Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said a suspect has been arrested in the killing of Margaret Dufour, a 56-year-old registered nurse who was found dead inside her home in Eagle Lake, Florida, in remarks carried by LiveNOW from FOX. The sheriff laid out the case at a news conference, describing how what began as a traffic crash led deputies to the woman's house on Wilder Way and to a death investigation. He identified the person arrested as Dufour's own 21-year-old son, framing the case as a family tragedy that unfolded only weeks after she had settled into a new life in central Florida.
The sheriff described Dufour as a dedicated professional who had spent her career helping others. According to Judd, she was a registered nurse who had received an award recognizing her as a difference maker, and she had been working at Bartow Regional Hospital, assigned to the surgery floor, for only about a month. He said she had also lived in her newly bought Eagle Lake house for roughly the same short period, having just relocated to the area before her death.
Judd said Dufour had moved to Florida for a specific reason tied to her family. According to the sheriff, she had come from Knoxville, Tennessee, and chose Polk County in the hope of finding better mental health support for her son and changing the environment around him. He said the young man had struggled with serious mental health problems and had been known to law enforcement in Knoxville, where deputies said there had been prior 911 calls and at least one previous arrest involving him.
The chain of events that exposed the case began early on the morning of Tuesday, July 21, the sheriff said. According to Judd, deputies responded just after 7 a.m. to a hit-and-run crash on Highway 27 North, near the Ridgewood Lakes development, in which the driver crossed the center line and struck another vehicle. He said that in an earlier collision the driver had refused to stop and exchange information when a woman pulled in behind him, driving off before becoming involved in the later crash and then running from it.
When emergency crews reached the wreck, they found the driver in an alarming condition, according to the sheriff. Judd said the man was unconscious and had blood on his hands, which puzzled paramedics because the crash itself did not appear to be the kind of collision that would produce that much blood. He said the driver was rushed to Lakeland Regional Hospital as a trauma alert while responders tried to work out why he was so badly off, having no immediate explanation for his state.
Deputies then worked to identify the driver and the vehicle, which set the investigation on a new course. According to Judd, they ran the tag on the 2022 BMW and found it was registered to Margaret Dufour at the Eagle Lake address. He said deputies went to the house and repeatedly knocked without an answer, and after checking with the hospital learned she was not at work that day, deepening their concern about where she was as the morning wore on toward midday.
Unable to reach her, deputies entered the home and made the grim discovery, the sheriff said. According to Judd, a deputy lifted the mat at the front door, found a hidden key, unlocked the house and went inside, where Dufour was found deceased in a bedroom that had been set up as an office. He said investigators determined the crash driver was her son, Gibson Nash, 21, and that detectives had opened a homicide investigation in which a suspect is now in custody, with the inquiry still ongoing.