Six months ago, the community was rocked by our report that Sheriff Eric Flowers had been caught having an extramarital affair – a story that stained his Boy Scout image, sickened once-loyal supporters and forced him to endure the humiliation of issuing a public apology.
That front-page column exposed the hypocrisy of both his “family values” campaign in 2020 and the first speech after his swearing-in ceremony, where he equated his deputies’ oath of office with a marriage vow and said he expected them to reflect his values.
Not only were we left to question our sheriff’s character and credibility, but many of us began to wonder about his judgment and ask: Can he be trusted?
Now we’re told the affair didn’t end last winter.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity – neither the jilted husband of Flowers’ paramour nor his now-estranged wife are public figures – we are told the affair was interrupted only briefly by the headlines, and resumed within a month of the sheriff’s empty apology.
No one should be surprised, then, that Flowers’ wife, Rachel, filed for divorce two weeks ago. She has hired Maggie McCain, a highly regarded Vero Beach family-law attorney, and claims in her petition that her 10-year marriage to the sheriff is “irretrievably broken.”
Flowers’ wife, who works as a nurse at Cleveland Clinic Indian River Hospital, is seeking alimony and child support for the couple’s 6-year-old son. She’s also asking the court to restore her maiden name.
McCain said her client didn’t want to comment “at this time.”
Court records show that Flowers, 42, is being represented by Kathryn Hill, another local attorney.
Neither the sheriff nor his agency’s public information staff, however, responded to emails seeking comment on his wife’s divorce filing and the circumstances that led to it.
A phone message left with Flowers’ executive assistant Monday was not returned.
The jilted husband, however, said the sheriff has proven himself unworthy of the lofty position he holds in our community. He filed a complaint with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement in late January, and he said he plans to contact Gov. Ron DeSantis in hopes of having Flowers removed from office.
The husband said his wife admitted that she continued to talk to Flowers after the sheriff posted his apology on social media in early February, and he believes the cheating couple began seeing each other again three weeks later.
The husband said Flowers purchased untraceable, pre-paid, burner cell phones – and his wife and the sheriff both used apps that allow for secret texting – in their efforts to hide their communications from their spouses.
“We have three kids, and I wanted to reconcile,” the husband said. “I thought we were trying to save our marriage, but it lasted only a month before it all started again.”
It was in March that the husband learned his wife had received from Flowers tickets to an April music festival on Fort Lauderdale Beach, and he became upset, saying to her:
“You’re accepting a gift from a guy you had an affair with?”
He also was angry with Flowers – so much so that he confronted him at the Sheriff’s Office.
The husband said he drove there after work, walked into the lobby and told the attendant at the window that he wanted to speak to Flowers, who eventually agreed to talk to him.
He said he did “all the talking” during the 15-minute conversation, calling Flowers a “lying, cheating SOB” before leaving.
Just so you know: A different source told us about the husband’s visit to Flowers’ office shortly after it happened last spring, and we filed a public records request for the surveillance footage.
The Sheriff’s Office refused to provide the video – or any other documentation of the husband’s visit – claiming unspecified security concerns, even when we amended our request to include only the footage from the publicly accessed lobby area.
Clearly, Flowers didn’t want anyone to know about the confrontation.
The husband said Flowers’ wife called him two weeks ago to tell him she had filed for divorce. Last week, he learned that his wife had done the same.
Flowers’ wife initially learned of the sheriff’s infidelity from the jilted husband in late January, after he placed a GPS tracking device on his wife’s car to confirm his suspicions about the affair.
This time, it appears to be Flowers’ wife who has the evidence, which the husband said proves the affair resumed after news of the scandal broke.
Flowers won a landslide election in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic prevented the campaigns of his political opponents from getting traction and, more importantly, canceled debates during which his qualifications for the office would’ve received more scrutiny.
Given that he was only 40 years old, many of us thought Flowers might be our sheriff for the next 20 years.
Indeed, Flowers announced through his local media lapdog in April that he would seek a second term, believing he had two years to repair the dent the winter scandal left on his reputation.
He believes he can overcome the political damage done by his bogus investigation and groundless demotion of then-Deputy Chief Milo Thornton, who was suspended in late January after Flowers’ bootlickers in the agency leveled trumped-up allegations at an all-too-convenient time – as news of the affair buzzed throughout the county.
He believes he can manage the fallout from his deputies’ questionable shootings at the hospital and in Gifford.
He believes he can continue to avoid accountability by relying on social-media posts and speaking to only the local media outlets he deems friendly, knowing they won’t ask the tough questions he doesn’t want to answer.
But can he command the respect needed to run a 500-member agency in which most of his employees carry guns?
Certainly, the hypocrisy and lack of judgment exposed by Flowers’ extramarital affair has raised eyebrows and eroded trust within the Sheriff’s Office.
In February, Flowers apologized to his wife, agency and community for failing to live up to his “own personal high standards” and promised to “work hard” to regain the trust and support his behavior had cost him.
Now, Flowers might need to work on another public apology – perhaps one that actually mentions the reason he’s apologizing – though it’s difficult to believe anyone but his most-devoted backers will accept it.
