BOONVILLE, Ind. — The infamy and villainy that animal welfare activists see when they hear Shayna Burko’s name is tinged with irony, too. They once saw her as one of their own.
Burko, 30, was sentenced to four years in prison in Warrick County Monday on her third animal cruelty conviction. She had pleaded guilty but mentally ill. On Wednesday, her attorney filed an appeal of the prison sentence.
In all, Deputy Prosecutor Jon Schaefer said in court Monday, Burko has abused and neglected at least 70 animals over nearly a decade, leaving many of them to suffer slow, agonizing deaths.
“She basically just leaves them in the house and goes on her way,” Schaefer said.
But there was a time, before Burko’s first animal cruelty case in 2018, when the Vanderburgh Humane Society (VHS) saw her and her mother, Kimberley Burko, as part of its extended family of animal lovers and supporters. VHS staff and volunteers knew and liked the Burkos.
“(Shayna Burko) had adopted several animals from us over the years,” VHS Director of Advancement Amanda Coburn said outside court Monday. “I don’t know when (the Burkos) started, but 2015, 2016, and then in 2017, they had been visitors. We knew them. They were very nice.
“Which is why it was a little bit scary when all this first happened,” Coburn said. “We had no reason at all to believe that this was going to be how things turned out.”
When the news about the first of Shayna Burko’s three animal cruelty cases broke in 2018, Coburn said, VHS and other animal welfare organizations stopped adopting animals out to her. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t obtain animals from random people, Facebook, breeders, friends.
Marza, ‘a shepherd mix, beige with a black face’
Kimberley Burko is at this writing facing a jury trial on July 7 on three felony counts of cruelty to an animal stemming from the same January 2025 incident that sent Shayna Burko to prison on Monday. The women lived together at the time.
When Shayna Burko was convicted a second time on seven felony animal cruelty charges in 2023 in a case involving malnourished and dismembered animals, Kimberley Burko also was hit with seven counts. But her charges were misdemeanors, given that she had no previous animal cruelty convictions.
Shayna Burko got probation in that case, confounding Vanderburgh County prosecutors who had sought prison time for her. Six of Kimberley Burko’s seven misdemeanor counts were dismissed and she pleaded guilty to one as part of a plea arrangement.
But none of that had happened yet when the Burkos showed up at VHS on October 26, 2017 looking for a dog from Puerto Rico to adopt. At the request of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), VHS had sent a team to the Indianapolis Regional Airport to take custody of 11 dogs so shelters in Puerto Rico would have space to house animals displaced by Hurricane Maria.
The Burkos were interviewed by the Courier & Press that day — a little less than four months before Shayna Burko would be charged with animal cruelty for the first time in February 2018.
They were there, Kimberley Burko would tell the newspaper, for a specific dog — “a shepherd mix, beige with a black face,” she said.
“We saw her online and fell in love with her,” Burko said with a smile.
The dog’s name: Marza. Shayna Burko laughed softly when the Courier & Press asked whether Marza would keep her name. Probably not, she said.
But Marza ended up in pieces, Melanie Ransom told the Courier & Press in Boonville Monday.
Ransom, a foster caregiver for VHS, said she fostered Marza before the little dog came under the Burkos’ control. She called her Flower.
“She had survived a hurricane and being flown across the ocean,” Ransom said, unable to keep the pain and anger from clouding her eyes.
The 2018 case involved five counts of cruelty to an animal in Warrick County. Shayna Burko pleaded guilty to three Class A misdemeanor counts and the other two counts were dismissed. She received a suspended jail sentence and a year of probation, court records show.
Behind the disposition of the case, prosecutor Schaefer said this week, are facts that are hard to hear.
“(Burko) admitted to leaving six dogs, four or five cats, four or five snakes, and two birds in her residence for over a month without checking on them,” Schaefer said. “The house’s floor was covered in feces, and the three dogs that were alive had cannibalized the other dogs.”
Melanie Ransom felt immense relief as she watched a deputy put Burko in handcuffs Monday. She had heard defense attorney Barry Blackard’s arguments that Burko is mentally ill and that she was abused physically and sexually earlier in life.
