A heroic NYPD police dog was still fighting crime months after his death — after his skill in sniffing out evidence helped convict a murderous pimp.
The 13-year-old German Shepherd, K9 Timoshenko, had an auspicious career sniffing out missing persons, guns and human remains. He added a posthumous feather to his cap last Monday when a federal jury in Brooklyn convicted Cory Martin of murder for hire.
To K9 Timoshenko’s partner, Detective Benjamin Colecchia, testifying at Martin’s trial was bittersweet. Timoshenko, or Timmy — he was named after slain NYPD Officer Russel Timoshenko — died of cancer in October.
“They put Timmy’s picture up as evidence,” Colecchia told the Daily News.
The moment nearly brought him to tears.
“I was holding back. It hit me. I couldn’t speak, and I couldn’t let it out.” he said. “Obviously, I got through it, but I was gonna break down so bad, because he was my son, my partner, my brother, you know? We’ve been through a lot together.”
Colecchia, a 27-year police veteran, has been assigned to the NYPD K9 unit since 2003. He’s trained three canine partners — Blaze, Timmy and, most recently, Russel, who is also named for the fallen officer.
The dogs lived with him and his family on Staten Island. Colecchia’s partnership with Timoshenko began when the dog was a 1-year-old pup, and was being trained in finding missing persons, sniffing out firearms, and locating cadavers, human remains and fluids.
On April 28, 2018, the NYPD called on Timmy’s expertise at Martin’s house in Rosedale, Queens. That was where weeks earlier the killer pimp strangled and chopped up 26-year-old Brandy Odom in the hope of collecting $200,000 in life insurance.
Colecchia remembered the nice weather and the green grass, and that when he gave the command “Search!” Timmy led him to Martin’s black sedan, right to the trunk.
“His whole demeanor changed, his body bulked up, his ears went up, he started throwing his nose, he nose poked,” Colecchia told the jury. “That’s one of the indications. He nose poked the rear trunk seam, and he’s telling me there’s odor of human remains there.”
Timmy also gave a deep bark, another indication marking human remains.
Timmy’s dog sense pointed detectives to a fact crucial to the case. Martin used the car to transport Odom’s body parts to Canarsie Park in Brooklyn, his accomplice turned government witness testified during the trial.
Colecchia said he was excited by the guilty verdict. “It felt good, yeah, absolutely,” he said, choking. “I just wish he [Timmy] would have known.”
Martin’s case wasn’t the only high-profile job where Timmy delivered.
Timmy was also instrumental in finding evidence in the 2016 murder of Joseph Comunale, 26, who was killed by James Rackover, the surrogate son of a jeweler to the stars Jeffrey Rackover, in Rackover’s luxury E. 59th St. apartment. The younger Rackover was found guilty of murder in 2018.
“He located the vehicle. He located the hotel cart where they put the body on,” Colecchia said. “The apartment — he just had a field day. He found everything that they tried to clean up and they didn’t. It still amazes me what he did.”
Timmy found several missing persons and bodies over his career, including a young boy who disappeared on Staten Island in 2015 and was later found alive in a friend’s apartment. In 2021, he won top dog in the U.S. Police K-9 Association’s cadaver trials in Plainsboro, N.J.
He’s also traveled the country as part of FEMA’s Search and Recovery Team, and sniffed out dozens of guns. One of those searches came with a scare for his partner — in 2017, when he fell through a ceiling during a raid in Red Hook, Brooklyn, where he helped find a handgun, six rifles and two shotguns. He was cleared for duty two weeks later.
Timmy was carrying on the legacy of his namesake, Staten Island Detective Russel Timoshenko, who was fatally shot in the line of duty in 2007 after pulling over a stolen BMW in Crown Heights.
Timmy became fast friends with the slain detective’s mother, Tatyana Timoshenko, who remembers the day they met, and how the dog rushed to kiss her. “And it was love in the air from the beginning,” she said.
“He was a special dog for me,” she told The News. She keeps photos of Timmy throughout her house to remember him, she said. “In his short life, he’s done so much for the city and for people. He made me proud so many times, many, many times.”
She added, “He continued my son’s legacy. We miss him a lot.”
