CORRECTION: This story has been updated to note that Families Against Court Tragedies, or FACT, was not involved in the Gingles case.
A year before Mary Gingles was shot and killed by her estranged husband, who police charged with murder, the 34-year-old mother spent a year in Broward Family Court pleading with judges to keep her husband away from her family.
Mona Rosita Clarke had warned family court judges and law enforcement authorities for months about her husband’s unstable mental health. Last year, he was charged with first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse in the death of his toddler daughter, Melody Rose Duran.
In 2021, Ali Kessler fought desperately for full custody of her 4-year-old Greyson Kessler, alerting Broward court officials that the boy's father was constantly harassing and threatening her. That same year, the father, John Micheal Stacey, killed Greyson and then killed himself.
Advocates say a common thread runs through these violent domestic cases: Florida's family courts allow abusers or those exhibiting mental instability access to children or spouses, ignoring clear threats of violence.
When contacted by WLRN for comment, Chief Judge Carol-Lisa Phillips of the 17th Judicial Circuit in Broward declined comment on the three cases.
"The Code of Judicial Conduct prohibits judges from commenting on pending or impending matters, and likewise cannot discuss the specifics of any orders," she told WLRN, by email. "We cannot stress enough that if someone has reason to believe a child or any other person is in danger, they should call law enforcement — in all instances."
The murder of Mary Gingles, David Posner and Andrew Ferrin
Mary Gingles began divorce proceedings against Nathan Gingles in February of 2024. At the time, she filed a temporary injunction for domestic violence against him. In the petition, she stated that she lived in constant fear of Nathan. Mary’s filing included claims that Nathan would sing songs about killing her, terrorize their then three-year old child Seraphine, abuse prescription drugs, become physically violent with her, and directly threaten her life.
“Because of Nathan’s psychotic behavior, his multiple threats, his drug use, his multiple/many silenced firearms and my impending divorce action, I am afraid that Nathan will kill me and my daughter,” Gingles wrote.
Nathan Gingles owned around 20 firearms that were confiscated by the Broward Sheriff’s Office after the court accepted the temporary injunction; however, a few months later Mary withdrew this injunction in favor of an agreed order that gave her possession of their shared house and gave both parties equal timesharing. Her husband’s guns were returned to him.
“We had multiple opportunities to protect Mary during the months preceding her death when she alerted us to the domestic violence she was experiencing."Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony.
Family court lawyers and advocates say those agreed orders can later be used as evidence that the original accepted claims of domestic or child abuse were false. Nathan Gingles filed a “Request for Admissions” along those lines on Feb 4, 2025, when he demanded that Mary admit that she voluntarily dismissed her previous claims about being in fear for her life.
“The way the court will view it, you agreed to share custody and timesharing with this person that you allegedly were terrified of, you entered into this voluntarily. So your fears must not have been what you once said they were. And that's a pattern that we see all the time,” said Yanina Hecker of Families Against Court Tragedies, or FACT, which was not involved in the Gingles case.
FACT is a South Florida-based non-profit organization that advocates for improving equity for women and children in family courts.
Mary made repeated calls to Broward Sheriff’s Office about her husband, which included reporting that she found a tracker on her car that she suspected Nathan Gingles had placed, and reported him breaking into the house to leave a backpack with zip ties, plastic wrap and gloves. On Dec. 29 2024, during one instance where BSO arrived to interview Mary Gingles, she told a Broward Sheriff’s deputy that Nathan Gingles planned to kill her.
In December, Mary Gingles secured a restraining order against Nathan Gingles. He was required to surrender his guns, including the one he allegedly used in the murders, as a condition of the court-issued order, but he never did. An officer asked via telephone if he had any guns. Nathan Gingles said he did not and no further action was taken.
