How to Catch A Criminal: Coming From Inside the House

Every officer with a decent amount of time on the job knows the unexpected turns an investigation can take. Seeing a major case through to completion often involves giving up on a theory and taking your investigation in a different direction as new information becomes available. In How to Catch A Criminal, we look at the many ways not-so-perfect crimes are solved. This month, a family is targeted and tormented until blood is shed. The motive behind the crime turns out to be unexpectedly personal.

The importance of family can’t be understated. When the rest of the world gives you the cold shoulder, you can (hopefully) find comfort at home. The love you receive from parents, siblings, and extended family is invaluable, but just as great, or perhaps greater, is love from people you welcome into your family. When you choose a spouse, you are bringing that person into your family circle with the expectation that your family members will also accept them. Ideally, the non-blood relation will experience the same level of trust and affection as the rest of the family. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. The new family member may turn out to be a bad fit. Once the novelty wears off, you begin seeing beneath the surface and really get to know the person. Or worse, you realize that you never truly knew them, and they’re already on the inside.

On the evening of October 23, 2017, Bruce Pleskovic arrived home to his residence in Strongsville, Ohio. He planned to check on his wife, 49-year-old Melinda, who had stood him up for dinner. Earlier in the day, Bruce received a text message from Melinda asking that they meet for dinner at a local brewery. This seemed a little odd because they had just eaten at that same place the night before, and Melinda had mentioned she wasn’t a fan of the drink selection. When Bruce arrived at the brewery, Melinda was nowhere to be found, and she wasn’t answering her phone. Bruce soon got a call from his daughter’s fiancé, 20-year-old Jeffrey Scullin. Jeff explained that he hadn’t heard from Melinda either, aside from asking to meet at the Applebee’s where Anna, Bruce and Melinda’s daughter and Jeff’s fiancée, worked. Melinda wanted to discuss the upcoming Scullin-Pleskovic wedding that was set to take place in less than a week. Jeff stated that he Anna, and their one-year-old daughter Aurora were at Applebee’s awaiting Bruce and Melinda’s arrival. Bruce showed up in no time and enjoyed dinner with his soon to be son-in-law. Melinda, however, never came.

Jeff had moved in with the Pleskovics around a year ago so that he and Anna could save their money leading up to the wedding. When Bruce and Jeff got home, they were relieved to see the lights were on and Melinda’s car was there. She had to be home. They made their way inside and found Melinda in the kitchen, lying on the floor in a pool of blood. Bruce made a frantic 911 call, reporting that his wife had been attacked. He also added that there had been previous break in attempts at their house recently, and law enforcement had done nothing to prevent this. Sadly, Melinda was deceased. She had suffered three gunshot wounds and countless stab wounds on her back. There were no signs of forced entry and the brutality seemed personal. That begged the question: who would want to do something so heinous to a beloved middle school teacher?

Bruce and Jeff were both questioned by detectives regarding the events of that evening. Bruce mentioned that Jeff and Melinda would butt heads on occasion, but overall, everyone gets along at the Pleskovic residence. Similarly, Jeff mentioned that Bruce tended to drink too much and become hotheaded, but he wasn’t capable of murdering his wife.  As the investigation unfolded, detectives were quickly drawn to what Bruce had mentioned on the 911 call. Records indicated there had been multiple incidents reported to law enforcement that indicated the Pleskovic family was being targeted.  A laptop had been stolen from one of their cars, on another occasion, nails were driven into the tires of Bruces car. Eventually a pair of car keys were stolen, but not the car. Instead, the thief would regularly return to set off the alarm or the remote start in the middle of the night. Just a few days prior to Melinda’s death, Jeff reported he saw someone trying to break into the house from the back door, but luckily the family dog chased them away. Evidently someone was after the Pleskovics, and this had been going on for a year.

It was not lost on the detectives that these incidents of harassment and vandalism had started as soon as Jeff became part of the family. This meant either Jeff had an enemy and brought that baggage into his new home, or he was directly involved in what was happening to the Pleskovics. The situation became even more apparent when neighbors explained that the neighborhood was quite safe, and the Pleskovics were the only ones experiencing these incidents. In fact, one neighbor’s security cameras showed nobody out of the ordinary around the house on the various dates that the family was terrorized. Detectives executed a search warrant of Jeff’s vehicle, where they found a bloody knife, which yielded a positive match for Melinda’s DNA. With this evidence in hand, Detectives gave Jeff another chance to come clean. Jeff’s new version of events was that he came home to change clothes before the family dinner. When he arrived, he was confronted by Melinda, who accused him of not being Aurora’s biological father. Jeff walked away from the argument but returned moments later to find Melinda armed with a knife and a gun. He attempted to disarm her, but the gun went off accidentally. This must have been quite some accident because the gun fired a second, and even a third time. He couldn’t explain the dozens of stab wounds on Melinda’s back, however.

The investigation determined that it was Jeff who had been stealing items, vandalizing property, and playing mind games with his in-laws to be. Though it was unclear what exactly Jeff had to gain from fabricating stories about masked figures attempting to break in for the last year, detectives uncovered another of Jeff’s secrets: he had as much sense as he had cents. His credit card had been declined repeatedly by the wedding venue and the ceremony, just days away, was not going to happen. After Jeff’s inability to pay the venue contacted Melinda. She was the only other person who knew that the wedding was in jeopardy, and this was surely going to become a topic of conversation at that night’s dinner. Premeditated or not, Jeff’s efforts to terrorize the family had laid the groundwork for the perfect alibi after he murdered Melinda. After the murder, the wedding was of course cancelled, and replaced by a funeral, at which Jeff served as one of Melinda’s pallbearers. After Jeff’s arrest three days later, the wedding was called off permanently.  One year after his arrest, on the first day of his murder trial, Jeff changed his plea from not guilty to no contest. While this plea was just short of admitting guilt, it also prevented evidence from coming to light in court.  Questions were left unanswered as to why he would go so far as to murder his fiancée’s mother rather than admit he was broke, and why he spent a year terrorizing the people who welcomed him into their home. Jeffrey Scullin was sentenced to life in prison, with the possibility of parole after 33 years.