Affair in 1949 leads to accused killer of nurse found dead in 1986, Florida cops say

Nearly four decades after a nurse was found dead in her Florida home, deputies have identified the suspected killer, thanks to an illicit affair, according to a sheriff’s office.

On Oct. 27, 1986, 29-year-old Teresa Lee Scalf was found dead by her mother after she didn’t show up for work, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said during an Oct. 16 news conference.

She had been “brutally” attacked, the sheriff’s office said in an accompanying news release.

Judd said Scalf was covered in “defensive wounds,” and her neck had been cut to the point where her head was almost detached.

“It was violent, and it was horrible,” Judd said.

Scalf’s unknown killer had left some blood on her body, Judd said, but without the technology to analyze it, her case went cold.

In the early 2000s, the blood sample was entered into the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, in the hopes the accused killer had been arrested at another point in time or by another agency and their DNA collected, Judd said.

The sample sat for decades without a match.

An ‘illicit affair’

In 2022, an investigator with the sheriff’s office began working with Othram Inc., a DNA genealogy company that works with law enforcement agencies to create genetic profiles to help solve cold cases.

With a genetic profile in hand, investigators began looking through genealogies and family histories.

Investigators tracked people related to the profile, all the way to a third cousin who had a child outside of her marriage in 1949 with a neighbor, Judd said.

Her “illicit affair” pointed investigators toward a new line of the family tree, and they tracked the line up to the time of her killing to a man named Donald Douglas, a former neighbor of Scalf, Judd said.

Douglas died of natural causes at age 54 in 2008, the sheriff’s office said, but the investigators reached out to his son and asked for a DNA sample to confirm the suspected killer’s identity.

He agreed, Judd said, and after 37 years of searching, investigators confirmed the blood on Scalf’s body belonged to Douglas.

Douglas, who was 33 years old at the time of Scalf’s death, operated an electrical company with his brother and lived behind Scalf in the same neighborhood, Judd said.

During his life, Douglas was never arrested, so his DNA was never entered into CODIS, Judd said.

“We believe it was a sexual rejection,” Judd said during the news conference. “We saw a lot of defensive wounds. She never had a relationship with him. So we believe that he was angry and upset because she wouldn’t have a relationship with him.”

Judd said Douglas was interviewed during a neighborhood canvass immediately after her Scalf’s death, but he was not considered a suspect at the time.

‘Tell your sisters’

“Teresa had told us about some creepy neighbor that had showed up at her house with what looked like he had yanked a flower up out of the ground and slapped it into a pot,” her sister Lynn Scalf said during the news conference. “He was sort of stalkerish, and she had told us about him, but she never described him. So anybody, but especially ladies, if someone’s being creepy, don’t just tell your sisters, tell them what he looks like.”

Teresa Scalf was a trauma nurse at a Lakeland hospital and encouraged her family to go into the medical field, her sister Pam Shade said in the news conference.

“Teresa was a wonderful person, the most loving person,” Shade said. “She didn’t deserve this. My family didn’t deserve this.”

Scalf was killed about a month after receiving her registered nursing license, Shade said.

“I’ve been a nurse (for) 38 years now,” Shade said. “My brother is a trauma nurse, my sister works in mental health, my mother worked at the hospital for 25 years, all due to her. It was all due to her.”

Lynn Scalf said Teresa Scalf had two bumper stickers on the back of her car, one advocating for the creation of 911 in Florida and another encouraging organ donation.

Lakeland is about 35 miles east of Tampa.

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