JUST IN: Nevada To Execute Corrupt U.S. Police Officer David Middleton — “No One Will Believe You
His name was on the work order. Her name was on the missing person’s report. 3 weeks apart, same address. That’s the only reason we know what happened to her. The others weren’t so lucky. On the morning after she was last seen alive, a school custodian knocked on her front door. Nobody answered, but something was there.
A TCI cable service tag dated Saturday, February 4th. left by someone who had already been to her house once, someone who had a reason to come back. That tag was the first piece of a puzzle investigators almost missed entirely. David Steven Middleton did not hide in the dark. He did not break into homes or follow strangers down empty streets.
He knocked on doors that people willingly opened. He wore a uniform that made questions feel unnecessary. He carried a work order that made him look like he belonged. And by the time anyone connected his name to a body, he had already done it before. This is the documented case of the man they called the cable guy.
David Steven Middleton was born on June 25th, 1961 in Boston, Massachusetts. On paper, his early life looked ordinary. His father was a police officer. Structure and authority were part of the household from the beginning. When Middleton was 11, his parents divorced. Two years later, his mother remarried and he gained a stepsister and a step-brother.
Not much is documented about those years at home, but what the records do show is that Middleton was a capable student, strong grades, no disciplinary issues, nothing that would have flagged concern. At 18, he was hired as a police cadet by the Boston Police Department while attending college on a basketball scholarship at Suffk University.
He later transferred to the University of Massachusetts. He left in December 1981 without completing his degree. That same year, he married his high school sweetheart, Julia Tina Heridia. Shortly after, he resigned from the Boston Police Department and relocated to Miami, Florida, where he joined the Metroade Police Department in 1982.
His first year there was, by all documented accounts, impressive. He earned commendations. He was promoted to detective in the Warrants Bureau where his responsibilities included tracking fugitives, serving legal documents, and supporting arrest operations. By every visible measure, he looked like a career officer moving in the right direction.
Then in 1984, while on duty, Middleton arrested a woman named Jerry Lynn Smith. He began a long-term affair with her. In 1987, his mother died. People who knew him noted a shift after that. By March 1988, the Metro Dade internal affairs division had opened an investigation into Middleton.
He had written letters to a prosecutor’s office in New Jersey requesting reduced bail for a man named Jabber Muhammad and had done the same for Jerry Lynn Smith. He was removed from the warrant section, placed on station duty, and eventually suspended. On February 15th, 1989, he was reinstated. 14 months later, he was behind the wheel of a police cruiser, telling a 16-year-old girl it was past curfew. September 1990, Miami, Florida.
A 16-year-old girl known in court records and public reporting only by her initials, AC, was walking along a street at night when a police cruiser pulled up alongside her. The officer behind the wheel was David Steven Middleton. He told her it was past curfew. That her parents were concerned about her.
That she needed to come with him for her own safety. He was in uniform. He had a badge. He represented the law. She had no reason not to trust him. She got in the car. Middleton did not drive her to a police station. He did not contact her parents. He drove her to a remote location outside Miami away from any witnesses where he used his department issued handcuffs to restrain her and sexually assaulted her.
When it was over, he left her in an empty lot with a warning she would never forget. No one will believe you. Is he did not accept that she went directly to the authorities and reported everything. The badge, the handcuffs, the false pretense, the assault. Middleton was arrested and charged with rape. The case went to trial.
The jury deadlocked and could not reach a unanimous decision on the rape charge. Rather than retry the case, prosecutors accepted a plea arrangement. Middleton pleaded guilty to aggravated battery and false imprisonment. He was sentenced to 5 years in prison. He served two. Upon his release, the Miami Dade Police Department terminated his employment.
But here is where the system failed in a way that would have consequences nobody anticipated. Law enforcement agencies in Colorado and Nevada were never adequately informed about Middleton’s conviction, his conduct, or what the evidence indicated he was capable of. There was no alert, no flag, no warning sent across state lines.
