Detective who wrongly accused heroic incest rape survivor deserves "death letter" from prosecutors
Failed Det. Melissa Turnage owns Polk Sheriff Grady Judd, which means she owns State Attorney Brian Haas. That's likely why Haas hasn't written a "death letter" killing her career.
First: the Taylor Cadle story at-a-glance
The ongoing atrocity that Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd’s office committed against Taylor Cadle, beginning as a 12-year-old child, is a massive, nearly decade-long story; but it boils down to the brief paragraph that follows.
Polk County Sheriff’s Office Det. Melissa Turnage and her supervisors belligerently disbelieved 12-year-old Taylor Cadle of Lakeland when she reported her multiple, very real incest/rapes by Henry Cadle — her uncle-turned-adopted father — in 2016. They charged her with fabricating her own very real incest rapes. They hauled her in front of a judge and forced her to apologize in writing to her incest rapist. Then they sent her right back to her incest rapist to be incest-raped again. The extraordinarily brave and self-possessed Cadle Cadle documented on her phone her next incest rape as it happened by side of the road in 2017 in an unbelievable act of composure and courage. She caught an image of incest rapist “dad”s exposed penis on camera just before her raped her with it — again. Only then would Grady Judd’s agency do its job. And the detective who abused Cadle, Melissa Turnage, remains employed by Grady Judd and on track to make sergeant, despite a record of incompetence and failure beyond the Cadle case.
Polk Sheriff Grady Judd has not contested a single reported fact of Cadle’s story; and the endlessly trash-talking Judd still refuses to publicly address it at all, as if it’s not his responsibility to run his own agency, rather than just sell merch to fanboys. Judd refuses to publicly apologize to Cadle and refuses to deal with Turnage.
Here is how the Sheriff’s Office responded to the Rachel DeLeon and Julia Lurie, the reporters who broke the story.
Turnage didn’t respond to our attempts to reach her, and Judd’s office declined an interview. When we showed up at the sheriff’s office in August and asked to speak with Judd, we were told that a public information officer would come down to talk. Minutes later, we were told, she had been pulled into a meeting and didn’t know when she would be available. (A spokesperson told the Lakeland Ledger that the sheriff’s office wouldn’t speak to us because it “became clear they were not interested in accurately reporting an investigation that occurred in 2016.”)
You can read the full DeLeon and Lurie story here:
You can read my takes here:
“Grady Judd must write his own public apology letter to Taylor Cadle”
MAGA elected official calls on Grady Judd to account to Taylor Cadle
What’s a “death letter”?
A little more than a decade ago, former 10th Circuit State Attorney Jerry Hill (the ongoing villain of the ongoing Leo Schofield atrocity, a whole other Polk County legal atrocity) aggressively, publicly sought to blow up the Lakeland Police Department. At the time, LPD was led by Chief Lisa Womack, the agency’s first female chief.
Hill actually had a good reason for his action: a cadre of male officers had taken turns having sex with an LPD employee (sometimes on the clock) who was a survivor of chronic childhood sexual abuse. And there were multiple other agency problems that Womack would not or could not address.
I saw Womack as a bad, us-against-them type chief, who let the worst parts of the agency run amuck in multiple ways, even beyond the gross sexual power scandal. I was publicly supportive of Hill’s extremely confrontational public work.
A showy cornerstone of Hill’s effort was a so-called “death letter” to an LPD sergeant Hill accused of being dishonest about the LPD scandal. The death letter stated that prosecutors would no longer use this officer as a witness in any case. As The Ledger reported at the time, this would essentially kill any frontline cop’s career:
"What they've basically done is destroyed his viability as a police officer to investigate crime," said Charles Rose, a instructor at Stetson University College of Law. "The state has identified him as a liar."
What specific circumstances prompted the death letter? The woman at the center of the LPD scandal accused of this officer of making unwanted advances. The officer was the only officer — of more than 20 — to deny the woman’s accusations of either sex or sexual advances, Hill said. And the officer wouldn’t take a polygraph. That was enough for Hill to kill his career.
Compare that to Melissa Turnage
Just three years later — with the full, ongoing backing of Grady Judd and the Polk Sheriff’s Office — Melissa Turnage mentally and legally traumatized a 12-year-old child of foster care who accurately and honestly reported her own incest rape by her uncle-turned-adoptive father. Note the parts in bold.
