A Florida police chief broke down Thursday as he described the worst crime scene of his 34-year career, detailing how a 27-year-old mother killed her own mother and two of her three young daughters before fatally shooting herself after days of escalating turmoil.
Hailey Dempsey, 27, gunned down her mother, Valerie DeBoe, 55, in the early hours of May 3 at Dempsey’s home in Plant City, a community in the Tampa Bay area, Plant City police chief Richard Mills said at a press conference. She then fled on foot with her three daughters — ages four, two, and four months — and killed the four-year-old and four-month-old, fired at the two-year-old but missed, and turned the weapon on herself.
The violence capped a turbulent 48 hours that began with a domestic dispute over pornography, Mills revealed. Police had been called to the Dempsey residence three times in the two days preceding the killings, he said.
The first call came Friday, May 1, stemming from a “verbal confrontation” between Dempsey and her husband, Jay, over porn she had allegedly found on his cell phone, Mills told reporters.
“It wasn’t cheating or anything like that, evidently it was just porn, and they were having an argument over that,” he said.
“I think that’s what everything stemmed from.”
Later that same day, police received a second call because Dempsey wanted officers to check whether a tracking device had been placed on her car, Mills said. Nothing was found.
Dempsey then left the property with her three children and DeBoe, who had been visiting from Clearwater, and the group spent the night in a hotel, according to the chief.
The following day, May 2, officers responded a third time to accompany Dempsey, her mother, and the children back to the family home so they could retrieve clothing, Mills said.
Jay Dempsey was detained following the murders, but after his potential involvement was “thoroughly investigated,” he was ruled out as a suspect and never arrested or charged, Mills said.
The chief noted there were “indications of some mental illness involved with the case.”
The three-month investigation into what Mills called a “horrendous tragedy” had “required patience, diligence and precision,” he added.
“I’ve been in law enforcement for 34 years, I was on that scene, and it was probably the worst scene that I’ve ever seen in my life,” Mills said, fighting back tears.
“It’s absolutely heartbreaking. The worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Asked about the condition of the surviving two-year-old, Mills said she is in “good health” and staying with family.
In the viral moment that first drew national attention to the case, initial reports on May 3 described a shocking quadruple death scene at a Florida home, with investigators initially releasing few details about what had transpired. The early hours discovery of multiple bodies, including those of young children, prompted an intense and lengthy investigation as authorities worked to untangle the sequence of events and determine whether an outside perpetrator was involved.
The case gradually came into clearer focus over the following weeks, with police eventually determining that Dempsey had acted alone in carrying out the murder-suicide. The full picture of the family’s final days — marked by repeated police interventions, a hotel stay, and the simmering dispute over pornography — was not made public until Mills’s emotional press conference Thursday, three months after the killings.