Just months later, Nathan Gingles arrived at the house, and shot and killed Mary’s father, David Posner. Mary Gingles fled with Seraphine to a neighbor’s house. Nathan Gingles followed them and shot and killed Mary Gingles and the neighbor, Andrew Ferrin, before abducting Seraphine. Nathan Gingles was later found with Seraphine unharmed in his car and arrested him. He has pleaded not guilty.
READ MORE: Timeline: How Broward deputies failed to help Mary Gingles before triple homicide in Tamarac
The Broward Sheriff’s Office acknowledged publicly it had failed to protect Mary Gingles from her husband.
“We had multiple opportunities to protect Mary during the months preceding her death when she alerted us to the domestic violence she was experiencing,” said Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony.
The murder-suicide of Greyson Kessler by John Michael Stacey
Ali Kessler met John Micheal Stacey while she was living in New York. The two dated briefly, and after relocating to Fort Lauderdale for a job and to be closer with family, Ali Kessler found out she was pregnant with Stacey’s child. Despite originally having no interest in being a part of Kessler’s s life, Stacey began harassing Ali during her pregnancy.
“ I started getting just really horrible text messages and harassing behaviors at that time to the point where I actually had to block his phone number while I was pregnant, because it was just not healthy and I was trying to make it the most positive pregnancy experience that I could,” Kessler said on her podcast, “Grey Minds Think Ali.Ke”.
Once Greyson was born in 2017, Stacey moved to South Florida and demanded a paternity test. He told Kessler that he wanted to be involved in Greyson’s life, and that he didn’t want lawyers to get involved.
“ Sure enough, within six months I was served papers that he was suing for paternity and a name change. He actually wanted me to change Greyson's last name to his [but] he wasn't even on the birth certificate,” she said.
While he was not awarded the name change, Kessler says that her lawyers told her she had to settle with Stacey.
“ I was told when I hired counsel that if a man wants 50% custody, they will get 50% custody,” said Kessler.
“I died that day. The version of Ali that existed before is not here. I may still smile at times or laugh at a funny show, but it's hollow and I cry in between and I don't sleep at night."Ali Kessler
As of 2023, Florida has a law that presumes that 50/50 timesharing in custody disputes is in the child’s best interest, unless otherwise proven, but that was not the case when Kessler’s lawyer told her that.
“ I didn't know John very well. I never lived with him. We were never married. I just basically was handing my child to a stranger, so I was really not happy about that,” Kessler said.
In the four years after the custody arraignment was agreed to, Stacey’s harassing behavior continued. Kessler says that every interaction was combative and, on one occasion, Stacey said his life’s mission was to make her suffer. Kessler shared all of these instances with her lawyer, but nothing changed.
Then Kessler started dating someone new, and the worrying behavior from Stacey began to escalate. He began sending threatening messages including:
“You are not allowed to date other people. It’s me or no one.”
“You lied to get pregnant. Fraud. You deserve to be punished.”
“You deserve to have your head separated from your body.”
In May of 2021, while Greyson was in Stacey’s custody, he was meant to drop the child off at school to begin Kessler’s custody. Greyson was not at school that day. Kessler worried something was wrong and called Stacey but got no answer. She then tried to get the police to intervene, asking for wellness checks on Stacey.
“They went out five times and they just said, ‘We can't go out another time.’ The child is just with his father,” she said. “It shouldn't have been that difficult to get help or police involved.”
Kessler filed a motion for an emergency pick up with the court; however, on May 20 Stacey shot and killed four-year old Gresyon before completing his own suicide inside his Fort Lauderdale condo. Kessler’s motion was denied hours later.
“I died that day. The version of Ali that existed before is not here. I may still smile at times or laugh at a funny show, but it's hollow and I cry in between and I don't sleep at night,” Kessler said.
Kessler became an advocate for Greyson’s Law, which was passed in 2023. The law is aimed at increasing safety for children in custody cases by forcing courts to consider evidence of domestic violence even if the accused was not convicted of a crime.
