Remember the Dollars?
A couple charged with torturing five of their eight adopted children accepted a plea deal Wednesday and were sentenced to 15 years in prison and 15 years of probation, to be served consecutively.
John Dollar, 59, and his wife, Linda, 52, were accused of using a cattle prod, mallet, pliers, chains and other items to abuse their children over a period of years. Authorities say the Dollars also deprived the children, ages 16 and younger when the couple were arrested, of food and sleep, bound them with chains and forced them to live in a closet.
But they were simply being loving Christian parents.
A Citrus County couple accused of torturing and starving five children agreed Wednesday to 15-year prison sentences, then said the crimes occurred because they took their religious beliefs too far.
“We are sorry that the children are hurt,” John Dollar said. “We are firm believers in the God almighty … because of those principles we were led to do certain things.”
Those “things,” prosecutors say, included pulling out the children’s toenails with pliers, starving them and shocking them with a cattle prod.
……Disturbing details of the Dollars’ life soon surfaced.
The family had operated a private Christian school in Tennessee, but many of the students rarely saw the Dollar children.
When the family moved to the Tampa Bay area, they changed homes frequently. Between 1990 and 2004, the Dollars bought and sold a half-dozen homes in Hillsborough County, from Plant City to Riverview to Valrico.
A closet door at one of their Hillsborough homes had a lock installed on its outside, as if it were meant to keep someone inside, not out.
A bag of what appeared to be toenails was found in the family’s motorhome.
……Seven of the Dollars’ eight adopted children lived with the couple in Pine Ridge, a central Citrus development.
Prosecutors say five of the seven were abused. The oldest Dollar child, Shanda Rae Shelton, 26, moved out of the home a couple of years ago. She is now married and has a child of her own.
About a dozen people sat in the courtroom gallery, including Citrus Sheriff Jeff Dawsy and the lead investigator, Detective Lisa Wall. Both approved of the plea deal, prosecutors said.
The children were not there. According to prosecutors, some of the children are staying in foster homes and others are living in a residential treatment program outside of the county.
Shelton didn’t attend the hearing, either. No one came in support of the couple.