Deputies Crack 1986 Nurse Murder Cold Case, DNA Points to Deceased Distant Cousin

Authorities recently announced the resolution of a 37-year-old cold case involving the brutal murder of a nurse, who was nearly decapitated.

Teresa Lee Scalf, 29, was tragically killed by her third cousin, Donald Douglas. The familial connection was previously unknown due to Douglas being born out of wedlock, Florida detectives revealed.

On Oct. 27, 1986, Douglas, then 33, is suspected of having entered Scalf's home and stabbed her to death.

Scalf had spoken to her mother, Betty Scalf, around 2:30 p.m. that day. Alarmed when her daughter failed to appear at work, Betty visited her daughter's home later that evening. She found the house locked and resorted to using a credit card to unlock the door, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office reported.

Betty soon discovered her daughter deceased, her body horrifically mutilated. Reports show Teresa's head was nearly severed, and her hands bore significant defensive wounds. Although investigators identified blood from Teresa and another individual at the scene, they found no immediate suspect.

Decades passed, but the killer was closer than anyone realized. Teresa’s neighbor, also her long-lost cousin, emerged as a suspect in the crime. Investigators theorize that Douglas entered the home looking for sex and murdered Scalf when she refused his advances.

Initially, investigators put the blood in the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) database in the 2000s, but this yielded no results. 

New DNA technology, with assistance from Othram, Inc., a private lab specializing in forensic genetics, revealed that Douglas was the killer.

In 2022, detectives teamed up with Othram to analyze the evidence and discovered an unrelated affair from 1949 had occurred, resulting in Douglas' third cousin — someone he probably did not know — having a child out of wedlock. It was through this distant relationship that law enforcement began to investigate him as a suspect.

Forensic scientists honed in on Douglas after obtaining a DNA sample from a son of Donald Douglas. The results confirmed that the blood found at the murder scene belonged to Donald Douglas, as the DNA profile indicated a 100% confidence of a parent/child biological relationship compared to Douglas’ son’s DNA profile.

“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, Teresa’s sister said Monday at a press conference. “She had told us about him, but she never described him.”