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In October 1986, a 29-year-old nurse and mother was found dead inside of her Polk County, Florida home.
The attack was so vicious that it nearly left her decapitated. Despite the tremendous amount of DNA evidence left behind at the crime scene, investigators were unable to identify her killer for over three decades. But just when everyone thought they had hit a roadblock in the investigation, the authorities got the clue they'd been waiting for. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 274, The Murder of Teresa Lee Sculp.
Thank you.
October 1986, Lakeland, Florida, a city in Polk County along Interstate 4 east of Tampa and west of Orlando.
Known for its unique shops, early 1900s architecture, Lakeland is the most populous city in Polk County. And in the fall of 1986, 29-year-old Teresa Lee Sculls called it her home. But that wasn't always the case. Born on June 13, 1957, Teresa was originally from Cincinnati, Ohio.
a town part of Hamilton County and 900 miles north of Lakeland. But as an adult, Florida became home. Monday, October 27th, 1986, was a rainy day throughout most of Polk County. But for 29-year-old Teresa, her future was as bright as ever. Just one month earlier, she had earned her white cap as a registered nurse, something that she was incredibly proud of.
Becoming a registered nurse is a huge accomplishment for anyone. It takes a lot of studying, different coursework, often lasting years, dedication. And for Teresa, her journey to becoming one was especially challenging. She was a single mother to an eight-year-old son, all while working full-time to support them.
She had climbed her way up at Lakeland Regional Health Medical Center, starting at just 18 years old as a nursing assistant. By 21, she was a phlebotomist, drawing blood. Next came respiratory school and then eventually nursing school. So if anyone was deserving of that white cap, it was someone like her. Here's what her sister, Pam Shade, had to say about what she was like as a nurse. Quote,
She used to cry when she had to stick babies for blood, and she cried when teenagers came in after car wrecks. She liked working in the ICU because she provided comfort to those suffering and their families, end quote. That morning, Monday, October 27th, Teresa went out to breakfast with a few of her hospital coworkers after they got off work. They had all been up all night long working the hospital's graveyard shift.
7 p.m. to 7 a.m., a very long 12-hour shift to be on your feet treating sick patients. So when their shifts ended, they decided to stop at a local restaurant and get some breakfast together before heading home, getting some sleep, and doing it all over again. On top of loving her patients, Teresa also got along great with her fellow nurses, who
She had worked there for over a decade, which meant she had developed some pretty good friendships along the way. The breakfast was fairly unremarkable. It was just a group of nurses getting some food together. The only thing that happened was that sometime while eating, Teresa spilled some tea on herself. So when she got home at around 11, she took off her nursing scrubs and changed into her robe.
She wasn't going to put on a different outfit because she didn't have anywhere to be until that night when she had to go back to the hospital to start another shift. A few hours later at 2.30, she called her mom Betty to see if she could pick up her eight-year-old son Craig from school. This was something that she usually asked of her mom. If Teresa worked the night shift at the hospital, she would usually ask her mom if she could stop by the school and pick Craig up so that she could sleep.
Her regular shift was 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., so she needed to use that daytime in order to get some sleep. So after speaking with her mom sometime around 2.30, Betty went to school and pick up Craig while Teresa stayed at home by herself. But what exactly happened after that, no one knows, because that was the last time that Betty ever heard from her.
Did she let someone inside after getting home and changing into her robe? Or was someone already inside waiting for her? That night, Teresa was a no-show for her shift at Lakeland Regional Health Medical Center. After it had been about an hour and she still hadn't clocked in, the hospital called her mom, Betty, to see if she had heard from her, but she hadn't. After she called asking her to pick up Craig from school, she didn't hear from her again.
So right away, Betty knew that something was wrong. It would have been extremely out of character for her to just be a no-show at work. If she wasn't planning on coming in like she was supposed to, she would have called the hospital to let them know. That was just the kind of employee that she was.
Plus, Betty had just lost one of her sons in an accident just a year and a half before this. So she was already on edge when it came to knowing that her children were safe. So as soon as she found out that Teresa didn't show up to work, she decided to go over to her daughter's house to check on her. Maybe she was just running a little late. Maybe she overslept.
But when she knocked on the front door, no one answered, which was something else pretty concerning. If Teresa was home and she overslept, why wouldn't she answer the door for her own mother? Betty then tried opening the door to let herself inside, but it was locked. That's when she came up with a plan to get inside.