He was a convicted predator who had used a police badge to target a teenager, and he walked out of prison into a system that simply was not watching. He crossed state lines. He changed his life on the surface and he started over in a new state with a new job and no meaningful oversight. Years later, AC would be prepared to testify once more, this time at Middleton’s Nevada penalty hearing as prosecutors moved to use the Florida conviction as a documented aggravating factor in seeking the death penalty.
The crime that the system had reduced to 2 years behind bars was not finished following him. Before we go further, if cases like this one matter to you, cases built on verified court records and documented facts that the headlines moved past too quickly, subscribe now and turn on notifications. Every case covered here is sourced directly from legal filings, court rulings, and confirmed reporting.
No guesswork, no speculation. Hit subscribe and let’s continue. David Steven Middleton is documented as the only convicted serial killer in American history who also served as a sworn law enforcement officer. That is not an opinion or a characterization. That is the verified public record. After his release from a Florida correctional facility, David Steven Middleton left the state.
He moved first to Colorado, then settled in Reno, Nevada. No badge this time. No department issued credentials, but he found something that gave him nearly the same level of access. He took a job as a cable television installer at TCI Cable Vision. Think about what that position provided.
A legitimate work order with a customer’s name and home address. A scheduled appointment. The homeowner arranged themselves. A reason to be led inside without a single question asked. Middleton could walk through a front door, move through a residence, observe the layout. note whether someone lived alone and leave with a complete picture of that person’s life, all while appearing to do nothing more than set up a cable connection.
What investigators later confirmed and what the Nevada Supreme Court acknowledged in its ruling was that Middleton had developed a consistent method across his crimes. He would gain entry through a legitimate pretext. He would use white nylon rope and duct tape to restrain his victim. He would then transport her to a storage unit he had rented in Sparks, Nevada, registered under the fictitious company named Hal Data Research, connected to him through his girlfriend, Ivon Ioni Haley.
That unit was not an afterthought. It was a deliberate maintained facility built for a purpose and it had been operational before the disappearances began. In late 1993, women started vanishing. The first was Buffy Rice Donahue. She was 18 years old and living in Montrose, Colorado. On the afternoon of Sunday, November 21st, 1993, she told her parents she was heading out to wash her car and pick up a lemonade, a routine errand on a quiet Sunday.
She was last seen at a local Safeway store. Her car was found later that day in the parking lot of a nearby Walmart. Her wallet was inside, her driver’s license was inside, Buffy was not. Search teams were deployed immediately. Helicopters swept the area. Sniffer dogs were brought in. Missing persons posters went up across Montros. None of it produced a single lead.
What nobody knew at the time was that Ivonne Haley, Middleton’s girlfriend, worked at that same Walmart where Buffy’s car was found. That connection would not surface until years later. Investigators also noted another disappearance in the same area around the same period. a 14-year-old girl named Cindy Booth, who had vanished just weeks earlier.
Despite the geographic and temporal proximity, authorities maintained the two cases were unrelated. 18 months after Buffy disappeared in May 1995, her remains were found in a remote wooded area near Norwood in San Miguel County, Colorado. She had been bound and placed inside a plastic bag.
San Miguel County Sheriff Bill Masters identified Middleton as the prime suspect based on his ties to the area and his connection to Ivon Haley. No charges were ever filed against Middleton in Colorado. Buffy Rice Donahue was never given a day in court. 8 months after Buffy vanished, the disappearances moved to Nevada. Thelma Aaro Deila was 42 years old.
She was a Guatemalan immigrant who had built a stable, quiet life in Reno with her sister, Dora Valvverde. For six consecutive years, she had worked as a porter at Circus Circus Casino. 6 years, not a single missed shift. Her supervisors and colleagues knew her as one of the most dependable workers on staff.
On the morning of August 8th, 1994, Dora left for work while Thelma was resting on the couch. When Dora returned home that evening, the front door was unlocked. The television was still on. A potted plant near the entrance had been knocked over. Thelma’s wallet, her keys, and several hundred in cash were sitting untouched on the table.
