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Taylor Morrello is a consulting division lead at CRS Technology Consultants in Cape Coral.
The firm specializes in providing IT security for companies and a big part of her job, she says, involves finding the best methods to utilize technology so the company’s clients can keep their businesses running efficiently and secure.
Her work is critical — especially as cybersecurity is becoming a bigger priority for many companies.
But what Morrello doesn’t say is that in the unlikely event it ever becomes necessary, she can also step in and help her clients solve a murder.
Morrello is a former deputy for the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office and earned a degree in criminology from the University of Florida.
As part of her training, she interned for the State Attorney’s Office Homicide Unit in Charlotte County during the summer of 2017.
Her duties that summer included working a cold case murder from 1999. She helped with the complete reorganization of the case files and to see that the defendant was found guilty.
Morrello can’t share details of the case, including the defendant’s name, but says he was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
It was during the internship that Morrello met Det. Kurt Mehl of the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office. Mehl would become a mentor and help guide her in the years to come.
He says there was group working on cold cases out of the State Attorney’s office and early on it was clear she had a knack for the work. “We just knew right away that she was the real deal,” Mehl says. “And very smart. Way smarter than I am.”
Morrello's plan was to become a detective in the department's major crimes unit, specifically working on cases involving crimes against children. Given that those types of crimes are primarily cyber-based, she took a part-time job as a systems engineer for a local IT company to developed the technology skills she’d need.
Those skills would come in handy later.
After graduation, she spent a couple of years as a deputy before deciding to leave law enforcement and moving to CRS.
“The parallels between the two careers are what drew me back to technology,” she says. “It allowed me to be in an environment where you are constantly adapting and learning new skills and, most importantly, being a part of protecting local businesses data.”
But there’s also a big difference between the two careers. Safety.
Morrello says that given the inherent dangers of law enforcement, deputies are taught to “keep your head on a swivel” when working road patrol. That’s not something she worries about now.
Still, she says, police work taught her a level of compassion that she hadn’t known before and that she applies to her current work. “You truly never know what people are going through — choosing to be kind and respectful regardless of the scenario will more often than not go a long way.”
