01 October 2025 :
September 30, 2025 - Florida. Victor Tony Jones, 64, Black, was executed on September 30
Jones died by lethal injection at 6:13 p.m. at the Florida State Prison in Raiford, according to the Florida Department of Corrections. He declined to make a final statement. Jones was sentenced to death for the Dec. 19, 1990, murders of Jacob “Jack” Nestor, 67, and Matilda “Dolly” Nestor, 66, at the couple’s business. A Miami jury sentenced Jones to death by electrocution on March 1, 1993, court records show.
Jones was the 13th inmate executed in Florida this year, surpassing Florida’s previous record of eight executions in 2014.
Before the execution, Jones met with a spiritual adviser, according to the Florida Department of Corrections. He had no other visitors. Jones’ last meal was fried chicken, collard greens and sweet tea, reports say.
During his confession, Jones said the Nestors hired him to clean around their business — and told detectives what led up to the killings. “Every Hanukkah, the Nestors would bring in a person from the neighborhood to do menial work around the business,” Kastrenakes told the Herald Tuesday. Jones confronted Dolly, demanding money for the work he had done, according to the Herald’s archives. But Dolly refused, saying he wasn’t finished. That’s when Jones pulled out a knife and stabbed Dolly to death in the bathroom. The drifter, in his detailed confession, said he then ambushed Jack with a knife as the inventor worked in the front of the shop. During the struggle, Jack — despite being stabbed — shot Jones in the forehead with a .22 caliber pistol, police say.
At the time the Nestors were killed, Jones had been out of prison for less than a month after serving time for robbery and burglary, among other crimes.
In their last-ditch efforts to stay Jones’ execution, his defense attorneys said he was among the hundreds of survivors of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys and the Okeechobee School, now-shuttered state reform schools in Florida where children were raped, beaten and tortured. In March 2024, the Florida Senate passed a bill, signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, to pay $20 million to compensate victims of the two schools. Court records indicate Jones was eligible for the compensation, although it’s unclear if he received the money. In a statement after the execution, Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty expressed sympathy for the Nestors’ loved ones but condemned the state for executing an “intellectually disabled Black man” who was abused at a state-run institution as a child. “After decades of denying any harm done at these “reform’’ schools, Florida finally acknowledged one of the most shameful chapters in its history — that it brutalized its young charges and caused them permanent and irreparable harm,” the statement said. “This execution exposes the hollowness of Florida’s apology to these victims and deepens its legacy of cruelty and hypocrisy.”
Jones becomes the 13th inmate to be put to death this year in Florida, the 119th overall since Florida resumed capital punishment in 1979, the 34th execution of the year in the US, and the n° 1641 overall since the nation resumed executions in 1977.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article312309354.html
