Months before Wade Wilson became nationally known as the “ᴅᴇᴀᴅpool Killer,” his name had already appeared in a Palm Beach County investigation involving serious allegations from a former girlfriend. Now, a Netflix true-crime series and renewed reporting have brought that earlier investigation back into the spotlight, raising questions about what investigators knew, what evidence was collected, and why the case ended before some of that evidence had been fully reviewed. Wilson was ultimately convicted of murdering Kristine Melton and Diane Ruiz in Cape Coral, Florida, on Oct. 7, 2019, and was sentenced to death in 2024. But the story presented by the recent documentary begins months earlier, when Kelly Matthews reported that Wilson had beaten, kidnapped and Sєxually ᴀssaulted her. According to reporting based on Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office records, Detective Louis Potter was ᴀssigned to investigate the allegations. Matthews described injuries that included marks on her wrists and ankles, marks around her neck, a bite injury and facial injuries. She also told investigators that she feared Wilson would kill her. Potter interviewed both Matthews and Wilson and collected Wilson’s DNA.

The investigation later became the subject of an internal review. That review concluded that Potter had not conducted a thorough Sєx-crimes investigation and that he closed the case before receiving the DNA laboratory results. The subsequent findings became especially significant because the DNA results reportedly came back after the case had already been closed and were identified as matching Wilson. Investigators also concluded that Potter did not pursue a dating-violence arrest and failed to follow established agency procedures. At the time of the original investigation, however, Potter’s report stated that there were no witnesses, insufficient evidence to establish probable cause and that Wilson denied the allegations. Those competing accounts are central to the controversy that has now resurfaced. Former State Attorney Dave Aronberg, who was in office in 2019, said the case never reached his desk. He also cautioned against evaluating the investigation entirely through the lens of what happened later, emphasizing the difficulty of making decisions without hindsight.

The distinction matters because the later murders cannot automatically establish what investigators could legally have known or proven months earlier. Nevertheless, the internal review created a formal record that questioned how the Palm Beach County investigation was handled. Potter was ultimately suspended without pay for 120 hours and reᴀssigned from the special victims unit to road patrol operations. He retired from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office on July 31, 2026. The Netflix series has given the earlier investigation a much larger audience, allowing viewers to see interviews and investigative material that were not previously part of the public conversation.

The renewed attention has also brought Matthews’ experience back into the national spotlight. For her, the central issue has never been simply the later notoriety of Wilson. It is the question of what happened when she first went to law enforcement and asked for help. The case now exists on two timelines: the decisions investigators made in early 2019 and the horrifying events that followed in October of that year. Those timelines have become inseparable in public discussion, even though the legal and investigative questions surrounding each remain distinct. Wilson’s criminal case proceeded separately. A Lee County jury convicted him in 2024 of multiple offenses, including the murders of Melton and Ruiz. His attorneys challenged his death sentence before the Florida Supreme Court, while his conviction itself was not the central target of the later challenge. In February 2026, his legal team halted one major death-penalty argument after acknowledging that recent court rulings had undermined the arguments it intended to present. The Netflix series has therefore reopened an older question at exactly the moment Wilson’s legal proceedings remain part of the public record: how much can be learned from an investigation that ended before the consequences of the later crime became known? For the families and survivors connected to the case, that question is not merely a television storyline. It is part of the enduring record of what happened before one of Florida’s most notorious 2019 murder cases unfolded.

Source: https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/crime/2026/08/12/netflix-show-details-ᴅᴇᴀᴅpool-killer-failures-in-palm-beach-county/91147812007/