A Florida man needed a “way out,” so instead of killing himself, he killed his wife and children.
A jury will soon decide the fate of a man from Florida who clobbered his wife to death with a baseball bat and murdered their four children over several days or weeks, in July and August 2019, and then put their bodies in tote bags.
Michael Wayne Jones, 41, pleaded guilty to the horrifying murders, and the jury panel will now decide whether he will get the death sentence or life in prison.
Jones’ defense attorneys argued that he was brought up in a deeply dysfunctional home and his disturbing upbringing should be grounds for the lesser punishment of life in prison. Prosecutors, however, argued that he should get the death penalty for his horrific and deliberate crimes against his wife and four small children.
Jones told the police that the killing spree started in July 2019 after his wife confronted him about infidelity after seeing messages on his phone. He told officers that his wife, Casei Jones, poked him using a baseball bat during an argument in their home in Marion County. The situation escalated, and Jones took the bat from her and beat her to death in a rage.
Their four children were asleep at the time of the incident. Two of the four were his biological children.
The man wrapped her body in blankets and stuffed it into a large tote bag. He then hid the bag in a closet.
He devised a way to make it appear as if Casei was still alive by using her phone to post things on her social media accounts.
The next day, Jones took his stepchildren, 4-year-old Preston Bowers and 8-year-old Cameron Bowers, to their father’s home as he devised a way to cover up the murder of his wife.
He then took his two biological children, 2-year-old Mercalli Jones and 11-month-old Aiyana Jones, to live with his wife’s mother.
Because the school year was almost starting, he got worried that the boys’ absence from school would lead to questions from his teachers at the Fruitland Park Elementary School.
Jones told detectives that just a week before school was supposed to start, he took Cameron out of his bed and strangled the poor boy on the floor of his room until he died. He then put his body in a suitcase.
The following day, he took Preston, choked him with a zip tie, and drowned him in a bathtub. He put his body in another suitcase.
A few days after killing the two boys, he wanted to turn himself in, so he drove to a police station with his daughters and parked outside a police station. Jones eventually backed out of the plan and chose to drown both girls in a bathtub. He put their tiny bodies in a single tote bag.
When investigators asked him why he killed his entire family, Jones said everything overwhelmed him, and killing them all seemed like his only way out.
Police arrested Jones several months after the brutal slayings, in September 2019, after a deputy responded to an accident scene involving his car.
The officer was overwhelmed by the smell of a decomposing body, and investigators found Jones’ wife’s body in a bag in the car. Jones then led the police to where he disposed of his kids’ bodies.
The death sentence must be a unanimous decision by the 12-person jury. The defense will rest its case on January 5.