Among the beach towels, tote bags, and novelty items at the Skeletons in the Closet gift shop, one product stood apart: a stuffed German Shepherd toy named Indy, branded with the Los Angeles Coroner logo. It was the shop’s nod to the real working dogs that played a critical role in the coroner’s operations — cadaver dogs trained to locate human remains.
Cadaver Dogs in Los Angeles
The Los Angeles Coroner’s Office and cooperating law enforcement agencies have long relied on specially trained dogs to locate human remains in cases where bodies are hidden, buried, or otherwise difficult to find. German Shepherds, along with Labrador Retrievers and Belgian Malinois, are the breeds most commonly used for this work.
These dogs can detect the scent of decomposition through soil, water, and rubble. In a city as vast and geographically varied as Los Angeles — stretching from urban neighborhoods to mountain wilderness to desert — cadaver dogs have been essential tools in homicide investigations, disaster recovery, and missing persons cases.
From Working Dog to Gift Shop Mascot
The decision to create a plush toy modeled after a working cadaver dog was characteristic of the Skeletons in the Closet philosophy: find the element of the coroner’s work that the public finds most accessible and turn it into merchandise.
Dogs are inherently sympathetic. Unlike a body outline towel or crime scene tape — which derive their appeal from dark humor — the German Shepherd toy worked on a simpler level. People like dogs. A stuffed dog wearing a coroner’s badge was cute in a way that most of the shop’s merchandise deliberately was not.
The Real Work
Behind the novelty, cadaver dogs represent some of the most difficult work in forensic investigation. Handlers train for years alongside their dogs, and deployments often involve grueling conditions — searching collapsed structures after earthquakes, combing remote hillsides in missing persons cases, or working crime scenes where the evidence of violence is unmistakable.
In Los Angeles, cadaver dogs have been deployed in cases ranging from serial murder investigations to wildfire recoveries. Their work rarely makes headlines, but it is foundational to the coroner’s ability to recover and identify the dead.
The Indy plush toy was a small tribute to that work — a reminder that behind the gift shop’s dark humor, the Los Angeles Coroner’s Office employed every tool available, including four-legged ones, in its mission to account for the dead.