The Broward Sheriff’s Office Wednesday released audio of non-emergency calls Mary Gingles made seeking their help in the weeks before her husband’s accused of killing her, her father and a neighbor in Tamarac last month.
On the two calls, she sounds nervous, speaking fast, and in one you can hear the voice of the four-year-old daughter who, deputies say, was kidnapped by Nathan Gingles as he gunned down anyone who got in his way.
“Hi, my name is Mary Gingles. I called on Friday. This is not an emergency, so I want to make sure I’m not taking up the phone time,” she says during a call in late December.
She is polite, patient and frustrated that estranged husband Nathan continues to violate a court order by entering their home.
“My intent is to get a restraining order because I just don’t know what else to do because, I’m just, I’m at a loss, and obviously the current court order is not doing anything at all,” she said, referring to a judge’s order in their divorce case that Natan have no hostile contact with her.
During the call, 4-year-old Seraphina is heard calling out to her mother.
Weeks later, she would be rescued from her father hours after, she told detectives, she witnessed him shoot her mother, grandfather and a neighbor whose home Mary ran to for help.
In the second call to BSO’s non-emergency line, in January, she wants updates on prior complaints that failed to get deputies to arrest Nathan.
In December, she accused him of hiding in her garage a backpack containing plastic gloves, duct tape, zip ties, contractor bags, CSI gear, crushed white powder and a note mentioning a means and cause of death: “needle – air embolism.”
In October, she found a tracking device attached to her car, one she told a detective she connected to Nathan through a company listed among his credit card receipts.
That one, “I would assume could be a case for the criminal investigations team because that seems like an easy case for criminal investigations to investigate,” she told the call taker. “Does that make sense?”
It did to Sheriff Gregory Tony, who said days after the triple homicide his deputies could have arrested Nathan based on the evidence in both of those calls.
Whatever investigation took place in either case did not lead to arrest.
The handgun and suppressor police believe was used to kill a Tamarac mother, her father and her neighbor last month was returned to the accused killer by the Broward Sheriff’s Office, according to recently obtained records.
Among the eight deputies Tony suspended with pay pending investigation was the detective assigned to Gingles’ case. The captain who headed the Tamarac district was demoted to deputy, as Tony vowed to discipline those who failed to prevent what happened Feb. 16.
That’s when Nathan Gingles allegedly went on his rampage, using a gun that was among the arsenal of weaponry returned to him by the sheriff in September after Mary consented to her first domestic violence injunction being dismissed. She did so only after the divorce court included a no-contact order prohibiting him from entering their house or having any hostile contact with her, including stalking.
After Nathan was served with a second injunction in January, deputies did not force him to follow the portion of the order that demanded he turn over his weapons again to BSO.
Indicted last week on murder and other charges, he is waiting to learn whether prosecutors will seek the death penalty. He has pleaded not guilty.
As for Seraphina, she is about to enter her second month in state foster care while child protection investigators and lawyers consider whether to recommend she be placed with her mother’s sister in Texas or with someone else while she gets help to put the shattered pieces of her life back together.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