The murder of Melody Duran
Jeronimo Duran began custody proceedings against Melody Clarke in April of 2023. At the time, Clarke had custody of their daughter Melody Duran. Jeronimo Duran filed a request for shared custody and Clarke countered his request.
Clarke stated that “the father suffers from mental illness including paranoia and anger issues (punching the wall). He also suffers from anxiety and has been Baker Acted a minimum of five times."
She also said that Jeronimo Duran suffered from suicidal ideations and had “a history of hearing voices to end his life, some while the child was with him alone.”
She described his behavior as “erratic, aggressive, violent, and dangerous to the mother and minor child.”
Instead of a hearing on these claims, the two settled.
“She had a domestic violence injunction against him. They were supposed to have a hearing the next day, and on the docket shows the hearing never held place. Instead, an agreed order was entered that resolved child support and timesharing,” said Hecker of FACT.
That agreement included unsupervised visits for Jeronimo Duran, which began on March 11, 2025. Just two months later, on one of those unsupervised visits, Jeronimo Duran slit the two-year old’s throat with a steak knife. The child was found by her grandmother and rushed to the hospital where she was pronounced dead.
Kessler bemoaned this as a tragedy that shouldn’t have happened when speaking to NBC 6 Miami at the time.
“If there are any red flags, if there's any sort of evidence that would imply you believe your or your child are in imminent danger, that’s enough for a judge to step in,” she said.
Jennifer Adams, a congressional candidate in Florida’s 7th district, is a survivor of domestic abuse. She said these kinds of cases highlight that, even though Greyson’s Law is in effect, its implementation has not been widespread.
“ What's happened is that mindset has not shifted. You have law enforcement where probably the educational money and tools have not been utilized to educate law enforcement about this new law, about these new tools— same with judges and with attorneys. They have a tool that can allow them to act,” she said.
“I have heard it helped out other people," Kessler told NBC 6 Miami, “by multiple parents who say, 'Your son, your law, has saved my child’s life.' But I’ve also heard it was cited in court and judges had no idea what it was."
Costs of fighting custody cases
Women especially face challenges in the family court system due to a number of compounding factors.
Because of the cost of legal representation, some defendants represent themselves, known as 'pro se.'
”We have a justice system that doesn't work the same for everybody. In family and domestic violence court, you're not automatically provided an attorney. A lot of these things happen pro se because that's the only option people have,” said Adams.
The high costs also benefit the partner with more money. Some custody disputes can drag on for years, which increases pressure on the parties to settle.
“We're talking millions of dollars in a single case that's being exchanged from parties to attorneys and professionals. Some of these cases are going on for five or six years just to get a divorce, and kids are being used as the weapon,” said Hecker.
This is especially true in cases that involve abusers. Hecker says that one of the most common tactics for abusers is what she calls “litigation abuse” or “vexatious litigation.” Essentially one party will fire motion after motion, no matter how spurious, in an attempt to harass the other party.
“ They can file whatever they want, whether there's any truth or validity, and have zero consequences. But you still have to respond, you still have to go into a court in a hearing and a judge makes a decision that can impact every aspect of your life,” said Hecker.
Parental Alienation
Claims of “Parental Alienation” also have resulted in more negative outcomes for women in custody cases.
Originally coined by psychologist Dr. Richard Gardner as Parental Alienation Syndrome in 1985, parental alienation is a pseudo-scientific theory that when one parent in a custody case alleges the other of abuse, they are doing so to alienate the child from the accused parent. Neither the American Psychiatric Association nor the American Medical Association recognizes Parental Alienation Syndrome, but the idea of alienation is a common defense against abuse allegations in family court.
Gardner himself testified in more than 400 child custody cases. In 1992, he weighed in on the accusations of child sexual abuse levied by actress Mia Farrow against Woody Allen. In support of Allen, he told Newsweek: “Screaming sex abuse is a very effective way to wreak vengeance on a hated spouse.”
