Dozens of students walked past the seemingly empty Spruce Cottage yesterday, nearly all of them unaware of the bloodbath behind the locked doors.

Fake blood, of course.

The crime scene in the cottage, located behind Ritenour Building, is actually a lab for students of Robert Shaler, director of forensic science, where the goal is simple -- solve the murder.

"There were two bodies, but one was put into the hospital already," Shaler explained. "The students were given a

police report, placed yellow tags near evidence and are now dusting for prints and photographing everything."

With that knowledge, the two sections of Forensic Science 297A (Principles of Crime Scene Investigation) began a competition to construct an accurate depiction of the crime by the end of the semester.

The mock crime scene is an idea original to the former chief forensic biologist for the New York City medical examiner's office, though Shaler said there's another like it at West Virginia University.

This is the first semester for the program, but Shaler said he is confident of its success and may expand the program in the future.

Recently, the popularity of the course has grown as wide as NBC -- it will appear on The Today Show, Shaler said.

"This past Sunday and Monday, camera crews filmed the setting up of the crime scene and everything the students did," Shaler said.

Both Shaler and several students were interviewed over the two-day process for the episode scheduled to air March 27, he said. The segment, however, may be aired anytime that week.

In the basement of the three-story cottage, Shaler monitors the students on two screens connected to cameras in most rooms. Here, he can offer tips to students in specific rooms or be asked to come upstairs to see something.

Team leader Dave Jaszcar (junior-forensic science) asked Shaler a question about a stain the team found on a chair.

Upstairs, the students observed the spot using an alternate light source and colored eyeglass lenses, which are used to make objects unseen by the naked eye visible.

Shaler told the students they shouldn't worry about the stain. It was not part of the crime scene. He said a blood mark on the floor was a sign of a struggle and encouraged students to focus on that instead.

Besides picking up blood samples, students also focused on matching the dirty footprint below the window.

Outside the window, a cast was made of a footprint in the mud. The cast is analyzed in the basement, next to a fingerprint dusting station.

"We've got the length of the shoe, and we know it's a tennis shoe, but we don't have enough to find a match yet," Jaszcar said. "There aren't too many matches, though; it shouldn't be too hard."

There aren't too many possible matches because the available matches are the forensic science faculty and the 30 students in the class, Jaszcar said.

He said the program is not entirely what he expected.

"There is so much organization that I never thought of," he said. "You have to log every picture, who took it, what time and date, what was around it and so on."

But that doesn't mean he doesn't enjoy what he's doing, he said.

He said he believes student interest in the program will expand and strongly recommends it to students interested in forensic science.

"But you've got to love this," Jaszcar said. "It's not like CSI. They solve crimes in a day or two. It really takes a few months just to analyze everything."

The ultimate reward, he said, comes at the end of the semester.

"[Shaler] said that by the end of the program, with a little bit of training, we could be doing this professionally," he said.