She went into her wallet and pulled out a credit card. And using that card, she was able to jimmy her way through the front door. Next to the door was a hanging paper skeleton for the upcoming Halloween holiday. Once inside the duplex, that's when she saw her. Her daughter Teresa's badly mutilated and lifeless body just lying in the middle of the living room.
But since this was before 911 was universally available, Betty had to come up with a different way to call for help. So she ran to the phone in the kitchen and found a magnet with the sheriff's office phone number on Teresa's refrigerator and called for help. She was fortunate that her daughter had that. As a single mother, she probably thought she would never need it, but she kept it on her refrigerator just in case.
The sheriff's office, she called, was the Polk County Sheriff's Department, and they became the lead agency on the case. All they knew at this point was that a 29-year-old victim had been found dead inside of her home. Her body had been reported by her own mother. They wouldn't know it yet, but this would be an uphill battle from the very start.
When detectives from the Polk County Sheriff's Office arrived at the address that Betty had provided them, this is what the scene looked like. Teresa's body was found in the middle of her living room, covered in blood. She was also still wearing the nightgown that she had put on after getting home from breakfast. So right away, this suggested a possible timeline.
She got off work from the hospital a little after 7 and returned home sometime after that. She put her nursing scrubs in the washing machine because she had accidentally spilt some tea on it. And then around 2.30, she called her mom. So that meant sometime between 2.30, 3 o'clock and 7, she was attacked inside of her house.
And when I say attacked, she was brutally assaulted. Whoever had done this repeatedly stabbed Teresa to the point that she was almost decapitated. She also showed major signs of defensive wounds on her arms and hands, suggesting that she put up a good fight. But she would have been no match to someone yielding a knife.
She had been repeatedly stabbed, had her throat slit, and was nearly decapitated by this person. The condition of her body also painted a pretty terrifying picture of the suspect that they were now searching for. This was a single mom in her late 20s, but now she's been stabbed to death multiple times inside of her very own home.
So the police had no idea what kind of person they were searching for. Was this someone that she knew? A boyfriend? An angry co-worker from the hospital? A serial predator? All options were on the table at this point. Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And in case you missed it, we're going on tour.
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These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. When it came to a sexual assault, the Polk County investigators weren't initially sure. When a female is attacked while home by herself, I think most people assume that this was over something sexual. But there weren't any obvious signs that she had been assaulted.
Now, later on, detectives would say that they did believe that this was a sexually motivated attack. Someone broke into her home, tried to assault her, but Teresa fought back, hence the defensive wounds, and now the assault turned deadly. That was the police's first theory about what they thought could have happened. Nothing had been reported stolen from the home, so robbery didn't make much sense.
Teresa was also a good person without any obvious enemies, so it didn't seem to be over anything personal either. There was no shortage of forensic evidence inside the home for investigators to work with.
The duplex itself was covered in blood, especially in the living room where detectives believe the attack happened. With that many stab wounds, it would have been virtually impossible not to leave behind a bloody crime scene. But it wasn't just the victim's blood. The police knew she had massive defensive wounds, suggesting there was a struggle.
So there was a good chance that some of the blood belonged to the killer. But processing all of the forensic evidence was a different story. This is 1986.
So when it came to processing and collecting forensic evidence like blood and fingerprints, police departments were pretty limited in what they could do. And whatever evidence was collected from a crime scene, there was also very little DNA or forensic testing that could be done with it. So all the blood from inside of Teresa's duplex was collected and the PCSO, Polk County Sheriff's Office, forensic team analyzed it.
They also looked for footprints, fingerprints, trace evidence, anything the suspect could have left behind while inside of the house. Right away, they found something promising. Several blood samples taken from inside of the home didn't match Teresa, the victim. This was something that most police departments could do in the late 1980s.
They could take DNA from a crime scene and do a direct comparison to the victim to see if they were a match or not. So in this case, the PCSO forensic team was able to say that there was definitely unknown DNA left at the crime scene. DNA that didn't belong to Teresa. It belonged to her killer. But the police had an even bigger problem on their hands.
The night that Teresa's body was discovered, it was raining heavily outside. So whatever evidence, blood, shoe prints, trace evidence, the killer might have dragged outside while leaving was long gone by the time the police arrived. The rain would have washed almost everything away. It also could have washed away evidence showing how they got into the house in the first place. Let's talk about that.
