Melissa Pope, MA

Melissa Pope, MA, joined the NamUs team as a Regional Program Specialist in 2022. Her background is in medicolegal death investigation, human identification, and biological anthropology. Ms. Pope spent eight years as an autopsy technician, death investigator, and investigations supervisor for the District 5, District 6, and Hillsborough County Medical Examiner’s Offices in Florida. Additionally, she served as the cold case program manager at the Florida Institute for Forensic Anthropology and Applied Science and as lab personnel for the Forensic Anthropology Lab at the University of South Florida (USF). There, she worked to bring cold cases up to current investigative standards through primary document review, skeletal assessments, and forensic archaeology field methods. Ms. Pope has participated in several human rights projects, including the cemetery excavation at the Dozier School for Boys and a mass grave investigation from the Nigerian Civil War.