But that doesn’t excuse everything, she said.
Ransom has followed Burko’s cases. She knows about Burko’s second conviction for animal cruelty in 2023, the one that frustrated prosecutors who had sought prison time only to see Burko get probation.
In that case, the Vanderburgh County Prosecutor’s Office reported officers found “a (dead) German Shepherd in a kennel with bags of dog food next to it, a decapitated dog, a dog missing a paw (but still alive), and a dog limb found in a hallway.”
Standing outside a Warrick County courtroom after Circuit Judge Greg A. Granger sentenced Burko to four years in prison, Ransom spoke with quiet intensity.
“The fact that she walked away. How does that even happen?” she said. “Leaving them. Leaving them.
“One dog was found in a crate with a bag of dog food beside the crate and the dog starved to death. He couldn’t get to the dog food right outside the crate and she didn’t go back.”
Prosecutor: Burko has never explained her actions
Burko could have spoken in court Monday, but she declined the opportunity. Her voice barely above a whisper, she answered pro forma questions about her understanding of her rights by saying, “no, your honor,” or “yes, your honor.” At times while Blackard spoke on her behalf, she nodded her head.
But that was all anyone got from her.
In the 2018 case, a Warrick County Sheriff’s Department report states that Burko “admitted to not being at the residence for at least a month” and “admitted to leaving 6 dogs, 4 or 5 cats, 4 or 5 snakes, and 2 birds in the residence.”
“While waiting for the fire department, I spoke with Burko,” an officer’s report states. “I asked Burko what the dogs were drinking. Burko told me she did not know. Burko told me she had not been at the residence for at least a month.”
And that was it. If Burko offered an explanation for her actions, it wasn’t in the report.
A Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office report on Burko’s second animal cruelty case, which began in 2022, states that Burko provided a key to the residence where dead and starving animals were found and gave deputies consent to enter the residence.
Burko was read her Miranda rights and signed a waiver agreeing to speak to a detective. But the report, dated July 9, 2022, doesn’t state that Burko provided any explanation for the fact that animals at the residence in Vanderburgh County were neglected.
“Shayna advised she had been caring for the dogs and the last time she was there was in late May,” the report says. “She advised her mother; Kimberly Burko told her she was going to move back in to the residence but never did.”
Shayna and Kimberley Burko were living together in Newburgh at the time, the report states, so Shayna Burko knew her mother hadn’t moved.
The report on Burko’s most recent case — the one that earned her a prison sentence — is no more edifying.
“Shayna was not present when we first arrived but later arrived at the house to assist in gathering the animals,” it states.
Schaefer, who prosecuted the case, said Burko has acknowledged her comings and goings that left animals dead or near starving — but he knows of no statements she has made explaining, apologizing for or justifying any of it.
“In no police report in any of these filings has there ever been a statement saying — why?” Schaefer said. “You would think that a normal person would be embarrassed, and they’d say, ‘Oh my God, I totally forgot or, ‘Ive been dealing with all these issues.'”
Burko’s true feelings are a mystery to those who remain grieved over her actions, said VHS’s Coburn.
“We did know who (the Burkos) were, which makes it a little more likely that you might trust someone, if they have been in your facility before, and they’re visitors and they’re very nice and they’re kind and they seem to really love animals,” Coburn said.
But this isn’t just a classic case of an animal lover taking on too many animals, Coburn insisted. Shayna Burko is financially stable enough to care for a large number of animals. Burko’s own attorney said in court that she is financially stable.
But a dog in Burko’s care still starved to death with dog food sitting a few feet away. A shipping container of gerbils sat unopened for almost three months in her home, and they starved to death.
VHS workers had welcomed Shayna Burko and her mother’s apparent willingness to care for animals, Coburn said. They knew them.
“You hear about murderers and people say, ‘I never expected this from them,'” she said. “This is just another kind of example of that.”
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Imprisoned animal abuser was once part of VHS family
Reporting by Thomas B. Langhorne, Evansville Courier & Press / Evansville Courier & Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Thomas B. Langhorne, Evansville Courier & Press | USA TODAY Network
