Detectives Solve Murder Of Young Nurse 37 Years Later

LAKELAND, FL — For eight years, a photograph of Teresa Lee Scalf, wearing a circa 1980s white nurse's uniform and the traditional nurse's cap, occupied a prominent place on the wall of Polk County sheriff's Detective Matthew Newbold's office.

He never met Scalf. By the time he inherited her murder case in 2015, nearly 30 years had gone by during which at least two other Polk County sheriff's cold case detectives worked on Scalf's case.

"But he kept that picture of her on his wall and would call me every so often to ask a question or update me on the case," said Scalf's sister, Pam Shade. "He told me he would not retire until he solved this."

And Newbold kept his promise, said Shade. After 37 years, Teresa Scalf's family now knows the name of her killer.

The brutal murder of the 29-year-old registered nurse, who worked in the trauma center at Lakeland General Hospital (now Lakeland Regional Health) might never have been solved if not for the advent of DNA technology and the tenacity of Newbold and David Nutting, the first detective to investigate the homicide when it occurred on Oct. 27, 1986.

Nutting went on to retire as a cold case detective with the Orange County Sheriff's Office and now serves as the law enforcement liaison for Orthram Inc., a private Houston, Texas-based, lab specializing in the use of forensic genetic genealogy to solve cold cases.

Pam Shade described her sister, Teresa, as a kind, caring person whose life was devoted to helping others. Teresa Scalf was only 19 years old when she became a nursing assistant and continued her studies, eventually becoming a certified registered trauma nurse.

In fact, said Shade, Teresa Scalf influenced nearly her entire family to follow her example.

"My sister signed me up for nursing school when I got out of the military, and now I've been a registered nurse for 38 years," said Shade.

Teresa Scalf's mother, Betty, also worked as a nurse at Lakeland General Hospital for 25 years. Her brother became a trauma nurse and another sister pursued a career in mental health.

"She was such a wonderful person," said Shade of her sister, Teresa. "She didn't deserve what happened to her."

It was on Oct. 27, 1986, that the hospital notified Betty Scalf that her daughter hadn't shown up for her night shift at the hospital.

Betty Scalf rushed to her daughter's home in Lakeland around, arriving around 8 or 9 p.m. There was no answer to her knocks and the door was locked so Betty Scalf used a credit card to jimmy open the front door.

When she walked in, she was greeted by a gruesome scene. Her daughter, dressed in her house robe, had been repeatedly stabbed and cut in a maniacal frenzy. One cut had nearly severed Scalf's head. Wounds on Scalf's hands and arms indicated that she tried to fight off her attacker.

"It was a vicious attack," said Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, who witnessed the scene. "I remember the case vividly. It was violent and it was horrible."

Investigators believe Scalf's killer broke into her home through a sliding glass door at the back of the house and killed the young nurse around 3:30 p.m.

By the time Betty Scalf arrived and found her daughter's blood-drenched body, it had been raining for several hours, washing away any footprints or trails of blood the killer may have left behind. Even the sheriff's K-9s were unable to detect the killer's scent.

Deputies canvassed the neighborhood, seeking witnesses or anyone who was acting suspiciously. Among those they interviewed was 33-year-old Donald Douglas, who owned D & D Electric Co. with his brother and lived in a house behind Scalf's home.

He was single and had taken a cursory interest in a romantic relationship with Scalf.

"He showed up one day with a flower he yanked out of ground and put in a pot," Shade said. But her sister thought he was "creepy" and wanted nothing to do with him, said Shade.

Investigators interviewed Douglas but Grady said they found nothing in his manner to indicate that he had anything to do with the crime. And he had no visible wounds that indicated that Scalf tried to fight him off.

"We talked to him at the time but there was nothing out of the ordinary," Judd said. "He was never on the radar. He had all the right answers and no injuries we could see."

At that time, DNA analysis hadn't been invented. But Nutting had the foresight to preserve blood samples from the crime scene, both Scalf's blood and the killer's blood.

In 2000 when the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) was established, the sheriff's office submitted the preserved blood samples to the national database but there was no match.

That's because the CODIS database is made up of samples from convicted offenders and missing persons.

Douglas had never been arrested so there was no reason for his DNA to be in the system.

He died of natural causes in 2008 at the age of 54, and his body was cremated.

Twenty years went by and scientific advances made it possible for average people to trace their ancestry using samples of their DNA. Hundreds of thousands of people consented to have their DNA added to a public database so they could find long-lost relatives.

In 2022, the Polk County Sheriff's Office partnered with Othram Inc., and Newbold submitted the samples preserved from Teresa Scalf's murder scene.

Newbold figured it would lead to another dead end. To his surprise, Orthram came back with a match to a child born out of wedlock in 1949. When Orthram traced the child's genealogy, they discovered the child was the third cousin of someone investigators had interviewed shortly after the murder — Donald Douglas.

Newbold asked Douglas' son if he'd be willing to submit a blood sample.

"The son was totally cooperative," said Judd.

When the results came back, Judd said Douglas' son was in for the shock of his life. According to Orthram's analysis, he was the son of the man who had murdered Teresa Scalf.

Although they'll never truly know the reason why, "we think she sexually rejected him and he got angry and killer her," Judd said.

Scalf's mother, Betty, who is now 84 years old, believes her longevity is due to the fact that she could never rest in peace without knowing who killed her daughter.

Judd marveled at Betty Scalf's strength and tenacity over the years, noting that her 23-year-old son died in a diving accident only a year and a half before her daughter was murdered.

Betty Scalf was equally amazed at the sheriff's detectives' refusal file her daughter's case away in a box to gather dust.

"I want to thank law enforcement. They didn't give up all these years and, due to their diligence in preserving the evidence, we now have the answers we've been waiting for," said Betty Scalf.

She added that Douglas' son and other family members bear no blame for the crime.

"The family needs to be left alone and not vilified," she said.

For those still awaiting answers, Scalf said her story proves that patience has its rewards.

"I would like to encourage other families," she said. "Don't give up."

Judd also commended the determination of his cold case detectives.

"We worked and we worked and we worked and we never gave up on this case," he said. "It was a long, painstaking process that took literally thousands of hours."

This is one of 106 crimes solved through Orthram Inc., said Nutting.

But, according to the Murder Accountability Project, which tracks unsolved homicides in America, 333,000 families are still awaiting closure.

"There will never really be closure for families of these kinds of crimes," said Betty Scalf. "But at least we now know who is responsible."