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Husband Found Deputy Sleeping In His Bed, Documents Show

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By STEPHEN THOMPSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 28, 2007

LARGO - When Matthew Clouser came home early from work on Sept. 29, he spotted someone with a buzz cut sleeping in his bed and at first thought his wife had shaved her head.

But it wasn't his wife, Heather, a radio operator with the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office.

It was Pinellas Deputy John Bradshaw.

That tidbit of information is one of many contained in dozens of pages of internal affairs documents released today, one day after it was made public that Bradshaw, 35, and Heather Clouser, 24, were punished for violating Sheriff Jim Coats' anti-adultery policy.

They are the only two employees found to have violated the policy since Coats instituted it in 2005. It prohibits anyone in the agency who is married from having an intimate relationship with anyone who is single, and vice versa.

Like Heather Clouser, John Bradshaw was married at the time of their affair, from April to September.

When he instituted the policy two years ago, Coats vowed his staff would not be conducting witch hunts to see who was cheating on whom. Rather, administrators simply would investigate complaints, he said.

Enter Matthew Clouser.

After the Publix supermarket employee found Bradshaw asleep in his bed – and heard his wife taking a shower – he crept downstairs in the Clousers' town home, retrieved a video camera and filmed a sleeping Bradshaw, a copy of his interview with the internal affairs investigators shows.

At the time, the Clousers' two young children had been left in their room with the door shut.

Matthew Clouser had suspected his wife of carrying on an extramarital affair with Bradshaw, but finding him in his bed was too much, he told internal affairs investigators. Though Clouser already had filed for divorce from his wife, they still were living together, he told investigators.

"The thing that really hit it off … that was my breaking point … was when I came home and found John Bradshaw asleep in my bed," he said. He then tried to get in touch with Bradshaw's wife, Sheila, who also works for the sheriff's office assigning cases in the child protection division, to tell her, he told investigators.

When he filed a formal complaint with the sheriff's office Oct. 9, Clouser provided internal affairs investigators what he believed was conclusive evidence of the relationship. Some of it was; some of it wasn't, the documents show.

Among the more damaging evidence:
A picture of Bradshaw nude that Clouser said he found in his wife's wallet.
A picture of the two embracing while on a sheriff's department retirement cruise, which Matthew Clouser had arranged for a friend to take with her cell phone camera.
An e-mail Bradshaw's wife sent to a twins group, telling members of Heather Clouser's relationship with John Bradshaw and warning everyone to stay away from her.

The Bradshaws and the Clousers have twins.

Matthew Clouser and his sister stalked the lovers when they were staying at the St. Pete Beach Grand Plaza Hotel. Clouser's sister chased the pair while they were taking a sunset stroll on the beach, and the lovers went their separate ways to avoid trouble, documents show.

There also are 108 pages of phone records showing text messages and phone calls between John Bradshaw and Heather Clouser, compiled by internal affairs investigators, the documents state.

The couples met through the twins club, the documents state.

Clouser and Bradshaw did not get to know each other intimately until after he communicated with her while recuperating from injuries he suffered in a car wreck, the documents state. He had run a red light during a chase and his squad car collided with a woman traveling with her child, and the woman was injured.

Matthew Clouser moved out of the couple's home not long after he filed a complaint, and the two mediated their divorce in November, Pinellas County court records show.

There is no documentation in the court system suggesting the Bradshaws are divorcing. On at least one occasion, Bradshaw told supervisors he and Sheila Bradshaw were going to try to salvage their marriage.

Heather Clouser was reprimanded for the affair; Bradshaw received a three-day suspension because in addition to the affair he used his cruiser to stop by her house. In the report, both admitted carrying on the affair.

Policy prohibits employees from using a department-issue vehicle for anything other than a quick errand to or from work; otherwise, they have to receive a supervisor's permission.

Reporter Stephen Thompson can be reached at (727) 451-2366 or spthompson@tampatrib.com.

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