FIU offers aid to law enforcement investigating horse slaughters


DNA typing could help solve the case

By Sissi Aguila

“Be proactive.” That was the message, DeEtta Mills, director of FIU’s Forensics DNA Profiling Facility, delivered to the South Florida Horse Show Association Sept. 18. Mills met with the group gathered at Tropical Park in South Miami to ask them to register their horses in FIU’s equine database, which could help investigators identify a missing animal and convict individuals responsible for the slaughtering of horses.

“The best way to protect yourself is with good identification of your horses,” she said. “Unfortunately microchips don’t do any good after the horse is slaughtered and found in a freezer. You can individualize your horse through DNA.”

Mills reached out to Miami-Dade Police when she learned of the first horse butchering incidents in South Florida and offered FIU’s Forensic DNA Profiling Facility’s services if they need them. Since January, at least 17 animals have been slaughtered and investigators have had few leads. One man, Luis Miguel Cordero, an 18-year-old Mexican citizen, was recently arrested after Police received a tip from two people he allegedly approached to help him with a slaughter. Police believe he butchered a horse for its meat on Sept. 9 at Lazy L Ranch.

Mills, who has 14 horses and a 40-acre ranch in the Redlands, said FIU’s database could help bring closure to owners if they are stolen or worse, slaughtered. “Our equine friends are all part of our families,” she said.

More families are heeding the warning and registering their horses in FIU’s national database. At a recent rally in Sunset, Mills, who hopes to get more of the local horses in the database to have something for local law enforcement to search against, received 60 requests for DNA typing, which costs $35. All horses DNA-typed by FIU, she said, will be entered into the database.

If the horse already has been DNA-typed, owners can contact that breed registry and request that it provide the DNA information to FIU, which will then include it in the university database at no charge.

As an added support, Mills also has prepared DNA kits for law enforcement to collect samples while on patrol. Detectives can use the kits, which do not need to be refrigerated, to swab evidence found on clothes or at a crime scene and store it for an extended period of time while they build their case.

The Miami-Dade Crime lab is not prepared to process evidence collected from animals. FIU’s International Forensic Research Institute was able to offer its support because it already had a system in place for non-human DNA studies.

“I’ve often been quoted as saying ‘If have DNA, will profile,’’ joked Mills, who added that the state-of-the-art facility will be able to process the samples as soon as they are received.

Mills began FIU’s equine database in 2006, when she signed a cooperative agreement with United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Horse Service in Oregon. Mills and graduate students Natalie Leyva, Margaret Shekarkhar and undergraduate Merly Suarez are helping assess the genetic health of wild mustang herds in the Ochoco National Forest. Because of severe weather and less open land, researchers believe that the herd has experienced a genetic bottleneck increasing the possibility of inbreeding and depression as well as increasing genetic diseases because of the small herd size.

Preliminary studies of captive horses have found that the gene pool has been affected by inbreeding. Mills and her team are conducting further investigations on those still in the wild.

“They get in your blood,” said Mills, who first became interested in genetics when breeding her own horses.

“I’d have some unusual colors pop out when I wasn’t expecting it. I kept asking people ‘how’d that happen?’ and they’d say, ‘I don’t know.’ So I started researching it myself.”

Today, part of her genetics’ lecture is 30 years of her horse breeding. Students learn that when you know the genetics, you can guarantee the color of your horse.

For more information on having a horse DNA-typed and added to the database, call 305-348-7410.