When Dr. Melinda Merck wanted to investigate crime scenes of animal cruelty cases in 2002, she didn’t have any university courses to turn to.
Merck, a veterinarian, forged ahead by working closely with human forensics experts. She used her knowledge in her work with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in cases such as Michael Vick’s dog-fighting ring. Now Merck is helping to create educational programs at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where others can learn about the new field of veterinary forensics.
By late spring, Merck hopes to complete an online veterinary forensics certification program that animal control officers, veterinarians, law enforcement officers and others in the animal welfare field can take.
In a year, the master’s forensics program at the University of Florida will have a veterinary forensics portion, wrote Jason Byrd, forensic entomologist and director of education for the William R. Maples Center for Forensic Medicine at the University of Florida.
Merck is thrilled about the partnership between the ASPCA and the university.
“We can draw resources from all over,” she said. “I’m very excited.”
Courses will include buried-remains excavation, bloodstain pattern analysis, bite-mark analysis, and animal crime scene processing and forensic entomology. One course will simulate an animal cruelty trial, according to a University of Florida written statement.
Merck was motivated to learn veterinary forensics when she was practicing in Georgia and the state made animal cruelty crimes a felony. Since the 1990s, Merck has worked with shelters and animal welfare organizations in the Atlanta area. “No one else was doing it at the time, so I started doing it to connect the dots,” she said.
Merck worked with the ASPCA’s field response team and helped animals affected by Hurricane Gustav in 2008.
She has testified as an expert witness in animal cruelty cases ranging from animal hoarding to puppy mills. In the Michael Vick dog-fighting case, Merck examined skeletal remains from the mass grave found on Vick’s Virginia property. She found evidence of dog fighting and corroborated eyewitness accounts that the Pit Bulls were tortured.
In 2006 Merck handled a puppy torture case where she collected enough evidence to prove the victim was alive when the crime was committed. The teenage brothers accused in the case plead guilty.
Each year the ASPCA investigates more than 5,000 cruelty cases and arrests or issues summons to more than 300 people, according to the University of Florida.
Animal crime scenes are similar to human ones when it comes to forensic entomology, or the study of insects in decaying matter. But Merck said that animals react differently than humans when they are shot, and bleed differently too. Investigators would also have to interpret injuries on animals differently – for example, animals are less easy to bruise than humans, which indicates a significant injury.
“I fully support new programs,” Byrd wrote in an email. “And the veterinary forensic science program is a new application of proven scientific methods for analysis of physical evidence. So the technology isn’t new, but the application is new.”
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