The police had already come up with a timeline of when they suspected that Teresa had been killed, but another question was how exactly this person got inside. When Teresa's mom showed up to check on her after missing work, the front door was locked and she had a jimmy her way inside. So this led detectives to come up with a theory about how the suspect could have gotten inside in the first place.
According to her mom, Teresa would have never left the front door unlocked, and she would have never let someone inside that she didn't know. She was an extremely cautious person, especially when her son was around, so there was no way that she would have let someone inside if she didn't know him. She also wouldn't leave her front door unlocked, even if she was home.
Plus, she was only wearing her robe when her body was found, so it seems very unlikely that she was expecting anyone. So according to Betty, the mom, she believed that whoever killed her daughter was probably already waiting inside when she got home, and then they waited for the perfect moment to attack.
Maybe they got in through an open window, a detail that makes this crime even more terrifying. After the DNA and blood samples were collected and determined not to have come from Teresa, they were tucked away in the PCSO evidence room. Whatever type of testing they had available back in 1986 was done and no matches were found.
So that's when detectives did what they had to in order to keep the case moving along, the good old-fashioned boots-on-the-ground approach. They started by knocking on doors in Teresa's neighborhood, asking people if they had heard or seen anything suspicious around the time they thought she was killed.
Sometimes this approach works out. A neighbor does hear or see something, and then it leads to an arrest or at least a possible suspect. But in this case, the police didn't really gain much from speaking with her neighbors. There also weren't any obvious suspects at the time. No jealous ex-boyfriends, no scorned friends or fellow nurses at the hospital, no
Virtually everyone the police spoke to about Teresa and her murder, they all said the same thing. They loved and adored her. No one could think of a single person who would want her dead. So the good old fashioned boots on the ground approach didn't yield much information to move the case forward.
Within a matter of weeks, the case was cold. The rain had probably washed away a lot of the forensic evidence outside of the home. The blood found inside couldn't be matched to anyone, and none of the neighbors saw anything. This also happened long before cell phones. There was also no video evidence because she had been killed inside of her house. So relatively quickly, the case was at a standstill.
This was what I meant by the police had no idea just how much of an uphill battle this was and how the case would turn out.
Although what happened troubled investigators, this was especially hard for Teresa's family, close friends, and her co-workers from the hospital. Her death meant that a young boy would have to grow up knowing that the one person he could always rely on, his mother, had been killed in such a brutal and callous way. However, fortunately for him, he wasn't at his mom's house that afternoon.
If his grandmother hadn't picked him up from school that day, who knows? He might have been killed as well. Especially if her mom's theory was right about the killer waiting inside of her house to get home. Here's what Betty said in a CNN article about what it was like losing her daughter. Quote,
Over the next 13 years, Teresa's case file sat on PCSO investigators' desks. But by 2000, a lot had changed when it came to DNA. In particular, many police departments were now using the National DNA Database, CODIS.
If they had unknown DNA collected from a crime scene, they would upload it to CODIS to see if there was a direct match. So in 2000, the police tried to do that. They took what they believed to be the killer's blood that had been collected from the interior side of the front door near the doorknob, and then they uploaded it to CODIS.
Once it was there, the sample would be compared to convicted offenders who had been required to submit their DNA. It would also be compared to unsolved crime scene evidence, as well as missing persons who had their DNA in the system. But, unfortunately, there were no matches. Whoever Teresa's killer was didn't have their DNA in CODIS in 2000.
But looking back on that, that really shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. By the year 2000, there were only 22,000 forensic profiles and only 490,000 convicted offender profiles, according to the FBI.
Forensic profiles were DNA profiles that had been collected from crime scenes, and convicted offender profiles came from people who had been convicted of a crime and were required to submit their DNA to the database. Now, to put these numbers into perspective, today, those numbers are a lot higher.
As of January 2025, there are over 18 million offender profiles in the system.
So the number of profiles in CODIS during this time back in 2000, which 25 years ago, there weren't that many, which meant it wasn't too surprising that Teresa's killer didn't have his DNA in the database. So after they tried CODIS in 2000, it was back to the beginning.
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Another 15 years went by with seemingly zero answers, zero suspects, zero possible explanations for a motive, nothing. But that didn't mean that Polk County investigators gave up. They remained determined to work the case and search for her killer.
Throughout the course of the investigation, all the DNA that had been collected from Teresa's house had been analyzed multiple times using new and different technology. They created an STR profile from it, a short tandem repeat profile. They regularly uploaded it to CODIS to see if there were any updates. They did direct comparisons if they had the name of a possible suspect.
