VERO BEACH — The Vero Beach Police Department announced Thursday that accused killer Michael David Jones, if convicted, would face the death penalty for the murder of Sebastian River Medical Center nurse Diana Duve in June.
A 32-year-old former financial planner and attorney with PNC Wealth Management on Ocean Drive in Vero Beach is accused of killing his on-again, off-again girlfriend, 26-year-old Duve, by manual strangulation. The Brevard Medical Examiner also found that Duve had suffered blunt-force trauma and that she had been restrained at some point before her death.
The department posted a statement on its facebook page with mugshots of Jones, “On November 18th, 2014, the Office of the State Attorney has filed a Notice of Intent to Seek the Death Penalty for Defendant Michael David Jones in the First Degree Premeditated Murder of Diana Duve.”
Jones was indicted on first-degree murder charges by the Indian River County Grand Jury on Aug. 26, paving the way for State Attorney Bruce Colton’s office to pursue the death penalty in this case.
Florida is one of 32 states in which the death penalty is a legal punishment for persons convicted of certain violent, premeditated crimes. According to the Florida Department of Corrections, Florida has used the electric chair since its first execution in 1924, but in 2000 the legislature approved lethal injection as an alternative means of putting inmates to death.
Assistant State Attorney Brian Workman is the lead prosecutor on this case. Jones is being represented by Assistant Public Defender Alan Hunt.
Jones was initially arrested on June 23 after he was found by police in a Hampton Inn hotel room near Interstate 95 in Ft. Pierce. He was charged with violation of probation for leaving Indian River County. His five-year probation was part of his sentence for a 2012 aggravated stalking charge from Broward County.
Later that week, Jones was formally charged with the murder of Duve, who was last seen leaving What-A-Tavern in Royal Palm Pointe with Jones at about 1:30 a.m. on Friday, June 20 and who subsequently went missing.
Investigators believe Jones killed Duve by manual strangulation in his Carolina Trace apartment in Vero and transported her body in the trunk of her Nissan Altima to a Publix parking lot on Babcock Street in Melbourne where the vehicle and the body were found.