For 34 days, Grady Nelson, a Miami-Dade social worker's aide, sat in the county jail, accused of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl.
It wasn't the first time. In 1991, he was convicted of sexual battery on a 7-year-old neighbor.
This time, though, the alleged victim was Nelson's stepdaughter, the accuser his wife. But prosecutors, faced with conflicting testimony from the woman and her daughter, decided that they didn't have enough evidence to keep Nelson in jail.
At 10:55 a.m. on Jan. 6, Nelson left jail a free man.
By 6:30 the next morning, Angelina Marcel Martinez, the wife, was dead, her throat slashed, a knife protruding from her head. Two of her children, her daughter and 13-year-old son, also had been stabbed, although both survived.
And 47-year-old Grady Nelson, accused of the crimes, was headed back to jail.
But almost as tragic as the Jan. 7 attack itself is the story of how Angelina, 32, and her children ended up in the blood-soaked bedrooms of their Miami home in the first place -- despite reports to authorities that Nelson was a threat to the family and that Angelina seemed unable to protect herself or her children.
''I should have my daughter here with me today. My daughter should not be dead,'' said Juanita Martinez, Angelina's mother. ``This surely could have been avoided.''
Miami-Dade police, the state attorney's office and the state Department of Children & Families all had received reports that Nelson had raped his stepdaughter.
The DCF had received complaints about the family's welfare starting in 2002.
Even more troubling, records show, is Nelson's 1991 conviction for sexual battery on a minor. Nelson, facing a possible 25-year sentence if convicted, opted for a plea bargain.
Juanita Martinez said she personally warned a DCF caseworker about Nelson's past: 'He said to me, `Oh, I'm going to help you, Mrs. Martinez.' No one helped me. No one helped my daughter.''
In fact, as the DCF investigated the recent complaints involving Angelina and her children, nothing in the agency's records indicated whether it even knew about Nelson's record.
''There is no criminal history that would present a threat of harm,'' one DCF report concluded in 2004.
Court records tell a different story:
Nelson was charged in 1990 with three counts of sexual battery of a 7-year-old neighbor. According to the records, Nelson dragged the girl by her hair into his apartment and his bedroom, where he raped her.
''Victim stated she didn't scream because she was scared and very nervous,'' the records state. Afterward, Nelson gave her a notebook, a pencil and $11.50.
When police went to his house to find him, Nelson was hiding in a closet. He told police: ``I gave her $11.50 for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Ice Cream, that's all.''
Judge Martin Kahn, now retired, ordered a court evaluation to determine whether Nelson should get treatment as a mentally disordered sexual offender. The therapist who examined him told the court: ``His insights into himself or why a person would do what he is alleged to have done were poor.''
Meanwhile, according to court records, the victim told prosecutors that she could not testify in front of Nelson. Attorneys and Nelson agreed to a plea bargain in which Nelson would get sex-offender treatment and 10 years of probation. He told the court that he could not make progress ``unless he was willing to admit that he had some sort of sex offending problem.''
EIGHT-YEAR SENTENCE
INMATE WAS RELEASED
AFTER SERVING 2 YEARS
He had completed only a year of the treatment when, in September 1992, he was sentenced to eight years in prison on a cocaine charge and for violating his probation for the rape. With credit for time already served, he was released just two years later, in November 1994 -- his sentence served.
In 2000, Nelson landed a job as a social worker's aide with the Miami-Dade County Human Services Department. His job: to persuade homeless families to seek services and shelter at county programs.
The job, county spokeswoman Aimee Artiles said, required a candidate who could move freely among prostitutes, drug addicts and street people. ''The person making the decision [on Nelson's hiring] felt that his criminal past would not necessarily be a liability,'' she said.
It was also about this time that he met Angelina, whom he married in July 2001. Juanita Martinez said Angelina met Nelson at the Miami Skill Center, where she was studying for her GED. She said Angelina loved to knit doilies, loved to sing. But she suffered from mild mental retardation; in her mother's words, she was ``17 mentally.''
``He just brainwashed her.''
Up to that point, Angelina appeared to have had little contact with welfare authorities.
REPORT OF VIOLENCE
ABUSE WAS ALLEGED
BUT LATER WAS DENIED
That all changed in October 2002, when the DCF received a report that Nelson had ''hit'' Angelina's then 10-year-old son seven times on the head. Nelson, Angelina and the two children denied abuse, but the children's uncle told investigators that both children had complained to him that the boy had been struck.
An investigator accepted Angelina's contention that the charges were concocted by her mother in an attempt to gain custody of the children.
But one month later, Angelina told a DCF investigator that she was unable to properly care for her children. ''Mom is not looking for services,'' the report said. ``Mom is looking for the removal of the children from the home.''
Less than two hours later, though, she called the DCF hot line to say that she had changed her mind, and that ''DCF involvement was no longer needed,'' the report said. A supervisor decided that no investigation was necessary.
A year later, on Oct. 24, 2003, another report: Angelina and her mother discovered bloodstains on the daughter's panties and again called the hot line. The girl told officials that she had been ''attacked by three boys in the bathroom'' at school. Days later, however, the girl could offer no explanation for the bloodstains.
''She laughed a lot and appeared almost incoherent,'' a DCF report said.
A DCF investigator wrote that Angelina was willing to send her daughter to a children's rape treatment center, which suggested that she was ``prepared to protect her.''
On Feb. 27, 2004, another complaint to the hot line alleged that the children were left at home alone. The report was closed with no action.
