So, this is a rather grisly question, but if someone used animals, like dogs or wolves, as a murder weapon, how would the police investigate it? I'm currently running with an idea of a scene where someone kills someone else with either starving dogs, or by tricking them near wolves in a way that leaves the wolves very angry, (i.e., near a wolf den), and was wondering what, if any, special tools the police could have access to in order to investigate it. A thought I've had is that killing someone this way would lead to a lack of forensic evidence, because the animals would eat a lot of said evidence, and because the murderer doesn't have to touch, or significantly interact with, the person to kill them, but, I could be wrong. Thoughts?
Of course you mustn't actually use the phrase "murder committed by animals" in your story. Animals (in the real world) can't be guilty of crimes. They can only be used as murder weapons. What do you mean the animals would eat forensic evidence? Their eating parts of the victim's flesh might make it difficult to identify the victim, but I don't think they are very likely to eat things like cell phones, car keys or credit cards. As to finding the murderer, the question is how could someone have either made the animals aggressive or lured the victim to a place where animals would naturally be aggressive. The latter wouldn't be much different from investigating how the victim was (for example) made to go into a building that was about to collapse. The police would probably try to find out who had been seen near the scene or with whom the victim had communicated before getting killed.
They wouldn’t pick it clean and they wouldn’t eat bones. Animals would not be a good way to destroy evidence. Beatles maybe, but even they won’t eat things like bone marrow (which has dna)
Maybe so, but rolling stones are even better. If there are many of them, they can bury the body under them so it will never be found. ;-)
Murder by wild animals in the wild would be hard to achieve, IMO. I'd at least go with wild animals in captivity, such as large felines and I'd leave the wolves out of it; they get to be the "big-bads" way too often. Dogs don't need to be starved to attack, they can be trained to do so. If found, the "killer" animal would be euthanized and it's stomach contents studied. I don't know much about murder investigation, but most evidence of murder would probably be circumstantial.
I don't think the investigation would be terribly different from a murder where the victim's body was left in a natural setting. Forensic investigators typically have to deal with the evidence being affected by scavenging, and insect life cycles are even an important point in determining time of death. At one of the body farms, a deer was recently observed eating the bones of a human corpse.
You know what's weird? Animals are almost incapable of killing out of malice, they only kill out of self defense or need to eat. But if an animal kills someone, it will almost definitely be killed("put down"). Humans basically only kill out of malice. But if a human kills someone the death penalty is either completely out of the question, or only got through a hard fought court case (depending on where you live).
As stated before, one of your big problems is getting your victim into that situation without raising suspicion. Just a couple of weeks ago a body was discovered locally. She had been missing for over three years and was found 10 miles from where she was last seen. She was found several hundred yards off of an unmaintained dirt road by someone who had stopped to use the facility/bush. I'm only vaguely familiar with that area but it's not a place many people frequent and I don't know of any campsites close by. COD hasn't been made public but it's been suspicious since the day she disappeared and the location of the body just heightened suspicion. Scavenger animals/insects were doubtless involved over three years. Forensics are trained to take that into account. If you want wild animals to do the dirty work, your victim will need be the type of person who would normally be in places wild animals are found.
