Troy Victorino, Jerone Hunter, Robert Cannon, Michael Salas
The Deltona massacre (commonly referred to as the "Xbox Murders") was a residential murder which occurred on August 6, 2004, in a home on Telford Lane in Deltona, Florida, United States. Four men broke into the home and bludgeoned six victims to death. The four attackers,[2] apparently inspired by the film Wonderland,[3] tortured and killed four men, two women, and a dog inside the home, making it the deadliest mass murder in Volusia County history.[4] Their primary motive for the murders was revenge on Erin Belanger, who had evicted a squatter, Troy Victorino, from her grandmother's then-vacant house, with the secondary motive of recovering an Xbox game console and some clothing that Victorino had left behind. Victorino was able to further motivate his accomplices by pointing out that the attack would likely allow them to kill another person they were mad at, but that person happened not to be at the house that night.[5]
A jury found Troy Victorino, Robert Cannon, Jerone Hunter, and Michael Salas guilty of the massacre in August 2006. Seventh Circuit Judge William A. Parsons upheld the jury's death penalty recommendation and called the killings "conscienceless" and "unnecessarily torturous."[6] He told each of the men during back-to-back sentencing hearings, "You have not only forfeited your right to live among us, you have forfeited your right to live at all." Salas and Cannon were both sentenced to life in prison, while Hunter and Victorino received the death sentence. The death sentences of Victorino and Hunter were overturned on June 14, 2017.[7] Prosecutors intend to seek death sentences for the two men again and both Victorino and Hunter are awaiting resentencing.[8][9][10]
Events precipitating the attack
Victorino and Hunter were among a group squatting on Belanger's grandparents' property while they were away.[11] The group was using the property as a party house. Belanger, who had moved to Florida to look after her grandparents' home, had deputies evict the squatters and boxed up belongings left behind.[11]
Victorino reasoned that Belanger and her housemates had "robbed" him of his Xbox and other belongings. Victorino told witnesses that, in the days before the killings, Belanger showed disrespect for him by calling police when he tried to get his belongings.[12] "He claims he is a Latin King, he is this big gang leader and they basically disrespected him and he had to deal with that because they couldn't treat a King like that," said the witness.[12]
One week before the murders, Victorino fired a gun in a car near the home on Telford Lane. That gun was supposed to be used for the murders, but the suspects couldn't find enough ammunition, so they rounded up about 15 baseball bats from neighborhood children instead.[11]
Two days before the massacre, a clerk at the New Smyrna BeachWal-Mart witnessed Victorino and his co-conspirators "laughing and giggling and being rowdy" at the store. The clerk told Volusia sheriff's investigators that she had a feeling the men "were up to no good" after spotting them in the store with baseball bats in hand.[11]
She said Cannon told the others, "We could take this bat and swing it and knock 'em over the head and crush their skull in." Salas then jumped in, the clerk told investigators, and said: "I got a better idea. . . . We could bash 'em in the face and knock their teeth down their throat."[11]
Victorino had been arrested July 29, 2004 for assaulting another man, but posted bail the next day. Richard Burrow, Victorino's probation officer, was notified of the arrest and was required to file a report to a judge detailing the arrest within 48 hours. This report could have sent Victorino back to jail on a probation violation. Paul Hayes, Burrow's supervisor, did not receive the report until August 4, and a judge did not receive it until August 6, after the massacre. In addition, Victorino met with Burrow on August 5. At this point, Burrow had the legal authority to conduct a "warrant-less" arrest on Victorino, and according to department officials should have done so. Instead, Victorino remained free. As a result, Hayes and Burrow were fired on August 9, along with two top administrators.[11][13]
The attack
Jonathan Gleason was on the recliner when the men stormed the house, and was fatally stabbed in the neck by Hunter. Victorino beat Francisco "Flaco" Ayo-Roman with an aluminum bat. Tito Gonzalez was murdered by Hunter, who fatally beat him in the head with a bat and stabbed him multiple times in the chest and stomach.[14]
After Erin Belanger was beaten to death, Troy Victorino sexually abused her body.[14] Anthony Vega was bludgeoned and stabbed in the throat by Victorino in the master bedroom near his girlfriend, Michelle Ann Nathan, who hid in a closet until discovered by Hunter who bludgeoned and stabbed her to death.[14]