Then, on Dec. 4, 2004, the DCF received a new report. Nelson, the reporter said, was having sex with Angelina's daughter.
Five days later, the state's child-welfare hot line received another call. ''The mother is not in the right state of mind,'' the caller said.
'It is reported that the mother is constantly saying, `What should I do? What should I do?' ''
This time, the DCF notified Miami-Dade police, who charged Nelson with sexual battery on a minor the same day that the DCF's abuse hot line was alerted to the allegations, records show. Although the DCF's investigation remained open, caseworkers documented little activity, as they assumed that the children were at ''low'' risk while Nelson was in jail.
During interviews with police, Angelina's daughter told investigators that Nelson had sexual intercourse with her, but she couldn't remember specific dates or instances.
''At certain points,'' according to a memo from the state attorney's office, she ''denied having sexual intercourse with the defendant.'' When taken to a rape treatment center, the girl told doctors that she could not remember what had occurred.
''The victim now making an inconsistent statement than what she had initially advised,'' the memo says.
Assistant State Attorney Barbara Govea decided that Nelson should not be charged. She cited inconsistent statements by both mother and daughter, in addition to a lack of physical evidence and eyewitnesses, adding that ``this became a one on one allegation with multiple problems and inconsistencies.''
CONCERN FOR CHILDREN
`PARENTING SKILLS'
OF MOTHER QUESTIONED
Nevertheless, records show, Govea was worried about the children. In two letters faxed to the DCF, on Dec. 30 and Jan. 4 -- two days before Nelson was released -- Govea cited ''the lack of parenting skills of [the girl's] mother.'' For one thing, Angelina apparently didn't see anything wrong with taking her daughter to jail or court to visit with the man who was accused of raping her, Govea wrote.
''If there is any scintilla of truth to the allegations initially raised by the mother and victim, there are great concerns,'' Govea wrote to the DCF, that the children might not be safe even with Nelson in the county jail.
Nelson was released at 10:55 a.m. Jan. 6. Twenty-six minutes later, a clerk at the Miami-Dade family courthouse stamped in Angelina's request for a domestic-violence injunction against her husband -- which was approved.
In her petition, she told a judge that Nelson was a violent man with a crack-cocaine addiction. She said he had beaten her, stomped on her abdomen, pulled her by the hair and locked her in a closet overnight.
Angelina, the petition said, ``is in great fear for her safety and that of her family.''
The very next morning, police were called to the family's home, where they found Angelina stabbed to death on the floor next to her bed. Her 13-year-old son was hiding in the bathroom, with multiple stab wounds on his upper body. The 11-year-old girl was found naked under the sheets of a bed, also stabbed.
A 4-year-old boy, the child of both Angelina and Nelson, was asleep on the floor, unharmed.
According to police reports and his own sworn statement, Nelson showed up at the family home at 2 p.m. the day he was released from jail. He stated that he sexually assaulted both stepchildren that afternoon and then took them to Pollo Tropical for a chicken dinner.
He also said he had been having sexual contact with his stepdaughter for two years -- since she was 9.
About 7 p.m., Nelson said, he stabbed his 75-pound wife to death as his stepson watched. He then used the knife against his two stepchildren as they pleaded for their lives, with the girl saying, ``Stop, Daddy. Daddy, don't do it.''
''How could this have happened?'' asked Patricia Barreto, Juanita's boss at P&L Diverse Service Corp. in Miami. ``We were all so stunned. Where was the justice in this tragedy?''
Nelson has since pleaded not guilty to the charges against him: first-degree murder and two counts of attempted first-degree murder. His attorney, Assistant Public Defender Stephen Harper, declined to discuss the charges. ''At this point, it is too early in the case to be able to talk about it,'' Harper said.
INFORMATION GAP?
COURTS MUST `INFORM US
WHEN HE'S GETTING OUT'
Although acknowledging that Angelina's death and the attack on her children represent a tragic failure, DCF Miami chief Chuck Hood insists that it was a failure of law enforcement, not his agency. He says that no one informed the agency that Nelson was being released the day before the murder.
``We went out, found the abuse, and the gentleman was arrested. Here's where the loop has to close: The courts have to inform us when he's getting out.''
Prosecutors point to child-welfare officials, saying they were well aware that Nelson was not likely to remain in jail and that the mother might not be able to protect herself or her children once he was out.
''This woman had limited capacities,'' said state attorney's spokesman Ed Griffith. ``The question was: How did those limited capacities impact directly on the daily life of her children?''
''Without doubt, there were discussions early on, and throughout,'' Griffith added. ``They knew that unless more evidence developed, there was an extremely strong probability that the case would have to be dropped.''
CONTACT FORBIDDEN
JUDGE ISSUES ORDER
AGAINST THE STEPFATHER
Even from jail, Nelson continues to haunt the Martinez family. Just last month, a judge issued an order forbidding contact with the family after he sent a letter to the children's grandmother seeking forgiveness.
Juanita Martinez said her faith in God has carried her through -- and the fact that she is caring for her grandchildren. The older boy bears scars on one hand, a slash on his neck, a puncture wound near his throat, and others on his side, abdomen and back.
The girl has scars on her hand, chest, stomach and back.
''I look every day at the scars on these children. I live with this every day,'' Juanita Martinez said. ``They didn't deserve this. My daughter didn't deserve this.''
Herald staff writers Scott Hiaasen and Manny Garcia contributed to this report.
