Donald Douglas (right) somehow made his way into Teresa Scalf’s home on Oct. 27, 1986, and murdered her, authorities said. Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd (center) suggested it was due to some sort of “sexual rejection.” (Images: Polk County Sheriff’s Office)
After almost 37 years, deputies say they solved a nurse’s brutal, near-decapitation murder, and although it’s too late to arrest the now-dead suspect, family members of victim Teresa Lee Scalf, 29, say they have some degree of closure.
“We don’t have closure for grief,” her sister Lynn Scalf said in a press conference on Monday. “There will never be closure when you have something this violent against a decent human being. It’s not human. It’s not humane. So for that, we will have no closure, but we have closure of questioning constantly because when it’s a deliberate act, you question everybody — her best friend, her ex-boyfriend, the cousins, anyone she’s run into in the last five years.”
Deputies in Polk County, Florida, say someone made their way into Teresa Scalf’s home on Oct. 27, 1986, and stabbed her. Her mother, Betty Scalf, had previously spoken to her at 2:30 p.m., then went to her home at about 8 or 9 p.m. after Teresa did not show up to work. Detective Matthew Newbold told reporters Monday that the residence had been locked. Betty Scalf had to get in with a credit card, the victim’s sister said. Once she got inside, she found Teresa Scalf dead.
Authorities described a grisly scene. Teresa Scalf’s head was nearly cut off, and she had “significant defensive wounds on her hands” from fighting her attacker. Investigators found blood — not just hers but another person’s — at the scene, but there was no sign of a possible suspect.
Teresa Scalf was killed just a year-and-a-half after her 23-year-old brother died in a diving accident.
“The first thing that I would like to say is Teresa was a wonderful person, the most loving person,” another sister, Pam Shade, said, with the victim’s mother, sister Lynn Scalf, and granddaughter Teresa Wooten at her side. “She didn’t deserve this. Our family didn’t deserve this.”
After all these years, it turned out that the killer was nearby. Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said that it was neighbor Donald Douglas, then 33. But Douglas didn’t land on their radar as a possible suspect at the time. “He had the right answers” during questioning during a routine canvass and had no obvious injuries that detectives knew about, Judd said.
Developing DNA technology informed the trajectory of this case. Authorities put the suspect’s DNA in the CODIS database in the 2000s, but to no result. It was in 2022 that detectives teamed up with the genetic genealogy database Othram to analyze the evidence.
The case ultimately hinged on an unrelated affair from 1949. Douglas’ third cousin — someone he probably did not even know — had a child out of wedlock, Judd said. It was through that distant relation that investigators zeroed in on him.
Douglas was already dead, having passed away from natural causes at the age of 54 in 2008, and his remains were cremated. But investigators spoke to his son, who willingly gave up a DNA sample. He was “mortified” to find the results, Judd said. Authorities said testing confirmed his father was the killer. Douglas had apparently never been arrested in his life.
Judd suggested the motive was some sort of “sexual rejection.” Investigators think he harbored some unrequited desire for Teresa Scalf, and he became mad about it.
“Teresa had told us about some creepy neighbor that had showed up at her house with what looked like he had yanked a flower out of the ground and slapped it into a pot, and he was sort of stalkerish,” Lynn Scalf said Monday. “She had told us about him, but she never described him.”
When Betty Scalf took to the microphone, she said, “All I want to say is, I’m 84 years old. I lived to see this done. I think that’s why I lived so long.
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