Turnage’s investigation came to a head after five months, in December 2016. She spoke with Taylor on the porch outside the Cadles’ home to deliver the news: The final results from the rape kit had come back, and there was no evidence of Henry’s DNA. “I’m not saying you’re lying,” Turnage told Taylor. “I just want to know why, if everything you said is true, why am I not finding anything?”
Taylor’s voice came out as a whimper. “I don’t know,” she said. “I swear on my life it happened.”
In fact, rape kits often don’t show evidence of abusers’ DNA, especially when more than 24 hours have passed since the abuse occurred, or when a condom was used—both of which applied in Taylor’s case.
“If it happened, there would be—there would be DNA found,” Turnage said. “And we didn’t find anything.”
If Taylor lived in another county, perhaps her case would have ended there: allegations made, no corroborating evidence found, no charge against the alleged abuser. But in Polk County, no wrongdoing is too small for a consequence. Sheriff Judd often quotes a phrase he learned from his late father: “Right is right, and wrong is never right.”
“Polk County has a very pro-arrest outlook,” said Joel Dempsey, a detective with the office until 2018. “If charges are deemed justifiable, then [suspects] are likely going to be charged.”
Inside the house, Turnage told Lisa that the sheriff’s office planned to move forward with a criminal charge against Taylor for lying to a law enforcement officer about a felony. Lisa was on board. “We know she’s mouthy, and she tries to act older than what she is,” she said.
Afterward, Turnage spoke with Taylor’s adoptive sister about what Taylor’s life would look like if she were sent to the juvenile detention center.
“You’re in your pretty little blue jumpsuit, with your little flip flops, and you’re housed with everybody else,” said Turnage. “She would come in and look like the pretty girl.”
Hearing bits and pieces of the conversation through the sliding porch door, Taylor had the distinct feeling that she was drowning.
Two days after meeting with Taylor at the Cadles’ home, Turnage filed an affidavit. The real crime wasn’t the alleged sexual abuse—it was that Taylor had given false information to a law enforcement officer, a first-degree misdemeanor. The victim of this crime, according to the affidavit, was the Polk County Sheriff’s Office.
To avoid prosecution and sentencing for accurately reporting her own incest rape by her adopted father (who implied to Turnage during her investigation that he masturbated about 12-year-old Cadle, to which Turnage and her bosses went ¯\_(ツ)_/¯), the Polk court system made Cadle write an apology letter to her incest rapist “dad.” By that time, she was 13.
See Cadle’s little apology letter below, along with disgusted commentary from very MAGA Polk County Commissioner Neil Combee.
By the way, at a superficial glance, the victim/accuser in the LPD scandal had a childhood profile very very similar to Cadle.
Cadle’s seeming ability to endure and overcome childhood traumatic events without letting trauma define her; her ability to coolly, openly, without shame redirect the trauma inflicted on her to the many abusive and weak adults who perpetrated it is … astonishing.
We should study it.
Grady Judd: “I applaud these ‘death letters’” — LOL
Check out this absolutely hilarious and/or hideous passage from Jerry Hill’s swooning retirement article in The Ledger. It was published at almost exactly the same time in December 2016 that Turnage was “investigating” Cadle’s incest rape and deciding Cadle was the criminal.
This article was written by Hill’s personal hype woman Suzie Schottelkotte (a longtime former Ledger reporter who is also one of the ongoing villains of the ongoing Leo Schofield atrocity). Note the parts in bold:
Hill could be a strong ally, but he could be an equally harsh critic. More than a few law enforcement officers learned that lesson when their honesty became an issue, prompting Hill to fire off one of his “death letters,” saying his office would no longer accept their sworn testimony.
Judd, whose deputies have received those letters, said he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“We’ve worked together to prosecute police officers,” he said. “I applaud those 'death letters' because if you’re not going to be honest when you raise your right hand and swear to tell the truth, you shouldn’t be in law enforcement. I’m totally in my comfort zone with Jerry’s philosophy.”
Hill said he makes no apologies for his tough stance.
“They don’t do these 'death letters' much in other circuits,” he said, “but in my mind, there is no excuse for any shortcomings in truthfulness or honesty when you’re trying to take somebody’s liberty away.
"We can deal with somebody making a mistake and owning up to it," he said. "What we cannot deal with is somebody who lies or covers it up. That will cost you your career, and it should.”
First, consider that passage in light the Leo Schofield wrongful conviction case, which is the ultimate example of Jerry Hill (and his house judges) making a terrible, unforgivable mistake and refusing to own up to it — for 35 years.
