FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The two men who offered a home, a job and a life far from South Florida to the brother of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter were arrested in Virginia on Wednesday, charged with exploiting the young man while pretending to help him.
Mike Donovan and Richard Moore, both 45, were released on $50,000 bond each.
In a telephone interview after their release, Donovan said he knows sparse details, but he believes he and Moore, his spouse, are accused of taking advantage of Zachary Cruz, 22, whose brother, Nikolas, shot and killed 17 people at Stoneman Douglas on Feb. 14, 2018.
Donovan and Moore swooped into Broward County in the spring of 2018 after Zachary Cruz was arrested for trespassing on the Parkland school’s property shortly after the mass shooting. They offered to care for him and get him away from Broward County and the shadow of his notorious brother.
Zachary Cruz has been living in Virginia with Donovan and Moore ever since.
The Cruz brothers lost their mother, Lynda, on Nov. 1, 2017. According to court records, each stood to inherit about $428,000 from her estate, but it’s not clear, at least publicly, how much of that money each received. Donovan said Zachary Cruz has spent the money and now lives on a weekly stipend while he works toward his GED and pursues his dream of opening a skate park.
Donovan said the indictment charges him and Moore with exploiting a mentally incapacitated person and obtaining money by false pretenses. A page of the indictment shared with the South Florida Sun Sentinel by Zachary Cruz’s attorney names Cruz as the victim of financial exploitation. Donovan said Zachary Cruz does not suffer from an intellectual disability.
“I want to point that out that first of all, I didn’t exploit Zach, and secondly, Zach isn’t mentally incapacitated,” he said in an interview with the Sun Sentinel.
At 8 a.m. Wednesday, he said, police banged on the door of the house, then rushed in to arrest the couple and execute a search warrant. Donovan said police pointed a gun at Zachary Cruz and handcuffed him, sitting him outside on the cul-de-sac for four hours.
“Zach is this incredible young man and he really should be broken, and he’s not,” Donovan said. “It’s like, why are you continuing to try to break this guy? His brother is a madman, but Jesus Christ, he’s his own person. He doesn’t deserve this.”
Zachary Cruz had gone to ride his skateboard, Donovan said, and could not be reached for comment.
Until recently, Moore had been a consistent presence in the Fort Lauderdale courtroom where Nikolas Cruz is fighting for his life — a jury hearing his case will decide whether he is sentenced to life in prison or lethal injection.
In an ironic reversal of what’s happening in Virginia, prosecutors in Broward are trying to convince the jury that Nikolas Cruz is not mentally incapacitated. At least, not as impaired as his lawyers would have the jury believe.
According to court records, Moore speaks to the Parkland killer regularly in jail phone calls. But neither he nor Zachary Cruz testified on his behalf. In a formal statement, Zachary Cruz said he declined to testify because he was tired of being harassed by law enforcement.
“Broward prosecutors partnered with a racist Virginia Sheriff and a corrupt prosecutor to attempt to arrest me, search my home, and subject me to a conservatorship,” he wrote after the defense rested its case without calling him to the stand.
Now it’s Donovan accusing the Augusta County Sheriff’s Office of corruption. He said he’s had a long-running feud with the sheriff’s office, as Zachary Cruz indicated in his public statement. “When you fight against corrupt cops, sometimes the corrupt cops snap back, and I guess that’s what happened today,” Donovan said.
Published news reports said law enforcement served warrants at Donovan and Moore’s home as well as their business, Nexus Services. Others arrested included Nexus Vice President Timothy Shipe, also accused of exploiting Cruz, and Timothy Donovan, Mike’s father, on a charge of obstruction. A fifth man, Santos Vicente Putul-Ax, was also charged with obstruction.
The alleged exploitation took place over the course of a year, from April 26, 2019, until April 20, 2020, according to the indictment.
Attempts to reach the Augusta County Sheriff’s Office after 5 p.m. Wednesday were unsuccessful.
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