Scott Dean adopted daughter stole, pawned family jewelry, police say

The oldest adopted daughter of former Columbia County Commissioner Scott Dean, who was convicted of child molestation last year, was in jail Monday on charges of burglary and theft by receiving stolen property.

Marlin Azucena Dean, 19, of Ansley Court in Augusta, was arrested Saturday in Harlem. She is accused of stealing jewelry from her adoptive mother, Renee Meyer Dean.

Renee Dean returned home from a weeklong trip out of town Friday. She told authorities Saturday that jewelry worth about $25,000 was missing from the bedroom of her North Hicks Street home in Harlem, said Harlem Department of Public Safety Director David Sward.

“The investigation revealed that Marlin Dean had actually pawned some of the jewelry at a pawnshop in Augusta,” Sward said.

Sward said authorities are still trying to find the remainder of the missing jewelry, which could have been pawned at other shops.

“We’re still looking,” Sward said. “There are numerous pawnshops in the area, so it is going to take us some time to check them all. Hopefully, we’ll find the majority of it or all of it. That’s our goal, to recover it all.”

Sward said pawnshop employees are required to obtain identification from anyone pawning items. The record keeping is sometimes backlogged but should help find the jewelry if anyone pawned it all.

Scott Dean was convicted in December of molesting another of his adopted daughters. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison in February and denied a new trial in June.

Allegations about Scott Dean came to light when Marlin Dean ran away from home and was later found in Mexico. In a phone conversation with investigators, she said Dean had tried to have sex with her. She later recanted.

She is being held in the Columbia County Detention Center without bond, according to jail records.