Alarming calls were made to DCF seven years ago alleging abuse of Julie Sulpizio’s daughters by her husband – foreshadowing the deadly ambush of sheriff’s deputies in 2024 — but the agency cleared the call.

Master Deputy Bradley Link was killed and two others were wounded in what investigators say was a trick by Julie to lure the deputies into her home  where her husband, Michael, 49, and daughters Cheyenne, 23, and Savannah, 22, were waiting to shoot them.

Master Deputy Harold Howell and Deputy 1^st Class Stefano Gargano were wounded in the attack.

Michael and his two adopted daughters committed suicide, according to investigators.

Julie, making bizarre statements and acting strangely, was sent to a state mental hospital. A competency hearing is set for June 26 to see if she can aid her lawyers in her murder case.

According to court records, she physically attacked some of her neighbors on Aug. 2, 2024, accusing them of being pedophiles, instruments of “Lucy” (Lucifer), and saying things like, “Julie is in heaven” and calling her husband “God.”

The neighbors said she tried to get them to enter her mobile home, but they did not trust her. They called 911 for help.

Lake & Sumter Style has obtained a copy of a sheriff’s report referring to the 2019 DCF investigation in a public records request.

Evidence collected in the 2024 attack is reflective of some of the information gleaned by DCF in 2019.

“The family has a bunker with stored-up food in it,” two concerned women told a Department of Children and Families investigator on May 15, 2019.  “The situation is out of a sci-fi movie.”

After the shootout in 2024, Julie claimed there was a body stashed in a bunker underneath her mobile home. No bunker was found, however.

The women said the girls, who were about 17 and 18 at that time, were “pretty much being held captive.” They were not allowed to go outside, have friends or talk to other children. They were home-schooled since first and second grade.

They said the girls were forced to take care of the property at 38144 Brookside Drive, including goats and dogs. “…if it is not done properly (in the timeline the adoptive father is told that it has to be done) they are told to go get switches so that the adoptive father could hit them.”

They also said, “they are told the world is coming to an end,” and that if they went outside while it was raining, they had to wear gas masks.

After the 2024 gun battle, deputies found 20 firearms, body armor, survival stores of food and water, military gear and “anti-government propaganda… along with conspiracy theory related media,” according to court records.

Rochelle Eldridge was among those who called DCF. She was married to the girls’ biological father, Richard, when the children were young.

In an interview with Lake & Sumter Style, she said she did not know the two women who made the 2019 report.

Savannah sometimes took the brunt of the abuse, says Rochelle, including a bite mark by Julie so severe it left teeth marks. “Julie didn’t want Savannah. She wanted a boy,” she added.

Richard ended up signing away his parental rights in 2004, she says. “I begged him not to sign but he did it anyway.”

“He was paying over $700 a month in child support and she (Julie) would not let him see the children. Finally, he agreed to sign the papers if she dropped the fees.”

She said they hired an attorney, but the lawyer told her they could go to court 10 times and the judge would make the same ruling.

“We didn’t have the money to fight it.”

She said she still tried to get to the children. Michael’s family warned her not to try. “He will kill you and claim self-defense,” they said.

The last time she thinks she may have seen one of the girls was when they would have been around 7 and she got a glimpse of blonde hair as a child got into a truck.

The women who made the 2019 call said the girls looked “raggedy” and had bruises.

“The mother always has some new broken bone and she would say that she got it at work, but the mother works at McDonald’s. The mother is not allowed to have a phone and the children are not allowed to be on social media,” they said in the report.

The family denied the allegations of physical abuse. Julie said she did not want the girls to have social media accounts because the girls were minors.

The girls said they were free to come and go within reason and were allowed to have friends.

A sheriff’s deputy who went to the home for an agency assist wrote: “DCF investigators walked through ethe home and verified that everything was in order and that the girls were well taken care. There was no evidence of a bunker, nor did the family appear to have any gas masks nor doomsday prepping paraphernalia.”

Contacted by Lake & Sumter Style for comment, the agency emailed the following response: “The Department of Children and Families conduct investigations concerning all allegations of abuse, neglect, or abandonment in Florida. Information regarding investigations is confidential per section 39.202, Florida Statutes.”

The State Attorney’s Office has subpoenaed DCF records.

Rochelle believes the tragedy could have been avoided.

“They just laughed at me.”

Photos provided by Rochelle Eldridge