If you catch yourself saying, gosh, the LPD scandal and Schofield and Cadle cases sure seem to have a wealth of overlapping pathologies and characters, you’re … not wrong.
Why no Turnage “death letter” in 2017?
Second, note the “leadership” behavior of Brian Haas, Jerry Hill’s timidly dutiful (to Jerry) successor as 10th Circuit State Attorney.
Haas was Hill’s protege and handpicked successor. He acted as Hill’s spokesman during the LPD scandal. Haas knew all about “death letters” and climbing down the throat of an law enforcement agency sex abuse scandal when he inherited the Cadle case from Hill.
So let’s recap: in December 2016, the retiring Jerry Hill and Grady Judd lovingly caressed each other in print about the importance of keeping officers honest with “death letters.” At almost exactly the same time, Melissa Turnage, a troubled, serial fuck-up of a detective, who violated all sorts of supposed agency standards in the Cadle investigation, swore an affidavit that Cadle was lying about an incest rape that did, in fact, happen.
Thus, the agencies that Judd and Hill and then Haas ran/run collaborated to belligerently disbelieve a 13-year-old incest rape survivor; prosecute her; force her to apologize to her incest rapist; force her to return to the custodial “care” of her incest rapist; force her to capture her incest rapist’s exposed penis on camera when he incest raped her again by the side of the road; and then face all the same trauma when she reported her incest rapist again.
Let that marinate a moment. And then reconsider this passage:
Judd, whose deputies have received those letters, said he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“We’ve worked together to prosecute police officers,” he said. “I applaud those 'death letters' because if you’re not going to be honest when you raise your right hand and swear to tell the truth, you shouldn’t be in law enforcement. I’m totally in my comfort zone with Jerry’s philosophy.”
So, obviously, with Grady Judd’s applause, Brian Haas wrote a public death letter to Melissa Turnage after the fake case collapsed, right? And Grady fired her, right? LOL. No.
Instead, at some undetermined moment, Haas stealthily, silently, out-of-public view changed policy at the SAO explicitly because of Melissa Turnage, as reported by DeLeon and Lurire and again by Lakeland Now a few days ago. Note the part in bold:
Since that case, the State Attorney’s Office created a policy that “requires administration be consulted prior to charging a juvenile that claims to be a victim of sexual abuse,” Orr added. “Since that time, three cases have been filed in similar situations; however, each of those included irrefutable evidence proving the falsehood.”
Let’s take a moment to process the fact that junior prosecutors had the authority, under Jerry Hill, to prosecute 13-year-old incest rape survivors for making false statements without bothering to run it by leadership. That’s the kind of organization Jerry Hill ran.
Now, take another moment to understand what a hidden administrative policy change really means in this atrocity. It means Haas fully understood then and fully understands now the scope of the atrocity that Turnage and the Sheriff’s Office perpetrated. Haas understood that it implicated his office, too.
It means he addressed it privately, covertly with his own people; but he covered for Melissa Turnage — and more specifically Grady Judd — with the public.
If this had happened at LPD in 2016-2017, Brian Haas and Grady Judd would have made sure LPD and Melissa Turnage led the local TV news.
The moment Taylor Cadle’s incest rapist uncle-dad’s penis appeared on her camera, Brian Haas should have signed a public death letter to Melissa Turnage with the ferocity of John Hancock. He did not. He has not. He will not.
Addressing it publicly would mean embarrassing and/or admonishing Grady Judd as a politician and merch salesman. Everything done or not done in this case is about protecting Grady Judd.
A repeat offender
Third, Turnage’s menace to public safety did not remotely begin with the Cadle atrocity she perpetrated. Note the parts in bold.
But mistakes quickly followed. In November 2015, during an interview with a man suspected of sexually assaulting a child, Turnage failed to read the suspect a key part of his Miranda rights—an omission that resulted in the suppression of the suspect’s confession. Turnage was suspended for eight hours, according to department records.
The following month, Turnage interviewed children who alleged their father was raping them, and then left for Christmas vacation without bringing the suspect in for questioning or updating her supervisors on the status of the case. While she was away, her colleagues found out about the seriousness of the accusations and immediately arrested the suspect. “Your decision to not complete this investigation or advise me of the interview results is inexcusable,” her supervisor wrote in a letter that year. “Disclosures made by children in this case must be acted upon immediately if the investigation allows for it.”
