TAVARES, Fla. — Five years ago, Feb. 28, 2021, was just another Sunday as Amy Harris went about her day — until a phone call changed everything.
On the other end was her sister Melissa Nease’s best friend, Abby Henderson, telling her something had happened. Harris couldn’t get answers, so she started driving. She knew it was bad, but she didn’t know she was driving toward something she would spend the next five years trying to understand.
As she pulled up to her sister’s home in Ocklawaha on that warm February afternoon, she saw the blue lights. The law enforcement activity. And then the crime scene tape.
And she knew her baby sister was gone.
Nease was found by a family friend, murdered in the home she shared with her boyfriend, Jeremy “Shane” Jenkins, their three children and his son from a previous relationship. Harris said the house at 68 Guava Pass Drive was very secluded and only had two neighboring houses.
Nease, a 2010 graduate of Tavares High School, was home alone when she was shot and killed. Her boyfriend and three children were out of town, Nease stayed behind because she had started a new job and couldn’t get the time off.
Marion County Sheriff’s Office is investigating agency on the case. In the five years since the young mom’s murder, MCSO has released very little information. Nease did have cameras with flood lights outside her home, Harris said, and about two weeks after the murder, a small clip of a surveillance video from Nease’s home was released, but there has not been any new information since. The video shows a man in a hoodie, skull cap and mask running from the home and tripping over a chair. At one point the masked man looks directly into the camera. The flood lights may distort the person’s image, but Harris has always believed someone knows who he is and is still urging them to come forward. The intruder entered and left through the back of the home and Harris finds it strange that the family dogs— one a pit bull— did not deter them from entering her sister’s home. The dogs were in crates, but Harris believes the barking alone would have deterred most people.
“You had to know this house to be able to get into it,” Harris said. “It’s out in the middle of nowhere.”
Harris, who graduated college with her little sister, has never understood why someone would murder her. “It’s not adding up,” she told Inside Lake in the weeks after the senseless murder. Harris was concerned then her sister’s murder would become a “cold case,” and now she fears it has. Five years after her sister was killed, Harris said the grief hasn’t lessened, and neither has her determination to see someone held accountable. The silence surrounding the case is as painful now as it was the day they lost her.
MCSO Public Information Officer Zach Moore told Inside Lake earlier this week, detectives are still working the case.
“The homicide of Melissa Nease is still an ongoing investigation. Major Crimes detectives are continuing to follow up on every lead that becomes available in the case,” Moore said in an email. “Unfortunately, we do not have any additional information to release at this time”.
“I just want someone to come forward,” Harris said.
A murder doesn’t just affect the victim. It sends a ripple through every person who loved them.
“We just miss her. Five years later, I still want to call her,” Harris, who was known as “Sissy” to Nease, said. “When something happens, I still want to tell her.”Nease’s children were young when she was murdered and Harris fears what little memories they have of their mom will continue to fade as they grow up. Her youngest daughter doesn’t remember her mom at all. Nease celebrated her baby girl’s second birthday with a weekend at Disney, just three weeks before she was murdered.
While Harris has struggled with her own grief, she has also watched her own teenage daughter struggle immensely with the loss of her aunt. The trauma has led to behavioral issues at school and a deep distrust of law enforcement; something Harris says is heartbreaking in a different way. Harris’ mother, Lisa Nease, is also still grappling with the loss of her youngest child. Since the murder, she has faced several health challenges, including a heart attack. She now needs back surgery and is trying to find a way to pay for it, Harris said.
Harris refuses to let anyone forget her sister. She regularly calls and emails MCSO and has even reached out to other law enforcement agencies she believes may have cases connected to her sister’s slaying. She still visits her sister’s grave often and celebrated what would have been Nease’s 30th birthday with a balloon release at her gravesite in December 2021. Jenkins, Nease’s boyfriend at the time of the murder, lost his mother, Stacey Miller, in 2019. Nease and Miller are buried next to each other. More than three dozen people attended, most of them wearing pink – Nease’s favorite color – and sang “Happy Birthday,” to the woman described as a “PTA mom,” by Harris.
Abby Henderson, Nease’s best friend and the woman who made the call to Harris, told Inside Lake in 2021 how much she misses her best friend, and said Nease will be remembered for heart, “She was always so loving to everybody.”
Birthdays come and go. Holidays pass. But justice, Harris said, remains elusive.
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