The blankets she had been sleeping under were gone. So was Thelma. She had missed a dentist appointment that afternoon, something those who knew her said she would never do without calling first. She did not show up to Circus Circus. Dora filed a missing person’s report with Reno police on August 10th. A witness would later tell investigators that Middleton had been seen on the stairs outside Deila’s apartment building on the morning she was last seen.
That placement documented and presented at trial put him at her location at the critical moment. For 8 months, Thelma Deila remained missing. Then on April 9th, 1995, a man walking his dog in a remote area near Verde, Nevada, came across human remains. Animal activity had severely disturbed the scene. What remained was a skull attached to several vertebrae and a number of long bones.
Pieces of white braided rope were found nearby. The remains had been wrapped in a large yellow storage bag, a product labeled the Warps banana bag. Investigators later traced that specific bag to a single store in the Reno area that carried them. Records showed one box of three bags had been sold at that store on February 8th, 1995.
That purchase date placed the acquisition of the bag weeks after Thelma had already disappeared, connecting the disposal of her remains to a deliberate post-crime action. A dental bridge recovered from the skull made the identification possible. The remains were confirmed as those of Thelma Amparro Deila. Dr.
Frederick Lobcher was brought in to conduct a medical examination. Because of the condition of the remains, a standard autopsy was not possible. There was no tissue left to examine. Dr. Lobshire reviewed the skeletal remains for any indication of cause of death. The skull was intact. None of the bones showed evidence of a gunshot, a knife wound, or any traumatic physical injury.
He could not establish a cause of death and stated he could not rule out suffocation or most other possibilities. The cause of Thelma Devila’s death was never officially determined. But the evidence surrounding her disappearance, the location of her remains, and the items found with her told a story the medical record alone could not.
Then 6 months after Thelma Deila went missing, it happened again. Katherine Elizabeth Powell was 45 years old, she held a PhD in psychology. For 13 years, she had taught third grade at Sun Valley Elementary School in Reno. She was divorced and lived alone. Colleagues described her as exceptionally reliable, the kind of teacher whose absence was immediately noticed because it simply did not happen.
On the evening of Friday, February 3rd, 1995, Catherine Powell was last seen alive. She had plans. A ski trip with a friend was scheduled for the following morning, Saturday, February 4th. She never showed up. Her friend could not reach her. Over the weekend, several people attempted to contact her. Nobody got through. On Monday, February 6th, when she did not appear at Sun Valley Elementary, her colleagues immediately notified police.
Officers were dispatched to her home on Silver Nullles Boulevard. Her truck was in the driveway. Her personal belongings were inside the house. Catherine was not there. A school custodian who had gone to her home prior to the police reported something that would later prove significant.
He had knocked on the door and received no answer. But attached to the front door was an attempted service tag from TCI Cable Vision. Dated Saturday, February 4th, 1995. The morning after Catherine Powell was last seen alive, someone from TCI Cable Vision had come to her address. Two of her neighbors, Angela Green and Charles Corning, told investigators they had noticed an unfamiliar pickup truck parked outside her home in the early morning hours of February 4th.
A third neighbor provided a more specific account. On February 1st, 5 days before Catherine was reported missing, a tci cable truck had been parked outside her residence. That neighbor later identified the occupants of that truck as David Steven Middleton and Ivonne Haley. On the evening of February 11th, 1995, at approxima
tely 9:30 p.m., a woman’s body was discovered inside a trash dumpster at a Reno apartment complex. The body was inside a sleeping bag covered by plastic garbage bags with a large yellow warps bag placed over the top of everything. Dr. Roger Ritzlin performed the autopsy. The body was loosely bound with rope. It was wearing only a black tank top and blue socks.
Bruising was present on the elbows and knees, and forensic analysis determined those injuries had occurred prior to death. Blue fibers were found on the body. Toxicology results showed a non-toxic level of lithium in the blood consistent with a prescription Katherine Powell had been given for a diagnosed bipolar disorder.
Microscopic examination of her heart showed acute cell death in the left ventricle. That deterioration had begun a few days before her death. Dr. Ritzlin also noted the absence of petiki eye small hemorrhages typically seen in cases of suffocation and the absence of fecal staining which is also commonly associated with that cause of death.