However, for the next several years, none of this yielded many positive results, and the case remained fairly stagnant for more than three decades. By 2022, the sheriff's office made a huge push to get the case moving again. It had become one of the area's oldest unsolved murders, and by 2022, a lot had changed.
So they decided to team up with Othram Inc., a DNA genealogy company that works with law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and worldwide. If you listened to the episode I put out two weeks ago on the murder of Esther Gonzalez from Southern California, then you know all about Othram.
Or if you've been listening to Forensic Tales for a while now, then chances are you're very familiar with the kind of work that they do. So when it came to Teresa's case, the PCSO had done everything they could with the DNA evidence. There weren't any direct matches in CODIS and they had hit a dead end.
So in 2022, they contacted Othram in Texas to see if they could retest the unknown DNA evidence and possibly find a match. But Teresa's case certainly wasn't the only unsolved murder out there.
According to the Murder Accountability Project, between 1965 and 2021, there were more than 330,000 unsolved murders just in the United States alone.
So it's not hard to imagine that companies like Authram receive a lot of phone calls from police departments all over the world asking for their help on just these types of cases. But luckily for the investigators assigned to this case, Authram agreed to help.
Over the years, dozens of detectives were assigned Teresa's case, but some of the recent ones were Detective Matt Nebold and Detective Jason McPherson with the Polk County Sheriff's Office. They had both been assigned the case since 2015 and done anything and everything possible to help this family get justice.
Detective Neibold even had Teresa's picture sitting on his desk, and he vowed to her family that he wouldn't retire until he found her killer.
So detectives Niebold and McPherson were the ones who sent the unknown DNA to Othram in Texas, and here were the results. Othram's scientists used what they call forensic-grade genome sequencing to develop a comprehensive genealogical profile from the DNA of the unknown male suspect.
Again, for those unfamiliar, forensic-grade genome sequencing is Authrum's proprietary method of developing high-quality DNA profiles that can be uploaded to various DNA databases. Once they had the genealogical profile, they used their in-house forensic genetic genealogy team to look for the suspect's relatives.
They knew the killer didn't have his DNA in CODIS, so being able to find just one of his relatives would be the next best thing. This process is done by uploading the profile to genealogy websites like Ancestry and 23andMe. This process took Othram about six months. Then once they found a few close relatives...
They built family trees to try and get closer and closer to Teresa's killer. This process took another two to three months, but the wait was well worth it in the end.
Othram had developed a usable genealogical profile of the suspect, uploaded it to publicly searchable databases to identify his relatives, then built family trees until they found the person that they believed killed Teresa all those decades earlier, Donald Douglas.
As soon as Authram believed they found a promising suspect, they were the right age at the time of the crime, they lived or worked in the area where the victim was killed, they turned that information over to PCSO. It's not their job to go out and make any arrests. Their job is to simply do the forensic testing in order to generate these new investigative leads.
So once Othram identified Donald Douglas as the likely contributor of the unknown DNA found at Teresa's crime scene, they turned that information over to the authorities. Initially, the police thought this discovery was a huge step forward. They had a good suspect. But as soon as they ran a background check on him, they were met with even more frustration. He was already dead.
Not only were they disappointed that he wouldn't be able to be brought to justice, but they were also disappointed because this meant they wouldn't be able to get a DNA sample from him in order to conduct a direct comparison. And to make matters worse in this case, Donald Douglas had been cremated when he died in 2008 of natural causes.
So they couldn't even go and exhume his body to get that DNA sample for that direct comparison. And since he died of natural causes, no autopsy was ever performed. So it wasn't like his DNA was saved anywhere anyway. When his body was cremated, all of his DNA went with him. But that didn't mean they were entirely out of luck.
the police could still get the evidence they needed to prove that, yes, he did in fact kill Teresa over 30 years earlier. PCSO detective Matt Niebold was able to track down one of Douglas' biological sons who agreed to provide them with a DNA sample.
The police told him what his father was being accused of doing, and the son agreed to work with them. After that, they performed what is called a kinsnip, a test that can determine if two people are related. Here's a direct quote about it from Othram's website. Quote,
Kinsnip allows investigators to infer kinship in closely and distantly related individuals, combining the speed of traditional forensic STR testing with the power of advanced SNP testing, end quote. When the results came back, they were what everyone had hoped for and expected.
