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Note tells why Dunedin man killed wife, self in Hernando wilderness

 
Published June 4, 2013

BROOKSVILLE — Michael Jones kidnapped his wife and shot her last month in the Hernando County wilderness before turning the gun on himself. But in his eyes, Glenna Jones was no longer the woman he had married.

By May 18, Michael Jones was sure that his wife of more than 40 years had been cheating on him with two men, according to a suicide note and an investigative report provided to the Times on Monday by the Hernando Sheriff's Office.

"My life is essentially over," wrote Jones, 66. "I'm confused, profoundly hurt and have no will to live. I also can't let the 'being' that (Glenna) has become continue to live."

The note and the report, released after detectives officially closed the case as a murder-suicide, shed more light on what motivated Michael Jones to kill his wife, then himself.

On the night of the 18th, he bound his 66-year-old wife's arms with zip ties in their home on Dinnerbell Lane South in Dunedin and drove her about 50 miles north to a remote spot in the Chassahowitzka Wildlife Management Area. There, he shot her once in the forehead with a 9 mm Ruger pistol before putting the barrel into his mouth and pulling the trigger.

Detectives found copies of the note in the couple's PT Cruiser and in the house. Though Jones' note outlines what he considered evidence that his wife had cheated, the couple's son, Kenneth, told investigators his father may have been delusional, the report says.

Asked by Detective George Loydgren whether Michael Jones had a mental illness, Kenneth Jones said his father had "supposedly" been diagnosed but wasn't taking medication. The diagnosis is redacted from the report. Kenneth Jones, who lives in St. Petersburg, told authorities his father had told him a few weeks before the killings that he had scheduled a mental health evaluation.

"Kenneth added his father was accusing his mother of having an affair, but he believes it was all in his father's head," Loydgren wrote.

Jones also accused his wife of "destroying my life by forcing the liquidation of our estate." He said he earned six figures as an information technology director but couldn't find a new job after federal regulators shut down the company where he worked.

He described his son and his daughter as his proudest accomplishments.

"I do love you all, but I have no life left without the woman I married," he wrote. "She ceased existing before I took her life."