He testified at trial that both markers are usually present when suffocation is the mechanism and neither was present in this case. A finding that complicated the cause of death determination while still pointing investigators toward what had likely occurred. The body was identified through fingerprints.
It was Katherine Powell, three women, two states, a pattern that law enforcement was only beginning to see clearly. And at the center of it, a man with a work order, a storage unit, and a method he had been refining for over a year. When Catherine Powell failed to appear at work on February 6th, 1995, her colleagues did not wait long before contacting police.
Investigators were dispatched to her home and what they found there set the case in motion. Her truck was in the driveway. Her belongings were inside, but Catherine was gone. Detectives began retracing her final weeks. They reviewed her financial records, her recent purchases, her scheduled appointments, and any service calls made to her residence.
One entry in her service history stood out immediately. On January 28th, 1995, 9 days before she was reported missing, a cable installation had been completed at her home. The name on the work order was David Steven Middleton. He drove a red pickup truck that matched the description neighbors had already provided to investigators.
He also had a prior felony conviction on record in Florida. On February 23rd, 1995, investigators executed a search of Middleton’s apartment. Inside, they found a shotgun. Under Nevada law, a convicted felon found in possession of a firearm faces immediate criminal charges. Middleton was arrested that same day, but the firearms charge was only the beginning.
Information received through Reno’s secret witness program directed investigators to a storage unit in Sparks, Nevada. The unit had been registered under the name of a fictitious company, Hal Data Research. When investigators searched the unit on March 5th, 1995, what they found built the foundation of the entire prosecution.
Inside the unit was Catherine Powell’s personal property. Items confirmed missing from her home. Investigators also recovered the yellow windbreaker that had appeared on surveillance footage from the Good Guys electronic store in Reno, where Powell’s Mastercard had been used to purchase a Yamaha stereo system after her death. The red hand cart used to collect that order was in the unit as well.
Store records showed the order had been placed by phone and collected by a woman in that yellow windbreaker who arrived driving a red pickup truck registered to Middleton. The unit also contained clothing belonging to Thelma Deila, including a black lace shirt consistent with items she was known to own, along with other personal belongings connected to her.
Hair samples recovered from restraints inside the unit were forensically consistent with both Catherine Powell and Thelma Deila. Saliva collected from items inside the unit contained DNA consistent with Powell’s profile. Biological evidence on Powell’s clothing provided a direct physical link to Middleton. Blue fibers recovered from Powell’s body during the autopsy were found to be consistent with materials present inside the storage unit, establishing crosscontamination between the unit and the crime scene.
White braided rope found inside the unit could not be excluded as the same rope used to bind Powell’s body, nor the same rope found near Dila’s remains in Ver. The forensic comparisons were consistent across all three locations. Then there was the refrigerator in Middleton’s apartment. The shelves had been removed.
Two holes had been drilled into it. At the time of the preliminary hearing, both the prosecution and the defense acknowledged the implication of what that refrigerator represented. The Nevada Supreme Court later confirmed in its ruling that there was compelling evidence Powell had been confined inside the unit and had suffocated as a result of that confinement.
Forensic odontologist Dr. Raymond Rosson, a professor in dentistry with recognized expertise in bite mark analysis, examined a dental mold taken from Middleton pursuant to a court order. He compared that mold against a bite mark found on Powell’s body. His conclusion was unambiguous. The bite mark had been inflicted while Powell was still alive.
It was a forceful bite that caused bleeding beneath the skin, and it was consistent with Middleton’s dental impression. On the day Powell’s body was discovered, Detective Jenkins had interviewed Middleton directly. During that interview, Middleton confirmed two things voluntarily. He acknowledged that he had performed a cable installation at Catherine Powell’s residence on January 28th, 1995.
He acknowledged that he owned the red pickup truck witnesses had described near her home. Everything else he denied. The evidence told a different story entirely. Piece by piece, from a service record to a storage unit to a forensic dental match, investigators had built a case that placed David Steven Middleton at the center of both murders.