Douglas's DNA matched the DNA that was found at the crime scene. He was Teresa's killer. The DNA profile indicated a 100% confidence of a parent-child biological relationship compared to Douglas's son's DNA profile. A direct quote from the Polk County Sheriff's Office about the testing. This is what detectives said about what it was like after contacting his son. Quote,
He was just mortified, just mortified. His dad had never been arrested before, never had any trouble. And here we are telling him that his dad didn't just murder somebody. It wasn't like he had a fight in a bar and hit someone. He stabbed and cut and mutilated this lady, end quote.
On October 16, 2023, the Polk County Sheriff's Office announced through a press release that the 37-year mystery of who killed 29-year-old nurse Teresa Scullf had been solved. Her killer all of those years ago was the man by the name of Donald Douglas. Through his living son's DNA, they were able to match Douglas' DNA to the crime scene DNA.
Here's everything that we know about him. The name Donald Douglas wasn't new to investigators. In fact, they had interviewed him right after the murder happened in 1986. He quite literally lived in Teresa's backyard. He lived in a duplex that was directly behind hers. So when the police went around the neighborhood talking to people, they stopped by his place and questioned him about the murder.
But at the time, detectives had no reason to suspect him. He was fully cooperative with them, answering every question they threw at him. He said he knew nothing about what happened, and because he had never been arrested before, his DNA was never uploaded to CODIS. So that's why they didn't get a match in the national database all of those years before.
Also, if they knew that he had never been arrested before and he didn't have a criminal record, why would they suspect him? Just because he lived directly behind the victim's house, there was no reason for the police to consider him a suspect. So, he never was. At the time Teresa was murdered, Donald Douglas was her neighbor. He was 33 years old and not married.
He lived a seemingly normal life before the murder, and afterward, he went right back to that normal life. He was never arrested for a crime, never suspected in any other rapes or homicides that we know of, until he died in 2008 from natural causes. If it weren't for his biological living son, who has remained anonymous, investigators may have never gotten the DNA results they needed.
Following the October 2023 press conference announcing Douglas as the suspect, Teresa's family publicly thanked the son, saying that he helped them when he didn't have to. When it comes to life after what happened, Teresa's son Craig has grown up to have two daughters of his own.
One of them was even named after her grandmother, Teresa Wooders, who was 25 years old at the time of the October 2023 press conference. Teresa's sister, Pam Shade, was also present, saying that she hoped finding her sister's killer would give hope to others who might be in the same situation. Hope to other people with unsolved murder cases.
We also would like to offer encouragement to other homicide victims' families. She said that at the press conference. Don't give up. Don't give up. And as long as detectives don't give up, you don't give up. End quote.
Then finally, Teresa's mother, Betty, the one who found her body all of those years earlier. She was also at the press conference. I'm 84 years old, she said. I lived to see this done. I think that's why I lived so long, end quote. The closing remarks were to directly thank Othram for their help in the case. Here's a direct quote from PCSO Sheriff Grady Judd, quote,
We are extremely grateful for the assistance from Othram, who provided us with a missing element in this investigation and ultimately enabled this case to finally be solved. Once our detectives had that, they were able to climb through a family tree that led to the identity of Teresa's killer. I also want to thank Mr. Douglas's son, who didn't hesitate to assist our detectives."
After 37 years, the killer responsible for Teresa Sculls' death has finally been identified. But is there justice? Well, since the man responsible died years before the police could link him to the crime, some people might say he managed to escape justice. Is there closure? Well, I don't know. I guess it depends on who you ask.
There's closure because Teresa's family can finally go to bed at night knowing who took her life away. But is there ever really closure after something like this happens? Especially when a clear motive hasn't been established. Why did Douglas target Teresa that day?
Was he waiting inside of her duplex like her mother suspected? Did he intend to sexually assault her? But since she fought back, as evidenced by the defensive wounds, the attack turned deadly. What was the motive to commit such a terrible crime? Then go on and live a seemingly normal life with no other arrests. What could possibly drive someone to do something like this?
Thankfully, with companies like Authram and advancements in DNA testing, we're solving more and more of these cold cases and getting answers to deserving families.
To learn more about how you can support companies like Authrum, I encourage you to visit DNAsolves.com. Like I've mentioned in previous episodes, this podcast is a proud monthly donor to Authrum and their work to solve these old cold cases. If you'd like to do the same, contribute financially to a case, or simply submit your DNA to the database, please visit DNAsolves.com to learn more.
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