A four-year-old girl who witnessed her father shoot her mother, grandfather and a neighbor told police the events that unfolded in gruesome detail, Florida authorities say.
Seraphine, the daughter of 43-year-old Nathan Gingles, said she was sitting on the couch in the living room of her Tamarac home on Sunday when her father burst in through the back door, according to an arrest affidavit obtained by the Miami Herald.
Nathan then made his way to the patio ‘with a long black gun’ and said ‘bye bye’ after shooting 64-year-old David Ponzer to death, the child said.
Ponzer, the little girl’s maternal grandfather, was outside drinking coffee and was gunned down at around 6:30am, according to the arrest report.
The girl then said she saw her dad chasing her mother, Mary Catherine Gingles, 34, out onto the street, where they began fighting on the ground.
She told detectives that her mother was screaming for help and banging on doors in the neighborhood until she was able to rush into the home of 36-year-old Andrew Ferrin.
Police said surveillance video showed Nathan entering Ferrin’s home, which was across the street.
Seraphine said that once Nathan was inside Ferrin’s home, he shot her mother ‘a hundred times,’ though police say only 10 shots were fired.
Seraphine, the daughter of Mary and Nathan Gingles, watched her father allegedly kill her mother, grandfather and neighbor
Seraphine is pictured riding a horse with her mother Mary, 34, who was beaten, tased, then shot to death by her husband, police said
Seraphine said her maternal grandfather, 64-year-old David Ponzer, was the first to be shot by Nathan, who allegedly said ‘bye bye’ before committing the evil act
In the midst of the fight between Mary and Nathan, Seraphine said her mother scrambled into the house of Andrew Ferrin, 36, for refuge. Mary and Nathan’s dead bodies were found inside the house by police
Mary and Ferrin were found dead in a bedroom. Her body was on the floor under the bedroom window, while the neighbor’s body was in bed and covered in a blanket, according to police.
Mary was also discovered to have serious injuries to her face and two marks from a taser gun under her right shoulder blade.
The child described the horrific murders as her mother and grandfather being ‘defeated,’ the affidavit said. She said she wanted her mother to ‘defeat’ her father but ‘her dad won.’
Seraphine was then kidnapped by her father, who reportedly told her that she would never see her mother or grandfather again that they were going to visit family in Texas.
That same day, an Amber Alert was issued for Seraphine, which led to Nathan being arrested by Broward County Sheriff’s deputies at a Walmart parking lot in North Lauderdale.
Court records indicate that Nathan had been banned from seeing his wife Mary in early February 2024 after she got a domestic violence restraining order against him.
Divorce proceedings began later that month and were continuing at the time of the triple murder.
Nathan, now in custody without bond at the Broward County Main Jail, faces three counts of premeditated first degree murder. On those three charges alone, he could be sentenced to death if convicted.
Nathan Gingles, 44, was charged with killing all three victims and for kidnapping his daughter
Haunting photos showed Seraphine smiling in the back of Broward County Sheriff’s Office cruiser after she was rescued from her father, who had taken her to a Walmart in North Lauderdale
He also been charged with seven other crimes, including kidnapping, violating a protection order and child abuse.
Broward County Sheriff Gregory Tony didn’t mince words about his and his department’s culpability in the triple murder and said the deputies who failed to protect the victims ‘will lose their job.’
‘This death is on my watch,’ Tony said. ‘There will be people that will lose their job over this.’
Tony announced the suspensions of seven deputies after the preliminary results of an internal investigation revealed serious lapses in judgment on the part of officers.
The officer said deputies failed to intervene in domestic violence disputes between Gingles and his wife in October and December.
‘This is just a matter of, what I’ve seen, pi** poor performance, complacency and people not doing their due diligence,’ Tony said.
‘There was enough there where we could have potentially pursued for probable cause affidavits so we could arrest him and take him off the street, and that didn’t happen.
‘I am basically saying we had a chance to save your loved one’s life, and we failed,’ he said.
According to court documents, Nathan and Mary met in 2016 and married two years later. They then moved to Germany, where Seraphine was born in August 2020.
Mary said that Nathan was a violent and abusive husband who had threatened to kill her and their daughter.
In one incident, Mary said Nathan was ‘up all night snorting Adderall and was in a drug-induced state acting bizarre in the morning and singing a made-up song about how he was going to kill the mother and get away with it and how no one would find her body.’
Broward County Sheriff Gregory Tony has suspended seven of his deputies for failing to intervene in the domestic disputes between Mary and Nathan. He said officers showed ‘p**s poor performance’ and claimed that people ‘will lose their job’
Nathan appears in court after the triple murder. If convicted of even one of the three killings, he’ll be eligible for the death penalty
Mary said in court documents that she lived ‘in constant fear of my husband.’ Nathan worked as an IT technician, earning $187,000 a year with a military contractor serving the Southern Command in Doral.
‘He will snort Adderall and stay up all night while Sera and I try to sleep. He has left lines of crushed Adderall on his dresser,’ she said.
Mary claimed he told her more than once: ‘If you try to leave me, I will kill you.’
Her initial domestic violence restraining order expired in July 2024, but she was able to get another put in place in late December, which remained active when she was killed.
In the second filing she claimed ‘[Nathan’s] stalking behaviors have increased recently and I think he is aiming to kill me while he has access to the rental property where I reside.’
In October, she reported to the Broward Sheriff’s Office that she found a tracking device on her car that matched one Nathan bought weeks earlier. In December, she told the sheriff’s she found what she believed to be a murder kit in her garage.
‘I think it is imminent that he will attempt to murder me,’ she said in the December court documents.
The protection order was extended by the court to March 19, but that did not stop the fatal attack.