According to a study by George Washington University Law School, judges are twice as likely to reject a mother’s claim of domestic abuse if the father claims parental alienation and four times as likely to reject claims of child abuse. It also found that when a court accepts a father’s claim of alienation, mothers lose custody at double the rate. Even in cases where the court accepts that a father has physically abused the mother or the child, custody is switched to those fathers 14% of the time.
"No one ever believes when they say there’s a reason for leaving or abuse, especially with women," Kessler told NBC 6 Miami in 2024. "Courts see them as being hysterical, angry or bitter when it’s just not the case."
“The best interests of the child”
Even if alienation is not directly claimed, its widespread acceptance in the legal system can lead to judges awarding shared custody. That’s because family court judges’ legal standard for child custody cases is to rule in a way that they see as “in the best interests of the child.”
“ It allows a judge with any preconceived notion to just shoehorn their personal beliefs into their decision. All the judge has to do to justify it is say, ‘Well, I believe it was in the child's best interest,’” said Hecker.
Melody Clarke had full custody of her daughter when the custody dispute began with Jeronimo Duran. The co-parenting plan they agreed to cited the best interests of the child as the reason for awarding unsupervised co-parenting despite Jeronimo’s documented history of mental instability.
In 2020, Judge Scott Bernstein of The 11th Circuit of Florida in Miami-Dade County was presiding over Alonso V. Alonso, a child custody case. The child’s mother, Annalye Pacheco (formerly Alonso) told Bernstein that her child refused to get in the car to meet with Gustavo Alonso, the child’s father. Despite being informed of a recent “physical altercation” between Alonso and the child, Bernstein ordered Pacheco to stop feeding her son under threat of jail time.
“If he’s hungry enough, he’ll get in the car. I’m serious about that,” he said.
The court appointed guardian ad litem in the case said that it would be traumatic for the police to forcibly remove the child from his mother to return him to his father, but that it was in the “best interests of the child” in the long term to do so. Judge Bernstein concurred.
Adams has her own story of startling judicial behavior.
”I had a judge who wrongly ordered me to prison because I had a teenage son who was running away from his abusive father,” she said.
But for those who feel a judge is being unreasonable, there is pressure to stay silent.
”We have a justice system that doesn't work the same for everybody. In family and domestic violence court, you're not automatically provided an attorney."Jennifer Adams, congressional candidate in Florida’s 7th district.
In a case held in Florida’s 15th Circuit, Judge Darren Shull has refused to recuse himself after being sued by four women who allege he is displaying clear gender bias against them, in custody cases and “engaging in a pattern of reprehensible discriminatory behaviors.”
One of the women, Nanea Marcial, who is suing Shull has their custody case before him and Shull has refused to recuse himself.
“I feel like he is intentionally remaining on the case to counter my efforts to remove him, to stick it to me and show me he has power over me,” Marcial told The Florida Bulldog
“ You shouldn't have to go against a judge and then you have the fear of retaliation. Because you're taking a position against somebody that's basically in control of your life who could just take away your kids,” said Hecker.
In the wake of the triple homicide in Tamarac, state Rep. Robin Bartleman, D-Weston, introduced a bill aimed at closing the loophole that allowed Nathan Gingles to keep his firearms.
Bartleman filed HB 729; state Sen. Tina Polsky, D-Boca Raton, filed a companion bill, SB 858.
The legislation would apply the same methods of gun confiscation used in Florida's "red flag" laws to domestic violence restraining orders.
“Currently, while judges have the power to grant or issue an injunction to compel abusers to surrender their firearms, there is no clear enforcement mechanism,” Bartleman told reporters at a recent news conference. “I spoke to different members of the law enforcement community and there was no clear or consistent response to these orders.”
With no mechanism to enforce these confiscations, the courts take it on good faith that respondents are being truthful. Under the new law, police would have the ability to execute search warrants for guns.
The bill will be reviewed during Florida's upcoming legislative session that begins Jan. 13.
