At some point during his teens, he moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he soon would delve into a life of crime and serve several prison sentences for minor offenses.
They then picked up Jones' girlfriend, 17-year-old Annie Mae Robbins, and drove around for two hours until they found an orange grove, where they left Giovanni behind and sped away.
However, a short time afterwards, Jones turned towards a dirt road until they reached some train tracks, which blew out the car's tires and caused oil to leak.
[2] From the period of 1999 to 2001, Jones was repeatedly jailed for a variety of offenses ranging from stalking, drug possession and violating restraining orders, but either served short sentences or the charges were dropped.
[1] After drinking and swallowing more Percodan, the victim was supposedly left near-incapacitated, which allowed Jones to drag him to the bedroom and continuously rape him for three hours.
Six weeks after the initial report, the Assistant State Attorney for Broward County, Lauren Covitz, announced that she would not press charges due to the unlikely chance of a conviction.
Upon closer inspection, he also saw that his throat had been slit and that the killer had apparently wiped the murder weapon on Gross' butt cheek, judging by the smudges of blood left on it.
[3] The blood-soaked Jones was soon discovered by Young, whom he ordered to help remove the bindings from the bodies and ransack the house, and after searching through it, the pair took the spouses' credit card and some jewellery before fleeing the scene.
Bartlett police released a statement announcing that they believed the crime was committed by two black males who were last seen in the vicinity of the home, but at that time, they were unable to identify who they were.
[1] Upon investigating the crime scene, police in Melbourne were notified that a black male driving a white four-door Lincoln Town Car had bought gas in their city using a credit card stolen from Tennessee.
[1] After contacting their counterparts in Tennessee, the investigators realized that their crime scenes shared remarkable similarities, most notable of which was the description of an older black male and the Lincoln Town Car.
While awaiting extradition to Tennessee, authorities from several states around the country started investigating Jones for possible involvement in unsolved murders within their jurisdiction.
This led to the Fort Lauderdale police to identify him as a prime suspect in Gross' murder, after they linked his footprints to the bloodied ones found at the crime scene.
At this initial trial, prosecutors were allowed to present evidence from the Perez murder, which convinced the jury of the defendant's guilt and resulted in a guilty verdict.
[6] During the proceedings, Jones, who chose to act as his own attorney in spite of attempts from the judge to convince him otherwise, complained that belongings like his legal paperwork, glasses and Bible were left behind in Tennessee.
[9] At times, he simply complained that he did not have full access to all evidence in the case, and on one occasion apologized about causing confusion in regards to an incident concerning a report and one of the witnesses.
[4] That same year, Jones' death sentence was automatically reviewed by the Tennessee Supreme Court, which ruled that the verdict should be overturned, citing the fact that state law prohibited admission of evidence from unrelated murder cases.