Belanger's pet dachshund, George, was intentionally stomped to death during the attack.[15]
Trial and sentencing
The month-long jury trial was moved from Volusia due to concerns that media coverage made a fair jury trial impossible, and was moved 85 miles (137km) to the Richard O. Watson Judicial Center in St. Augustine, Florida, after two years of preparation. The $1.5 million in legal defense fees were a 7th Circuit record.[16]
The trial came to an end on August 2, 2006, when 7th Circuit Judge William Parsons sentenced Victorino and Hunter to death by lethal injection, and Cannon and Salas to life in prison without the possibility of parole.[6] Victorino and Hunter were carrying out their sentences in one-person cells on death row at the Union Correctional Institution in Raiford, Florida. However, on June 14, 2017, the Daytona Beach News-Journal reported that Victorino and Hunter were to receive new sentencing hearings due to a state Supreme Court decision that requires unanimity of jurors in recommending death.[17] Prosecutors decided to seek death sentences for the two men again and both Hunter and Victorino are awaiting resentencing.[10]
Victorino was found guilty of first-degree murder of all six victims, abuse of a dead human body, armed burglary of a dwelling, and animal cruelty.[6] At trial, he claimed he was drinking at a bar when the murders occurred. Victorino contended that the size-12 bloody boots presented at trial were his, someone must have stolen them from him before committing the murders.[18]
Hunter was also found guilty of first-degree murder of all six victims, conspiring to commit aggravated battery, tampering with physical evidence, abuse of a dead human body, and armed burglary of a dwelling.[6] He closed his eyes as the first "guilty" verdict was read, and stared straight ahead as he was further condemned to death. Hunter was at one point the youngest inmate on death row in Florida.[19] A September 2008 appeal by Hunter was rejected.[20]
Cannon pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six life terms without parole for the murders, life for armed burglary of a dwelling with a weapon, five years for conspiracy to commit aggravated battery, murder, armed burglary of a dwelling and tampering with physical evidence, 15 years each for five counts of abuse of a dead human body, and five years for cruelty to an animal.[6]
Salas was found guilty of first-degree murder of all six victims, conspiring to commit aggravated battery, tampering with physical evidence, and armed burglary of a dwelling.[6]
Victims
Belanger, Ayo-Roman, Nathan, and Vega were four friends who worked together at Burger King and rented the Telford Lane home. Gleason was not a resident at the home; Gonzalez was another co-worker who was spending the night.[2][15] George was Belanger's pet dachshund.[15]
Originally from Nashua, New Hampshire, Belanger moved to Deltona in 2004 to help take care of her grandmother's winter home.[15] She met Troy Victorino in Deltona, Florida while she was working at a Burger King as a cook. Ayo-Roman, Belanger's new boyfriend and co-worker, grew up in Puerto Rico. He moved to Florida to finish school and obtain his nursing certification.[15]
Vega, a painter and construction worker, moved to Florida from The Bronx, New York. He moved into the three-bedroom Telford Lane house two weeks prior to the slaying.[15]
Nathan, Vega's girlfriend, said she wanted to marry Vega and was very excited about living on her own. Her parents considered her a princess, and she had a tattoo of a princess on her arm. After her death, her father got the same tattoo on his arm.[15]
Gleason, originally from Deltona, was the only person living in the home who did not work at the Burger King; however, he had filled out an application.[15] He spoke Spanish, Portuguese, and French, and was planning to volunteer at a medical clinic in Africa. People that personally knew him described him as a very intelligent, funny, loving guy who loved people, and often performed in plays, and even dabbled in dance.[15]
Murderers
Troy Victorino
Jerone Hunter
The attackers share two commonalities: a degree of mental illness and troubled, unstable upbringings.[21]
Troy Victorino, the 6-foot-6, 300-pound ringleader of the attack, was on probation at the time of the murder. Victorino had been jailed many times for assault and was incarcerated for eight of the eleven years prior to the massacre. He had a history of childhood abuse ranging from beatings with belt buckles and sexual abuse beginning at age 2. Medical experts testified that his scarred mental development and brain damage left him with an inability to control his impulses. Witnesses that grew up near him and his brother could confirm the instability in that house: there were drugs, violence and abuse, and a general lack of parental unity or care.[21]
