Years after a Hillsborough deputy murder-suicide, a family wants reform

Abigail Bieber’s parents still sometimes break down sobbing at the hardware store or while grocery shopping. They feel her loss at family dinners and when they pass a photo of her in her deputy’s uniform.

Bieber’s older brothers say they think of her as they put on their own police uniforms before going out on duty.

It’s been more than two years since Bieber was killed in a murder-suicide by her boyfriend, a fellow Hillsborough sheriff’s deputy named Daniel Leyden.

Bieber’s death — so sudden, so violent — has challenged her family’s trust of the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office.

Family members now say they are at odds with Sheriff Chad Chronister over how his agency responded after Bieber’s death and how the organization handled an incident involving Leyden’s previous girlfriend years earlier.

A spokesperson from the department told the Tampa Bay Times that the office sympathizes with the Bieber family and that the organization, too, “feels her absence every day.”

The Biebers say that isn’t enough. Abigail’s father, Bruce, says the family knows how common officer-involved domestic violence is nationally. They worry the agency isn’t looking into how to better watch for problems with their deputies.

”It’s like they just want it to go away,” Bruce said.

The search for answers

Abigail Bieber had been dating Leyden for eight months when the couple and four other off-duty deputies headed to St. Augustine on vacation in January 2022. Abigail’s mother, Sarah, said her daughter told her that she was considering breaking up with Leyden because he was trying to move too fast in the relationship.

Other deputies who went on the trip later told her family that, rather than share a bedroom with Leyden, she spent nights sleeping on a couch at the Airbnb.

It was a Saturday night on Jan. 29, 2022, when the other deputies in the house said they heard Leyden and Bieber yelling in a closed room, according to a St. John’s County Sheriff’s Office report. The report said the deputies, who hid in a bedroom closet while calling 911, heard Bieber say, “put the gun down,” and the sound of gunshots.

An autopsy report found that Bieber was shot three times in the head before Leyden shot himself. Parts of her fingers were blown off, indicating that she tried to protect herself.

Abigail’s brothers joined other law enforcement in a cross-state procession organized by the Hillsborough sheriff’s office. Sarah Bieber wept as she, Bruce and Abigail’s German shepherd, Louie, met the hearse.

It was then that Bruce said a deputy revealed a 2016 incident between Leyden and a former girlfriend, Chynna Ratner. Bruce said the deputy told him that he and others felt uneasy about Leyden after that incident, and that the deputy told Bruce he thought Leyden should have lost his job.

According to a July 3, 2016, incident report, four sheriff’s deputies, including a supervisor, arrived at an apartment after Leyden called to report concerns that Ratner ran over his foot when he tried to stop her from driving drunk. The two had recently broken up but were still speaking.

Ratner had gone to a party at her friend’s house and was out later than Leyden wanted her to be, she said in the report. Leyden called Ratner’s cellphone 17 times, the report said, then showed up at her house.

When Ratner got home around 1:30 a.m. and realized Leyden was there, she tried to drive away, the report said. Leyden wouldn’t let her, putting his foot behind her back tire. She cried as she told deputies she felt Leyden was being “controlling” and had punched her car window and hood hard enough that she worried the window would break.

The report said a DUI deputy detected alcohol on Ratner’s breath but determined that she was not drunk, and noted that Leyden had glassy eyes and smelled of alcohol. The deputy did not put either through sobriety tests. Deputies noted that Leyden didn’t seem injured. They gave Ratner a victim’s rights pamphlet. Leyden took an Uber home.

A Hillsborough sheriff’s detective reviewed the case and spoke with an assistant state attorney, and decided against charging Leyden or Ratner.

Yet, while the agency’s policies state that allegations of deputies involved in criminal misconduct require administrative investigation, no records showing further internal investigation were provided to the Times nor included in Leyden’s personnel file. His file does include two letters of reprimand for crashing agency vehicles.

Asked why there was no internal affairs investigation, the sheriff’s office told the Times in an email this month that because it determined that no crime occurred, there was “no catalyst for an administrative investigation.”

What Ratner did shortly after Abigail Bieber’s death suggests that there may have been more that leadership could have looked into.

She posted a video to social media, saying that Leyden had physically and mentally abused her while they were together. She said he followed her home after they separated, put a gun to her head, beat her and sexually assaulted her.

Bruce Bieber saw the video first. Then he talked to the rest of the family about it. They were stunned.

The family set up meetings with Hillsborough sheriff leadership. Bruce Bieber said Chronister told him he would look into it and see if more should have been done.

Deputies reinterviewed Ratner in February 2022 but noted in an internal affairs document that she didn’t make any allegations beyond what she said in the video. Deputies said she couldn’t be reached a second time.

Internal affairs deputies decided that because Leyden was dead, “an administrative investigation could not be opened.”

In an interview with the Times, Ratner said she doesn’t trust the Hillsborough sheriff’s office for letting Leyden keep his job after the 2016 incident and said she felt like deputies didn’t believe her when she was approached again in 2022. She said deputies didn’t try to contact her again after that.

She said she thinks Chronister and top officials didn’t pursue an investigation into how the administration handled Leyden because it would have shown negligence.

“They could have stopped this back then and they didn’t,” Ratner said.

Abigail’s brothers, Ben and Daniel Bieber, who both have handled domestic violence cases as local police officers, said an internal affairs investigation into Leyden should have been launched in 2016.

A law enforcement consultant who specializes in domestic violence cases, Mark Wynn, said Hillsborough deputies should have done more — before and after —Bieber’s death.

Deputies should have conducted a more thorough interview with Leyden at the scene, said Wynn, a former officer with the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department. They then should have followed up with an internal investigation, he said, adding that Leyden should have had his gun taken from him and undergone a psychological evaluation to determine his fitness for the job.

“It’s absolutely disgraceful,” Wynn said. “As an agency, what can you even say to the family of Abigail when you didn’t take the proper steps to address this problem?”

Wynn said that when Ratner came forward after Abigail Bieber’s death, the agency should have launched an internal review of its policies.

Picking up the pieces

The last text exchange between Bruce Bieber and Chronister was on the first anniversary of his daughter’s death. Bieber asked Chronister why he didn’t reach out that day and why the agency didn’t say anything publicly. He asked Chronister if he thought the family was now a “shameful embarrassment.”

“The only shameful thing here is that you rushed to judgment and made such a crazy and misguided assumption,” Chronister wrote. “The loss of Abigail isn’t one that only you and your family have shouldered and endured. You’ve made it abundantly clear over the past several months that you’re looking to pacify your anger by blaming someone besides the person who did this but please, don’t place it here.”

Chronister, who was not sheriff in 2016 but was appointed in 2017, declined an interview with the Times. He’s seeking reelection this year.

Bruce Bieber said he’s focused now on getting more training about officer-involved domestic violence to law enforcement agencies. He said he is reaching out to reporters and documentarians and networking with experts, victims’ families and advocates. Research over the past few decades shows that reported domestic violence incidents involving law enforcement officers occur at a much higher rate than the general public.

Sarah Bieber said the family wants to keep her daughter’s memory alive. She was best friends with her daughter. They saw each other regularly and texted all the time. She cries when she talks about her vibrant personality and about how she befriended outcasts at school and made a big deal out of birthdays and anniversaries.

Without her daughter, Sarah Bieber said she’s living a different life. She said the family wants Abigail’s name to be remembered and for change to come out of what happened to her in the way law enforcement responds to domestic violence.

“We have to be her voice,” she said.