10 days before she was murdered, Mary Gingles detailed how dangerous her husband was
.jpg "Mary Gingles with her father David Ponzer. Both were shot and killed Sunday morning, Feb. 16, 2025, in Tamarac, FL. Nathan Gingles, Mary’s estranged husband who had a domestic violence restraining order against him, has been charged with their murders and the murder of their neighbor, whose home Mary sought refuge as Nathan stalked her, police say.")
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Amber Alert unravels triple murder in Tamarac
Nathan Alan Gingles is accused of abducting his 4-year-daughter and killing her mother, grandfather and a neighbor in Tamarac.
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Just days before she died, Mary Gingles laid out in chilling detail her fears about how her and her 4-year-old daughter’s lives would end.
“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 Nathan will kill me and my daughter,” Mary wrote of her husband in a court filing in their divorce proceedings.
Ten days later, deputies say, Nathan Gingles shot his estranged wife as their little girl watched.
The Army veteran, 43, is accused of going on a shooting rampage in a quiet Tamarac subdivision on Feb. 16, stalking his wife and gunning down her father and a neighbor in whose home she sought refuge. As Nathan hunted Mary that Sunday morning, their daughter Seraphine trailed behind him, barefoot, police say.
After the murders, Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony suspended eight deputies and demoted a top officer as investigators look into why Nathan’s guns weren’t taken from him after a judge signed off on a restraining order. Deputies had been called to the family’s Tamarac home 14 times over the past year, a Herald review of the BSO call log shows.
Mary’s statements prophetic
Court documents obtained by the Miami Herald outline the extent Mary went to protect herself and her daughter from her husband, who she told police stalked her and continually threatened her life.
As the couple divorced, Mary stayed in their house in the Plum Bay community and Nathan moved into a nearby apartment.
She accused him of stealing her car key, health records, her and her daughter’s passports and the only copy of their daughter’s birth certificate.
The statement 10 days before she died echoed the allegations and fears she had expressed in police calls and official filings. She said Nathan put a tracker on her car, broke into her home wearing gloves, disabled the security cameras in the house, and left behind a backpack containing duct tape and plastic restraints.
“Nathan has entered my home, left a backpack full of items that he would need to murder me, a note with, ‘Needle — Air Embolism, Psych Med OD, Waterboarding’ written on it, staged a ladder outside my house, and left windows in my house ajar. I think a reasonable person would consider those ‘steps to murder’ me,” Mary wrote in the filing.
She said Nathan entered the home in late December when he was supposed to be taking care of Seraphine, “which means he left her alone as . . . he did regularly at four years old.”
In fact, Mary elaborated on this after picking up her daughter from a December custody visit with Nathan: “When we got to the car to load up, she told me that, ‘Daddy left me alone again. He is trying to make you die,’’’ she wrote in her court filing seeking a restraining order.
Both Mary and Nathan are U.S. Army veterans, both captains when they left the service — she in 2020, he in 2019. Nathan worked at the U.S. Southern Command in Doral as atechnology contractor with General Dynamics, making more than $160,000 a year, the divorce petition states.Mary stated in court documents that Nathan would not let her work as part of his campaign to control her.
In her February 2024 divorce petition, Mary described Nathan as “heavily armed” with “semi-automatic, handguns and more sophisticated firearms” with silencers that she believed he would use to kill her: “as what else would he need silencers for.”
As it turned out, the Sig Sauer P320 semiautomatic handgun detectives say Nathan used to kill Mary and the others was one of about a dozen firearms and ammo deputies seized a year prior per a court order. They were supposed to confiscate his weapons again in December on a judge’s order.
Gun silencers, 660 rounds of ammo
A BSO dive team found the semiautomatic handgun and silencer in a body of water less than half a mile away from the murder scene.
In February 2024, deputies seized more than 40 firearms and firearm-related accessories after a Broward judge granted Mary a temporary restraining order against Nathan, according to court records. Deputies collected 12 firearms, six silencers and 660 rounds of ammunition on Feb. 9, 2024, the same day as the restraining order.
Despite Mary’s fears for her and her daughter’s safety, BSO returned the weapons to Nathan Gingles seven months later in September 2024, citing the lifting of the restraining order. As part of their divorce proceedings, Mary and Nathan agreed to a “no-harmful contact order” so they could share custody of Seraphine, thus negating the restraining order.
Mary had obtained a second domestic violence restraining order against Nathan on Dec. 30. In that order, the judge ordered Nathan to surrender his guns and sent a copy of the order to BSO.
BSO didn’t seize Nathan’s weapons.
Six weeks later, deputies said, Nathan stormed into the Plum Bay community and shot Mary, 34, her father David Ponzer, 64, and neighbor Andrew Ferrin, 36.
Broward Sheriff’s deputies believe Ferrin was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Mary had run into his home through an unlocked front door as she desperately tried to escape from Nathan, who had already struck her with a Taser and gunned down her father as he was drinking coffee on the back patio.
‘Imminent threat of domestic violence’: Mary
After the murders, Sheriff Tony said deputies were called to the home numerous times between February 2024 and February 2025. He called the calls for service “robust” and said Mary repeatedly feared she would be killed by Nathan.
“The combination of his actions would lead anyone to think I am in imminent threat of domestic violence,” Mary wrote in her Feb 6 statement.
Ten days later, she was dead.
Miami Herald staff writer Grethel Aguila contributed to this report.
This story was originally published March 7, 2025 at 5:07 PM.
