Scott: Don’t read too deeply into Sievers photos

FORT MYERS, Fla. – Lee County Sheriff Mike Scott warned those looking at crime scene photos related to the killing of Dr. Teresa Sievers to not read too deeply into the pictures.

“You’re talking about the burglary, the pried door and that the scene was staged,” Scott said while attending a crime task force meeting with Fort Myers city officials on Friday. “I would be careful in just assuming that the hammer was this, or this is this, or this is that. The case is far more complicated than folks realize and I think some walk a slippery slope trying to solve it before it’s all out.”

Pictures of blood splatter and a hammer on a floor with hair attached were among more than 1,500 photos released Thursday in connection to the Sievers murder case.

The batch was the third set of documents, which number well into the thousands, released by the State Attorney’s Office.

The photos include a pool of blood on the kitchen floor inside Sievers’ Bonita Springs home, blood splatter on the dishwasher and fridge, jewelry and other personal effects with blood on them and external and internal shots of the home.

Sievers, 46, was found bludgeoned to death with a hammer inside the kitchen of her Jarvis Road home on June 29. Jimmy Ray Rodgers, 25, was arrested in connection with the killing. He is serving six months in federal prison for a probation violation in an unrelated gun case. Curtis Wayne Wright, 47, is charged with second-degree murder in the case.

Sievers’ husband, Mark, is suspected to be involved with the killing but has not been charged.

Despite thousands of pages outlining the evidence against Rodgers and Wright and investigators’ suspicions of Mark Sievers’ involvement, Scott said the case is far from over.

“What I would say is you see continued focus, tenacity, forward progress,” he said of the documents. “There’s a lot going on that we can’t talk about, a lot. They’ll continue to release documents and the picture will continue to become a little more clear.”