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Man convicted of fatally stabbing married couple set to be executed
30th September, 2025 09:17 AM
A man convicted of fatally stabbing a married couple during a 1990 robbery in South Florida is scheduled to be executed on Tuesday evening.
Victor Tony Jones, 64, is set to receive a lethal injection starting at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke under a death warrant signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. It would be Florida’s 13th death sentence carried out in 2025, further extending the state’s record for total executions in a single year.
Also Watch: Kitengela Woman Arrested for Stabbing Husband to Death
Since the U.S. Supreme Court restored the death penalty in 1976, the highest previous annual total of Florida executions was eight in 2014. Florida has executed more people than any other state this year, followed by Texas with five. Two more executions are planned next month in Florida.
Jones was convicted and sentenced to death in 1993 on two counts of first-degree murder. Jurors also found him guilty of two counts of armed robbery.
Jones was a new employee at a Miami-Dade business owned by Matilda and Jacob Nestor in December 1990 when he stabbed the wife in the neck and the husband in the chest. Investigators determined that before he died from his wounds, Jacob Nestor managed to retreat to an office.
He pulled a .22 calibre pistol from a holster and fired five times, striking Jones once in the forehead.
Jones was subsequently hospitalised
Police found Jones wounded at the scene with the Nestors’ money and personal property in his pockets.
Jones filed an appeal with the Florida Supreme Court earlier this month, based on intellectual disability and alleged abuse he suffered as a teen at a since-shuttered state-run reform school. Justices denied the claims, finding that the disability issue had already been litigated and allegations of abuse were never presented during Jones’s trial.
An appeal was filed Saturday with the U.S. Supreme Court, but it did not immediately issue a decision.
A total of 33 men have died by court-ordered execution so far this year in the U.S., and at least eight other people are scheduled to be put to death during the remainder of 2025.
Samuel Lee Smithers, 72, is set to become the 14th person executed in Florida on Oct. 14. He was convicted of killing two women whose bodies were found in a rural pond in 1996.
