Former DCF employee abused and murdered her adopted child: police

Inset: Diane Natasha Mack (Highlands County Sheriff’s Office). Background: The home and garage where Diane Natasha Mack allegedly abused her adoptive daughter (Highlands County Sheriff’s Office/YouTube).

Deputies in Sebring, Florida, were called to a “gruesome” crime scene Friday for which “no amount of law enforcement experience” could ever have prepared them, police officials said.

Diane Natasha Mack – a 34 year old former Florida Department of Children and Families employee who worked as special curator (GAL) – had called police to report the death of her 13-year-old adopted daughter after finding her “unresponsive” early Friday at noon on the floor of their home in the Sun ‘n Lake golf and recreation community or Sebring had found: 7 p.m., according to the Highland County Sheriff’s Office.

What authorities discovered there is something they won’t soon forget, according to Highlands County Sheriff Paul Blackman.

“This is one of the most disturbing crime scenes I have encountered in over three decades of law enforcement,” Blackman said Friday in a video at the sheriff’s office announcing Mack’s arrest on murder and child abuse charges. “There are no words I can say that can truly convey the nightmare that this child’s life must have been.”

Officers allegedly found Mack’s daughter dead in her home, wearing only a diaper and showing “obvious” signs of abuse and neglect, Blackman said. Mack initially told investigators she found the girl Thursday morning, but then changed the time of discovery to about 3 p.m., the sheriff said.

“She was extremely emaciated and clearly malnourished,” Blackman said of Mack’s daughter. “Her body was covered in wounds in all stages of healing, including open lacerations that had clearly been recently sustained.”

Upon further investigation, officers found evidence showing the girl, who was homeschooled, had been locked in the garage before her death, the sheriff’s office said. “We don’t know yet how long she was there, but it appears she was tied to the garage door and being watched from inside by a security camera mounted in the garage,” Blackman said.

As her child “lay dead on the floor,” police allege Mack used pool chlorine to destroy evidence in the garage before calling emergency services. the house with her to a home in Titusville before calling police.

Diane Natasha Mack, 34, is being held without bail in the Highlands County Jail (Highlands County Sheriff’s Office/YouTube).

Mack was arrested and charged with first-degree murder while engaging in aggravated child molestation, as well as aggravated child molestation, kidnapping and destroying evidence.

“Parents have a duty to love our children and ensure no harm comes their way,” Blackman said. “To see a child treated this way is not only heartbreaking, it is infuriating. What makes it even more disgusting is that the suspect is not only a former employee of the Department of Children and Families, but also worked as a guardian ad litem. That someone whose job it was to look after the welfare of children could treat his own child in this way is simply beyond belief.”

Mack is being held in the Highlands County Jail without bail.

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