactly that. And for all of that specialized training, statewide travel, and evidence finding, Boone's food and veterinary care costs the department about three thousand six hundred dollars a year. That seems like a pretty good return on investment. Especially when you consider what one tiny electronic device can hold. In Timothy Mole's home, investigators were already searching for electronic evidence when Boone walked into a bathroom and alerted to something that looked like nothing more than a screw and a switchplate. A human investigator could look right at it and see part of the wall. And that's why they brought the dog. His name was Boone. Recording laws vary by state. If you suspect you are being recorded without your consent, call your local police department. If you're in a private setting where you have a reasonable expectation of privacy, you may have grounds to sue for invasion of privacy or civil rights violations. Federal law allows for one-party consent except for 13 states which require two-party consent. Know your rights and what law dictates in your area. If you suspect a child is being abused, trafficked, or part of a CSAM operation, please contact authorities. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children can be reefed at their 24-hour hotline at 1-800-the-Lost or 1-800-843-5678. Ww.missingkids.org is a great resource for reporting or for next steps. If you think a child is in immediate danger, call 911 to get help. Otherwise, you can report suspected child abuse to your state's Child Protective Service or the Child Help National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-4453. You do not need proof. Reasonable suspicion is enough. Boon, what a guy. I'm going to keep an eye on this case, and if I get any updates about a trial or a plea deal, I'll be sure to let you know. And I have to say it, the nose knows. I know, I know, but I couldn't help myself. As always, I will put the sources for this episode, as well as all the links to all the things in the show notes. I'll be sure to include the information I just mentioned before about relevant resources. On another note, while I was working on this recording, I found out that the beloved and gracious Dolly Parton passed away. This one hits differently. She was a forced and will be incredibly missed. This episode is dedicated to you, Dolly. I bet you would have loved Boone. Dog Days of Murder is an Angry Hamster production, hosted and produced by me, Paula Quintana, and the Corgi in charge, Ayn. Don't forget, rate, review, follow, and all the stuff. Have a great week, and we will see you next Monday for a new story. Until then, Ayn, graduation.
