George Brooks was born February 24, 1897, in Onalaska, Wis., and was the son of John and Charlotte (Filkins) Brooks. He had originally intended to become a pharmacist, but ran out of money while in his second year of school and began working at the Bodega Lunch Club in downtown La Crosse. Brooks worked at the soda fountain and kept that job for the next forty-two years.
Brooks began training hunting dogs, but felt that it was not a worthwhile pursuit since laws restricted hunting to just several weeks a year. In 1932, he purchased his first bloodhound from England. While his new dog, Lady, was still a puppy, a local sheriff requested help from Brooks with a case. A bank had been robbed in Mindoro, Minnesota, and two of the suspects were hiding out in the woods. While on a leash, Lady was able to track the scent of the suspects to the banks of a stream, but was unable to locate them. Later, when the two were apprehended, they admitted to hiding under water and breathing through hollow reeds. As Brooks remembered, this was the only case where one of his dogs was unable to find where a suspect was hiding.
Brooks owned over forty bloodhounds over the course of his life, and he was frequently called upon by local law enforcement to track down criminal suspects and find lost children and other missing persons. He never accepted payment for his services and had an agreement with his boss at the Bodega Lunch Club, William Bonadurer, that he could leave work whenever his dogs were needed. Brooks trained his dogs to track individuals silently, without barking, and never trained his dogs to be vicious. He carried a gun and a deputy sheriff's badge because he and his dogs were usually first to reach a criminal suspect.
Brooks trained his dogs by having La Crosse area children lay out trails throughout the city and surrounding area. He would then take the dogs out to follow the trails. Brooks would treat the children to ice cream cones in exchange for their work.
While Brooks and his bloodhounds were well known in the La Crosse area, two cases brought him into the national spotlight. One involved a man named Jens Thompson, from Freeborn, Minnesota, who shot and killed four of his neighbors in a quarrel in July 1937. Brooks and his hounds trailed Thompson over four counties until Thompson finally gave up because he felt that he could not evade the dogs.
In another case that began in 1939 in Cable, Wisconsin, Ray Olson shot and killed two deputies. Brooks' dogs followed Olson for two weeks, while he tried to elude the dogs by burning cabins he stayed in and traveling on water, but the dogs were always able to pick up the scent again. Olson was finally killed trying to escape.
The success Brooks and his dogs experienced lead to more national exposure. Articles appeared in the
Saturday Evening Post, Life Magazine, American Magazine, and
Reader's Digest. Brooks estimated that he worked on over 3000 cases during his lifetime. Law enforcement officials and friends honored him at a testimonial dinner at the Stoddard Hotel in 1958.
After a heart attack in 1960, Brooks preferred to stay closer to home. He passed away on April 11, 1978, in La Crosse, and is buried at St. Mary's Cemetery in Tomah, Wisconsin.
