BRADENTON, Fla. — Text messages reveal a sister’s bond.
“I asked her what she wanted for lunch for her birthday. She said, 'A big juicy cheeseburger,'” said Krista Kale, Patty Matejcek’s sister. Kale’s texts from her sister, Patty, always ended the same way.
“She told me she loved me,” Kale said.
That text would be the last.
“I texted them and said, 'Please tell me everything is OK. Please. Please,'” Kale said.
Manatee County deputies say Patty’s son, Thomas Matejcek, murdered her sister and her sister’s fiancé, Sean Harrison, and has been charged for both of their murders.
“We warned them,” Kale said. “Them,” she says, was the Manatee County State Attorney’s office.
Matejcek had been arrested back in May and was charged with a first-degree felony after police said he attacked both Patty and Sean.
“I got there. She’s laying on the floor and Sean’s head was all bloody. And Patty’s like, ‘Tom came in and beat us up.’ She says, ‘he threw me around like a rag doll,'” Kale said.
A little over three months later, a judge ruled him incompetent to stand trial.
“They told us he’s not going to be released due to circumstances of his crime, and he was,” Kale said.
Matejcek was placed on conditional release and ordered to check into outpatient treatment and ordered to take certain medications.
He was not ordered to a state mental hospital because court documents say he did not meet the criteria provided in Florida Statute. The section of the law regarding defendants who are deemed unfit to go to a state hospital is if the defendant’s mental illness makes them incapable of surviving alone or with the help of willing and responsible family or there is a substantial likelihood that, in the near future, the defendant will inflict serious bodily harm to himself or another person.
“We told them this would happen,” Kale said.
Krista says releasing her nephew didn’t make any sense knowing that two years prior he was arrested for strangling Patty.
"He said to her, 'I hope you die,'" Kale said.
The family even sent an email to the State Attorney after Matejcek was arrested in September during his conditional release which said, in part, “How can he not understand the charges against him, but he understands that conditions of his release? Is it going to take Tom killing someone to get him away from the public? Patty & Sean are scared to death that he will back out.”
“They told me today going forward. Well going forward, I don’t have a sister anymore. We don’t have Sean. We don’t have any of them here and life kind of stops without them here,” Kale said.
And this investigation doesn’t stop with just Matejcek’s case.
10 Investigates has uncovered the same thing is happening all across the Tampa Bay area — and even the state.
From a man charged with numerous counts of sexual battery and indecent exposure put on conditional release after being found incompetent to a Pasco County woman who just a month ago faced a judge for petit theft. Her mom told a judge in court, “I’m trying to get her psychological help, but it’s hard.”
She was found incompetent and put on conditional release but is now locked up in Pasco County facing charges of resisting an officer with violence.
She just underwent a psych evaluation.
“It’s concerning. You have someone that has a pending charge, and they are not going to face that pending charge because they were found to be incompetent. The law is very limited on what a judge can and cannot do,” said Rohom Khonsari, a criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor.
Khonsari, says when someone is ruled incompetent and let out, there are no resources where the person is followed or tracked.
“As it stands now without legislature passing laws, those resources are not there,” Khonsari said.
Back at the home where Patty and Sean were murdered, “This is where their trailer was,” Kale said.
The home where they were murdered has been taken away.
“Now, it’s just this,” Kale said.
She says until something changes, other lives will be taken.
“There is a huge gap in the system,” Kale said. “That’s why we are trying to rally the troops the states attorneys, the police department, you see what’s happening innocent people are dying and you people have been warned this has got to change.”
There were changes in Minnesota recently after our colleagues at KARE uncovered the same gaps in their system. Legislators passed a law allocating $32 million to close the statewide gaps to treat and supervise mentally incompetent defendants. We’ve reached out to lawmakers here in Florida, and Kale is also now in contact with one of them in hopes the same change may happen here.