PASCO COUNTY, Fla. – Shortly before her death, Laura Ivancic started pressing for answers on where her daughter was and why the family hadn’t seen her in so long.
It turns out, according to investigators, she had been dead for possibly nearly a year.
On Tuesday, the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office identified the remains found behind a Port Richey home as 21-year-old Jamie Ivancic.
RELATED: 4th body identified: Pasco Co. investigators say man killed wife, her parents and her brother
Investigators believe Jamie is the fourth member of the family killed by Shelby Nealy, also known as Shelby Svensen, Jamie’s husband. Police say Svensen admitted to killing his wife and her mother, Laura, 59; father, Richard, 71; and brother, Nicholas, 25.
The three were found dead on New Year’s Day inside their Tarpon Springs home, but police believe they were killed before Christmas.
“It’s going to be a long time before we put this to rest,” said James Zindroski, Laura’s brother, a former police chief who lives in Ohio where the family is from originally.
Zindroski says something was always off to him about the man who married his adopted niece.
Jamie and Nicholas were adopted by the Ivancics as infants because the couple couldn’t have children of their own, according to Zindroski.
Laura was Richard’s second wife. He has four adult children from a previous marriage, including Richard Ivancic Jr., who told 10News Jamie and Nicholas were adopted from "a very troubled home."
In an emailed statement, he said the murders have rocked the family but that they were appreciative of the work of law enforcement.
"Our hopes are that our family's killer... will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," he said. "We will work tirelessly with the prosecutor for their conviction."
Zindroski says before his sister’s death, she started pushing Svensen for more information on where Jamie was and why the family hadn’t seen her. Now he fears it’s that tough questioning that ultimately led to her’s, her husband’s and their son’s murders.
“[Svensen] was making the excuse that [Jamie] was working, she’s in Texas, she’ll be driving back to Florida with another car we purchased, etcetera etcetera,” Zindroski said, referring to what his sister had told him.
But it was all fabricated. Investigators on Tuesday say it appears as though Svensen was able to “just trick them into thinking that she was unavailable,” said Col. Jeff Harrington with the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office.
“I think because of my sister pressing him that probably pushed him over the edge and he snapped and he thought well I got away with killing Jamie, I can get away with killing everybody here too,” Zindroski said.
Family members said they were still receiving periodic text messages and pictures of the kids from who they thought was Jamie.
“For a period of time—a significant period of time—there was no direct communication between her family members and her,” Harrington told reporters. They believe Svensen was the one sending the messages.
“He was making statements to the family that she was unavailable and then, perhaps, he was communicating through different mechanisms to pose as her, that’s part of the investigation.”
Acting on a tip, deputies found Jamie Ivancic’s body on Sunday behind the Port Richey home where the couple and their two and three-year-old children had once lived.
Investigators say Jamie Ivancic’s cause of death appears to be “violent blunt force trauma,” which is believed to have happened nearly one year ago. Harrington indicated that was around the same time she had told some of her family she was going to leave Svensen.
“It’s bad enough if you lose one person through normal—you know, you get old, you die and have a heart attack—but to have your entire family wiped out by some atrocious act like this,” Zindroski trailed off.
Svensen remains in Ohio where he awaits extradition after being arrested there last week. The couple’s young children are in protective custody. Zindroski says some family members are hoping to adopt them.
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