Nelson’s brother gives detailed testimony of their childhood abuse
Jury weighs death penalty for Fulford slaying
As a high school student, Scott Edward Nelson worked hard at a landscaping job one summer and saved enough money to buy a nice car, his brother James Nelson told jurors. But the next time James Nelson saw his brother, the car was gone – Scott Nelson sold it because their mother needed money.
As a 12-year-old, Scott Nelson became his schizophrenic mother’s primary caretaker after his abusive father divorced her, James Nelson testified Tuesday. The two moved to a trailer, where Scott Nelson was in charge of making repairs and being his mother’s emotional support.
“I don’t know how [Scott] dealt with it,” James Nelson said.
“He was just a kid.”
The testimony about Scott Nelson’s childhood came as the jury in his murder trial decides whether he should spend the rest of his life in prison or be executed. Nelson, 55, was found guilty last week of kidnapping 56-year-old Jennifer Fulford from her employer’s Winter Park home during a 2017 robbery and killing her in a field, where he left her body.
Nelson’s attorneys have argued his difficult upbringing and lifetime of substance abuse issues, imprisonment and mistreatment should give jurors pause about recommending that he be sentenced to die. Prosecutors say the cruelty of Fulford’s slaying weighs in favor of capital punishment.
By the time Scott Nelson was born in Massachusetts in 1964, his mother Joan had already suffered several nervous breakdowns and was medicated on powerful psychiatric drugs, James Nelson said. Their father, Lawrence Nelson, once beat her when she was seven months pregnant with Scott Nelson, his brother said.
James Nelson described his father as a “good provider,” who was highly regarded in the community. But inside their home, he said Lawrence Nelson was “extremely emotionally abusive, verbally abusive and physically abusive” toward the three brothers and their mother.
“He would call people derogatory names and make fun of us,” James Nelson testified. “I was hit with a two-by-four on more than one occasion. He would throw things at you. He would get you in a corner and he would beat you with a belt. … He punched me in the face.”
Shortly after the family moved to New Hampshire, Lawrence and Joan Nelson divorced after he had an affair with another woman, James Nelson said. With his two older brothers out of the house and his father refusing to help financially, Scott Nelson’s life with his mother took a bleak
turn.
They burned furniture to keep warm because the heat didn’t work anymore in the home Lawrence Nelson built, and then moved to a trailer, James Nelson said. As a teenager, Scott Nelson began using drugs and alcohol, his defense attorney Chelsea Simmons said.
In 1994, when Scott Nelson was about 30, he was convicted and sentenced to 14 years in prison for robbing his father with a gun of $10,000 and a car. James Nelson said his brother had previously asked Lawrence Nelson to stay with him, but their father refused. Thomas Broderick, Nelson’s cousin, said after the robbery, Scott Nelson told his father, “You’re never going to hurt me or my mother again.”
While Scott Nelson was incarcerated, the two brothers wrote letters to each other, but Scott Nelson asked his older brother not to visit him because saying goodbye afterward would be too painful. Their letters stopped after 2010, when Nelson was released and then arrested 11 days later for trying to rob a Daytona Beach bank with a fake bomb.
“I haven’t seen Scott in over 25 years,” James Nelson said, testifying remotely by video chat. “Seeing him in this video is the first time I’ve seen him in over 25 years.”
During his brother’s testimony, Scott Nelson told Assistant State Attorney Kenneth Nunnelley to “shut up” as Nunnelley objected to parts of James Nelson’s statements.
“I object to all these interruptions,” Scott Nelson said. Circuit Judge Keith White told him to let his attorneys object for him.
Several months after being released in 2017 on federal probation from the bank robbery, a homeless Nelson planned to rob the Winter Park home where Fulford worked as a caregiver and house manager.
On Sept. 27, 2017, Nelson pushed his way into the house with a knife after Fulford opened the door to collect a UPS package. He restrained her with zip ties and wrapped her in a comforter before putting her in the trunk of her own car.
Nelson drove Fulford to a nearby Wells Fargo, where he used her card to withdraw $300 from her account. He told detectives he wrapped duct tape around Fulford’s face and stabbed her several times before leaving her body in the field of a vacant lot on Fenton Street near Apopka-Vineland Road.
Jurors also heard Tuesday from neuropsychologist Robert H. Ouaou and neurologist Mark Rubino about how Nelson’s multiple head injuries over the decades, alcohol abuse and heart problems could have affected his memory and cognitive skills. Nelson’s IQ is 82, and he exhibits shortterm memory loss as well as behaviors like impulsiveness, inattention and poor planning, according to the doctors.