The question now was whether a jury would agree. While Nevada investigators were assembling their case, prosecutors in Florida were doing something equally significant. They were going back. Files from Middleton’s years on the Miami Dade Police Force were reopened. What emerged was a pattern that extended well beyond the single case that had ended his law enforcement career.
Florida prosecutors filed charges connected to two additional assault cases from his time as an active officer. The first involved a woman named Cosmi. Her account described Middleton using his position and authority as a law enforcement officer to isolate her before carrying out the assault. The badge once again was the mechanism.
The second case involved a victim identified in proceedings only as Jane Doe. Her account was more detailed and considerably more unsettling. She told prosecutors that Middleton had stopped her under the pretense of a DUI checkpoint. He later contacted her and invited her to his residence. When she arrived, he was dressed in a religious costume.
He led her into a darkened room where he burned incense and drew symbols before assaulting her. It was calculated, controlled, and deliberate from the first moment to the last. Additional victims came forward during this period, each describing a version of the same structure. a position of authority used to establish initial contact, a false pretense to create isolation, and a controlled environment in which the assault took place.
Florida prosecutors faced significant challenges in advancing every case. Some of the evidence had deteriorated over time. Some allegations could not be sufficiently corroborated given how many years had passed, but the Florida cases did not fade into the background entirely. led Nevada prosecutor Thomas Valoria moved to use Middleton’s documented Florida conviction as an aggravating factor at the Nevada death penalty hearing.
The crimes committed in Miami, the ones that had cost him a badge in 2 years of his life, now followed him into a courtroom where the stakes were his own. The trial of David Steven Middleton opened in Wo County District Court in Reno, Nevada in the summer of 1997. Presiding over the proceedings was Judge Peter Breen.
The prosecution was led by Deputy District Attorney Thomas Valoria. The defense was handled by public defender Michael Spetio and Deputy Public Defender John Ree Petty. Before the trial even began, the defense made its first move. Spio filed a pre-trial motion seeking a gag order on press coverage of the case. Judge Breen denied it.
The road to trial had not been straightforward. Middleton’s defense team had previously filed a pre-trial habius corpus petition arguing that because no confirmed medical cause of death had been established for either Thelma Deila or Catherine Powell, the murder charges could not legally stand. Judge Breen initially agreed and dismissed the charges on those grounds.
The Nevada Supreme Court reversed that decision unanimously. The court found that while exact causes of death remained undetermined, the full body of available evidence supported a reasonable inference that both deaths resulted from criminal agency. The charges were reinstated and the case proceeded.
Valoria built the prosecution around a single documented argument that Middleton had followed the same pattern in both cases and that the physical evidence connecting him to both victims was extensive, consistent, and independent across multiple forensic disciplines. The evidence presented at trial included Powell’s Mastercard traced to a post-death electronics purchase at the Good Guy store in Reno.
Wool and textile fibers recovered from Powell’s body were consistent with materials found inside the storage unit. Dr. Raymond Rosson testified that the bite mark on Powell’s body was inflicted while she was alive and that it was consistent with Middleton’s dental impression. Hair samples from both victims were recovered from restraints inside the storage unit.
Biological evidence on Powell’s clothing provided a direct physical link to Middleton. Rope recovered from the storage unit was consistent with rope found at both crime scenes. Three separate witnesses placed Middleton at Powell’s residence. The modified refrigerator in his apartment was confirmed by the Nevada Supreme Court as the location where Powell had been confined, and Middleton himself had acknowledged to Detective Jenkins that he performed a cable installation at her home and owned the truck witnesses described. Then Middleton took the stand
in his own defense. He told the jury he had a prior consensual encounter with Catherine Powell. He said he left her home afterward, that he returned later and found her already dead, that he panicked, that he wrapped her body and placed it in a dumpster because, in his own words, he did not believe anyone would accept his version of events.
Valoria responded to that account directly and without hesitation. A person who discovers someone already deceased does not wrap the body, load it into a vehicle, transport it across the city, and place it in a trash bin. That is not the behavior of a panicked bystander. That is the deliberate action of someone managing evidence.