…
Remarkably, the same day Turnage filed the affidavit accusing Taylor of lying, she received a disciplinary letter from a lieutenant regarding another case. After investigating the sexual assault of a minor, Turnage had arrested the wrong person. A video of the assault showed the suspect had visible tattoos, but the man she detained had none. “It is imperative that as a detective you look at the totality of the circumstances and all evidence present in developing probable cause to make an arrest,” the letter read. It concluded, “You are a valued member of this agency and I am confident this will not recur.”
Let’s recap that in bullet form:
2015: Suspended 8 hours for basic incompetence that let an abuser go free.
2015: Took vacation after interviewing children accusing their father rape without addressing the suspect. Admonished by supervisor.
2016: Arrested wrong man. Disciplinary letter.
2016: Arrested Cadle for making false statements.
2017: False case against Cadle collapses.
What on earth would it have taken for Turnage to get fired? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And what is Turnage’s status today? This is from DeLeon and Lurie:
Turnage is still a detective, though she’s no longer in the special victims unit. Her latest performance review noted that she’s on track to become a sergeant.
I tried to confirm that is still the case with Sheriff’s Office spokesman Scott Wilder; but he ignored me.
Indeed, I suspect Melissa Turnage can do whatever she wants now at the Polk Sheriff’s Office to whomever she wants with impunity. She has Grady and Haas and Hill all on the hook with her. She owns them. Do you think anyone dares try to discipline her?
I mean, what happens if Grady fires Turnage or Haas writes a death letter? Grady will have to publicly admit his compounding failure, account for it, and address it publicly for the future. So will Haas. Neither is remotely strong enough as a man to do that. We’ve seen that in the Schofeld case with Haas — and literally everything else with Grady, who is utterly incapable of admitting and addressing a mistake.
Doubt me on that? Here’s my exchange from a few days ago with SAO leadership on the “death letter” subject. Note the bold:
Me: I noted with interest Jake [Orr]’s comments on changes the SAO made following the Taylor Cadle atrocity. In the past, in dealing with LPD, the SAO issued what I think you called a "death letter" -- or something similar -- to a police officer you decided you could no longer trust in court. Has such a letter been issued to Melissa Turnage?
SAO public records custodian: In response to your Public Records Request, in accordance with Chapter 119, Florida Statutes, we have no records responsive to this request. I can be contacted at my office at (863)534-4844, by mail at our main office (address listed below) or by e-mail at psessions@sao10.com.
Me: Thanks, this wasn’t a public records request. It was just a policy question of leadership. I am going to assume since there is no record of a “death letter” that none has been submitted and that Turnage remains in good standing with the agency as a witness. Please correct me if this is incorrect.
How weak and lame is that?
Grady, if I call you a “charlatan and loudmouth bully,” will you do your job with Turnage?
Speaking of weak and lame, this article provides a pretty remarkable example of how Grady Judd has devolved in this petty merch salesman twilight of his career.
TL:DR: Haas’ office dropped charges felony murder against a guy accused of being part of a fake drug deal robbery that turned into a stand-your-ground killing because law enforcement supposedly couldn’t find a key witness.
At that point, the guy’s lawyer publicly shit-talked Grady:
“Once exposed to the scrutiny of the court system, the State’s case against Mr. Cruceta-Pimentel swiftly collapsed," the release said. "In fact, PCSO’s allegations were so utterly unhinged, only someone as self-important as the charlatan & loudmouth bully Sheriff Grady Judd could have invented them.”
Lo and behold, sheriff’s deputies re-arrested the guy two days later. Grady dropped this statement dunking on the lawyer:
"I would like to thank lawyer Ralph R. Maiolino of the law firm Smith & Eulo PLLC for bringing to my attention that the murder charge against his client, Mr. Cruceta, had been temporarily dropped," Judd said in a news release about the arrest on Wednesday. "This allowed us to quickly locate a needed witness, which enabled the State Attorney's Office to re-file murder and other charges against his client. I thank the State Attorney's Office's professional team for their persistent and hard work in this case."
I shit talk Grady all the time; and I can’t get him to do his job. So maybe I’m not using the right words. Or maybe this just how agencies die under the “leadership” of petty merch dictators— paralyzed by fear and contempt for the public they serve.
In any event, horror often devolves into farce. And I hope Taylor Cadle at least takes some satisfaction from watching all these weak, posturing men — who are wholly- owned by the malicious incompetence of a detective who happens to be a woman — silently living in terror of facing their own culpability for their failure and incompetence in public.
Or, maybe somebody could give Cadle some real satisfaction.
Write the long overdue death letter, Brian. Grady claims he’ll applaud it. LOL.