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July 28, 2003Search teams uncover hidden gravesByRecord-Eagle staff writer MAPLE CITY - Round Top Cemetery, a pitted hillside in Maple City, is thick with lily of the valley. Myrtle creeps around an old birch tree standing guard over a cluster of gravestones that have shifted and heaved over from years of neglect. Terri DeFilippo stands at the crest of the old Quaker cemetery and picks her way along rows of stones and little orange flags. She studies inscriptions on some of the 27 slabs - a few bear still-familiar surnames - and reads dates from 1876 to 1930. But the orange flags are the reason she's here. For every flag stuck above ground, there is, according to a world-famous dog trainer and her cadaver-finding dog, an unknown grave underneath. Those flags also mark the crumbling reputation of the trainer - an investigator whose career, along with the cemeteries and murder scenes she's processed, is now being questioned. Earlier this month, two search dogs and their handlers mapped the Maple City cemetery, discovering a total of 211 graves. Members of the Traverse City-based Friends of the Light are restoring the cemetery, where a Quaker meeting house once stood. Eagle, a search dog owned by Sandra Anderson of Midland, and Dax, a search-dog-in-training owned by Jim Delbridge of Mustang, Okla., worked the site for five hours on July 12. "Every time Eagle would find a grave, he would lay down," DeFilippo said. "And if that orange flag wasn't exactly where he wanted it, he wouldn't get up. It was amazing." The mapping cost Friends of the Light next to nothing. The Historical Resource Foundation, a network of volunteer dog handlers from across the country, charges only for the gas to drive to the site. DeFilippo later learned Anderson was charged in June with planting bones at three Michigan crime scenes. The charges were filed in the U.S. District Court in Detroit. An arraignment has not been scheduled. Anderson and Eagle have investigated murders across the country and been profiled on national television. Though neither Anderson nor her attorney could be reached for comment, she has steadfastly claimed innocence since the charges were levied. The charges haven't shaken DeFilippo. She was impressed with Anderson and confident in her work. "I thought the dog was phenomenal, and she was good with him," DeFilippo said. "I have no reason to think that they did anything that was a little off. The dog seemed so sure of what he was doing that I wouldn't question anything he did." Rayanne Chamberlain of Lyons, Mich., helped found the Historical Resource Foundation last year. She said Anderson is a technical consultant for the group and is used on occasion at various sites. "We feel very comfortable working with her," Chamberlain said. Also satisfied is Betty Armstrong, who brought in Anderson and the foundation to plot grave sites at the Omena Presbyterian Church in May. Armstrong said the church has spent thousands of dollars on stones to mark each of the 290 graves discovered by Eagle. "We've been working at the church every day; this is a historic church," said the church's moderator Ross Foster. "We are trying to get it back in shape. ... It was so overgrown it was unbelievable." Delbridge, the Oklahoma trainer who worked with Anderson at Round Top Cemetery, said he enjoys restoring sites. "What you really like seeing is coming back to a cemetery you've worked on and seeing new headstones and a fence around it, and that it's being taken care of," he said. Friends of the Light will continue to clean up Round Top cemetery and possibly mark the new-found graves with stones. Other Leelanau County cemeteries might soon benefit from a visit by the dogs and their trainers. Chamberlain said she's had requests for the foundation to map several more grave yards in the area.
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