The jury heard it all. At the penalty phase, Valoria called three witnesses to address the human cost of what Middleton had done. Jeff Powell, Catherine’s brother, took the stand and testified that the last time he saw his sister was Christmas 1994. He brought a home video he had filmed at that gathering. The courtroom watched Catherine Powell wearing a Santa’s cap with elf ears, laughing and playing with Jeff’s two young children.
Catherine’s mother also testified. So did Dora Valverde, Thelma Deila’s sister, who had come home one evening in August 1994 to find her sister gone and never saw her again. The jury found five aggravating circumstances in the murder of Catherine Powell and four in the murder of Thelma Deila. All of them warranted the maximum penalty.
On August 26th, 1997, the verdict was delivered. Guilty on all counts. Two counts of firstdegree murder. two counts of firstdegree kidnapping, grand lararseny, fraudulent use of a credit card. On September 15th, 1997, Judge Peter Breen handed down the sentence, death twice for additional life terms for the kidnapping convictions, 32 more years for the firearms violations, and the fraudulent use of Powell’s credit card.
The total estimated cost of the proceedings came to approximately $461,260. David Steven Middleton, former police officer and cable installer, became the 83rd person placed on Nevada’s death row. The verdicts delivered on August 26th, 1997 were not the end of the legal process. They were the beginning of a new one.
In November 1998, the Nevada Supreme Court reviewed the case in full and affirmed all convictions and both death sentences. The court found that substantial evidence supported every charge the jury had returned and that Middleton’s claims on appeal had no merit. Middleton’s legal team did not stop there. Over the years that followed, multiple appeals were filed raising a range of claims.
His attorneys argued ineffective assistance of counsel. They alleged prosecutorial misconduct during the original trial. They filed a motion arguing Middleton should have been given a pre-trial competency hearing before the case ever reached a jury. Then in 2004, the Nevada Supreme Court issued a ruling in a separate case, the McConnell decision, which held that a specific aggravating circumstance used to secure a conviction could not then be used a second time to justify a death sentence.
Middleton’s attorneys moved to apply that ruling to his case, arguing it required the removal of at least two of the aggravating factors the jury had found. The court agreed that two factors needed to be set aside under McConnell, but it also ruled that the remaining aggravating circumstances were sufficient on their own to support both execution sentences.
The challenge failed. In 2017, the Nevada Supreme Court issued a 26-page order rejecting a further set of petitions. The court found no evidence that trial or appellet council had performed deficiently. It found no support for any claim of actual innocence. Every argument Middleton raised was addressed and denied. In 2022, a federal appeal was filed.
It was similarly denied. Every legal avenue that existed has now been exhausted. As of 2026, David Steven Middleton is 64 years old. He is held at Elely State Prison in Elely, Nevada, where Nevada’s death row population is housed. Nevada has not carried out an execution since 2006. No execution date has been scheduled for Middleton and none is currently pending.
The Donahghue family in Montro, Colorado has never received a trial verdict in Buffy’s name. They filed a civil suit alleging investigative failures, but the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals denied relief on statute of limitations grounds. Their one stated wish remains the same, to be present when Nevada carries out Middleton’s sentence, whenever that day comes.
Dora Vdee, Thelma Deila’s sister, who came home one evening in August 1994 to find an unlocked door and an empty couch, received a verdict in 1997. So did Jeff Powell, Catherine’s brother, who last saw her at Christmas 1994 and spent years away from his own practice and his own life to see the case through. They got the outcome the legal system was able to provide, but no verdict gives back what was taken.
Buffy Rice Donahue never had a trial. Catherine Powell held a PhD, taught third grade for 13 years, and was last seen on a Friday evening before a ski trip she never made. Thelma Deila worked six consecutive years at the same job without missing a single shift before her sister came home to find her simply gone.
If documented cases like these matter to you, cases built on verified court records, forensic evidence, and facts that get left behind when the news cycle moves on, subscribe and turn on notifications. Every case covered here is sourced from legal filings, court rulings, and confirmed reporting. These stories are not finished and neither are we.
