MELBOURNE, Fla. – Evidence related to the 1990 rape of an 11-year-old girl was disposed by the Melbourne Police Department sometime over the past three decades, a newly released audit reveals, but the agency cannot determine when or why it was destroyed or who authorized it.
Without that physical evidence, which includes a rape kit and the child’s clothing that tested positive for the presence of semen, prosecutors said they cannot file criminal charges against the suspected rapist, who still lives in Brevard County.
Elizabeth Bradshaw, who has publicly identified herself as the rape victim, has retained an attorney in her quest to obtain records about the case and explore potential litigation.
“I am a former sex crimes detective with 16 years of law enforcement experience, and I have never seen such wanton disregard for the safety and emotional well-being of a rape victim by an investigating agency,” said Damon Baxley, Bradshaw’s attorney.
[EXCLUSIVE: Become a News 6 Insider (it’s FREE) | PINIT! Share your photos]
Melbourne Police officials declined to comment about Baxley’s statement or the audit’s findings.
On the November 1990 evening, Bradshaw reported being sexually battered in her bedroom, the 11-year-old told police her attacker was a 26-year-old family acquaintance who spent the night at the Melbourne home she shared with her single mother.
Months after the rape, Bradshaw said she was informed the family acquaintance had committed suicide.
“My mom told me that my rapist killed himself,” Bradshaw said in an interview with News 6 last year.
“I had no reason not to believe her,” Bradshaw said.
Bradshaw, who is now 45, spent most of her life believing her attacker was dead.
But two years ago, Bradshaw said she came face-to-face with the man inside a Brevard County gas station.
“I hadn’t seen him in over 30 years, and I knew who he was. My whole body just kind of froze,” said Bradshaw. “I was crying, and I kept trying to tell myself he was dead.”
News 6 is not identifying the man since he has never been charged with Bradshaw’s rape.
When Bradshaw contacted Melbourne Police in 2022 with questions about her case, she learned the agency had disposed of all of the physical evidence and most of the paperwork stemming from the child rape investigation.
Police officials gave Bradshaw a copy of the initial 1990 incident report that noted “the suspect was not located or contacted.”
The agency also found a Florida Department of Law Enforcement crime lab report confirming semen had been detected on vaginal swabs collected from Bradshaw at a hospital on the night of the rape. The nightgown and underwear Bradshaw had been wearing were also stained with semen, the lab report showed.
“It says right there in black and white, 11-year-old little girl covered in sperm. I could not have done that to myself,” Bradshaw told News 6. “And they did nothing.”
Melbourne Police located a “chain of custody” log that indicates FDLE returned the physical evidence to the agency in October 1991, nearly one year after the reported rape, but police were unable to find the items in the department’s evidence storage room or other facilities.
Prosecutors announced last year they were unable to file criminal charges in the case, in part because there is no longer any physical evidence that can be subjected to modern DNA testing and presented at trial.
“For reasons that nobody can explain to me, an officer of the Melbourne Police Department destroyed evidence in the active rape case of an 11-year-old child,” Bradshaw told News 6 last year.
Hoping to learn why the evidence was disposed, in 2022 Melbourne Police Chief David Gillespie ordered agency employees to conduct an audit of the case.
Gillespie was hired by the agency in 2017, decades after the rape occurred.
Following a nine-month “staff inspection” that involved searching through more than 1,400 pieces of evidence from other cases in storage, reviewing internal department documents, and interviewing retired police department employees about Bradshaw’s case, the agency was unable to locate any records detailing what happened to the rape kit and other evidentiary items.
“Without disposal records there is no way to know when, why or who authorized disposal of the evidence for this case,” the audit concluded.
There is also “no way of knowing” what investigative activity took place after Melbourne Police received the FDLE crime lab report in 1991 and whether an investigating detective ever received the laboratory results, the audit found.
Due to the lack of documentation, auditors could not even determine whether the agency had assigned a detective to follow-up on the child rape investigation after receiving the FDLE crime lab report.
Sgt. Dennis Nichols, who retired from the Melbourne Police Department in 2014, told auditors he “does not remember” going to the hospital in 1990 to meet with Bradshaw and retrieve the rape kit. The original police report indicates the detective responded to the initial sexual battery complaint.
Nichols also did not recall seeing the 1991 FDLE crime lab report.
“Sergeant Nichols said that if he had been notified of the FDLE report, his investigative protocol would have included a request for DNA testing of the semen,” the audit states.
Although still in its infancy at the time, law enforcement agencies increasingly began using DNA technology to solve crimes in the late 1980′s after an Orlando man became the first person in the U.S. convicted of rape based on DNA evidence.
Retired Melbourne Police Sgt. Steve Lyon, who managed the agency’s Property and Evidence Unit until 2003, also did not remember Bradshaw’s case.
Although state laws that now require police agencies to safeguard potential DNA evidence were not in effect in the early 1990s, Lyon told auditors that evidence containing semen would not generally have been destroyed during his tenure because it could be tested for DNA in the future.
He also noted that evidence would have been held until the statute of limitations of any potential crimes expired. There is no statute of limitations for sexual battery of a child under the age of 12.
Neither Lyon nor another retired Property and Evidence Unit manager, Antoinette Rao, recalled policies in place in the 1990s specifically requiring their staff to notify investigating detectives that crime lab results had been received.
As part of the audit, the agency reviewed 400 pieces of evidence from sexual assault cases occurring between 1989 and 1991 that were still in storage at the Melbourne Police Department.
Only evidence from criminal investigations that resulted in defendants being prosecuted and convicted has been retained by the agency, the audit found. The agency was unable to find sexual assault evidence from any unsolved or non-prosecuted cases during that time period, records show.
Whenever Melbourne Police disposed of unneeded physical evidence to free up limited storage space, the agency was required to document the disposal.
However, the audit revealed that some older disposal records were lost in the early 2000s due to a computer hard drive failure.
“No record was located that explained the decision to dispose, or who authorized the disposal, of evidence and evidence paperwork for this case,” the audit found.
Although newer state laws and department policies now require the agency to retain evidence in certain criminal investigations, the auditors suggested Melbourne Police review how the agency currently handles internal investigative records.
“I share your viewers’ shock and anger at the Melbourne Police Department’s outrageous and reckless conduct documented by the Audit Report,” said Baxley. “We hope that the current leadership within the Melbourne Police Department and Melbourne’s City Council Members have read the Audit Report for themselves and will now stand in solidarity with Mrs. Bradshaw.”
In late 2022, prior to the audit being initiated, a Melbourne police detective arranged for Bradshaw to make a secretly recorded phone call to the suspected rapist.
The man hung up when Bradshaw confronted him about the sexual battery, police records show.
When detectives later confronted the man in his Melbourne mobile home community, he claimed he did not know Bradshaw and adamantly denied raping her when she was a child.
“I know I would never do that,” the man told detectives before declining to speak further without an attorney present. “I don’t know how I ended up there, if I ended up there.”
Detectives also interviewed Bradshaw’s elderly mother, who reportedly told her daughter the rapist had died decades earlier.
But records show Bradshaw’s mother was unable to recall many details about the 1990 incident, saying a brain tumor and brain contusion may have affected her memory.
“If any viewers have specific knowledge about Mrs. Bradshaw’s original rape investigation or of how the Melbourne Police Department conducted similar investigations in the 1990′s, please call the King Law Firm at (352) 629-8747 and ask for Damon Baxley,” Bradshaw’s attorney told News 6.
Get today’s headlines in minutes with Your Florida Daily: