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Melinda Merck, the ASPCA’s forensic vet, has teamed up with the University of Florida to establish a new animal forensics program— the first of its type in the nation.

Merck, who has helped solve some of the most notable animal crimes in history, including the Michael Vick dogfighting case, is moving to Gainesville to teach at the University of Florida. Her class was the subject of a feature story Friday in the St. Petersburg Times.

As the Times story points out, crimes against animals have gained increasing attention in the past few years. Police are charging more people with animal hoarding, dogfighting, abuse and neglect. And there’s a growing recognition that  people who hurt animals often go on to commit more serious crimes against humans — Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Albert DeSalvo (the Boston Strangler) and David Berkowitz (Son of Sam), to name a few.

While more law schools are offering animal law classes, the animal forensics program at the University of Florida will be the first of its kind, but likely not the last.

Florida, the Times report notes,  seems to have more documented animal cruelty cases than most states — or maybe it does a better job of bringing them to light. Just in the past few weeks, a man in Miami was accused of being a serial killer of cats; a Tampa woman was jailed after she left her puppy in a hot car while shopping at Ikea; and another man was arrested for leaving two dogs in the bathroom of his apartment while he went to Las Vegas for two weeks.

In her partnership with the University of Florida, Merck will teach at the school’s College of Veterinary Medicine and continue her animal forensic investigations. The school plans to establish an animal forensic degree program that likely will start online this fall.

Merck  lands there with some impressive credentials. She has been seeking justice for abused animals for years.

In 2006, two teens in Atlanta hog-tied a 3-month-old puppy with duct tape, doused it with paint, lit it on fire and then baked it in an oven. Merck’s work showed the animal was alive during the torture and the teens pleaded guilty.

A few years later, she was called to a field in Virginia to excavate the graves of eight pit bulls. Reviewing skeletons left behind by Vick’s dogfighting operation, she found that some of the dogs had been hanged or shot to death.

Today Merck works for the ASPCA, responding in the ASPCA’s Mobile Animal CSI Unit to animal cruelty scenes across the country. She’s also the co-author of Forensic Investigation of Animal Cruelty: A Guide for Veterinarians and Law Enforcement, and she’ll soon be publishing a textbook, Veterinary Forensics: Animal Cruelty Investigations.

The Times article describes Merck’s class going into the woods at the Austin Cary Memorial Forest, north of Gainesville to unearth the bodies of eight cats and dogs (euthanized remains from animal shelters) that Merck had buried there, along with some fictional evidence, earlier.

Merck showed them how to find the graves, mark them with stakes and string, clear and save the plants, and collect bugs, which can also provide clues to an animal’s death. The students had to unearth the animals and solve the fictional crimes based on the planted evidence – beer bottles, candles, a statue of the Virgin Mary and  gum wrappers. 

“I want to be Melinda Merck,” one 19-year-old student in the class said. “She’s definitely my hero.”

To learn more about the work of Merck, you can read an interview with her on the ASPCA website, and listen to a 2007 interview on NPR.