Michael Salas' upbringing was on record by child protective services, and he and his brothers were determined to have been exposed to violence, drug-use, malnourishment, and abuse such as cigarette burns by their mother. His father Roberto died of AIDS when Michael was 9. Michael, who has several diagnosed mental disorders including bipolar disorder, dropped out of school in ninth grade.[21]
Jerone Hunter was a clinically depressed, mentally ill man whose parents were both committed to mental hospitals at the time of the massacre.[21] As early as age 3, Hunter would converse with his identical twin brother Jeremy, who died from pneumonia at 6 months old. His mother did not seek medical attention for his abnormal behavior because she thought it was common and reasoned, "in the black culture, I was told when they have a twin brother and they pass away, they always have that relationship with him, so I never thought it was strange."[21] Hunter's rejected August 2008 appeal claimed he has schizophrenia who was forced into the slayings by Victorino and therefore should have been tried separately.[22]
Legislative response
In response to the Deltona massacre, the Florida legislature proposed a bill that would add additional "risk-to-public" hearings for probation violators with violent histories. State law allowed, but did not require, probation officer Richard Burrow [23] to arrest Troy Victorino, a violent felon who was facing a battery charge and thus probation violation. Burrow opted to let Victorino leave his office and to ask for an arrest warrant the next day, which gave Victorino the opportunity to commit the killings.
The bill, SB-146, which passed on February 23, 2007, seeks to close this loophole by addressing felony probation and other community control violations with the new designation, "violent felony offenders of special concern" (VFOSC).[24] Such an offender cannot be released from jail until a court hearing determines whether supervision was violated.[24] If supervision is found to have been violated, the court must make a written finding as to whether the offender is a danger to the community.[24] If determined to be a danger to the community, the violator may have his probation revoked and be sentenced up to the statutory maximum or longer if permitted by law.[24] The bill substantially amends sections 921.0024 and 948.06, Florida Statutes; creates sections 903.0351 and 948.064, Florida Statutes; and reenacts sections 948.012(2)(b), 948.10(9), and 958.14, Florida Statutes.[24]
Volusia County is located in the east-central part of the U.S. state of Florida between the St. Johns River and the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2020 census, the county was home to 553,543 people, an increase of 11.9% from the 2010 census. It was founded on December 29, 1854, from part of Orange County, and was named for the community of Volusia, located in northwestern Volusia County. Its first county seat was Enterprise. Since 1887, its county seat has been DeLand.
Deltona is a city in Volusia County, Florida, United States. It is located on the northern shore of Lake Monroe. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 93,692. It is a principal city of the Deltona–Daytona Beach–Ormond Beach metropolitan area, which was home to an estimated 685,344 people in 2021. It is the third largest city in the Greater Orlando combined statistical area.
Life imprisonment is any sentence of imprisonment for a crime under which convicted criminals are to remain in prison for the rest of their natural lives. Crimes that warrant life imprisonment are extremely serious and usually violent. Examples of these crimes are murder, torture, terrorism, child abuse resulting in death, rape, espionage, treason, illegal drug trade, human trafficking, severe fraud and financial crimes, aggravated property damage, arson, hate crime, kidnapping, burglary, robbery, piracy, aircraft hijacking, and genocide.
In justice and law, house arrest is a measure by which a person is confined by the authorities to their residence. Travel is usually restricted, if allowed at all. House arrest is an alternative to being in a prison while awaiting trial or after sentencing.
Lionel Alexander Tate is the youngest American citizen ever sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, though this sentence was eventually overturned. In January 2001, when Tate was 13, he was convicted of first-degree murder for the 1999 battering death of six-year-old Tiffany Eunick in Broward County, Florida.
A home invasion, also called a hot prowl burglary, is a sub-type of burglary in which an offender unlawfully enters into a building residence while the occupants are inside. The overarching intent of a hot prowl burglary can be theft, robbery, assault, sexual assault, murder, kidnapping, or another crime, either by stealth or direct force. Hot prowl burglaries are considered especially dangerous by law enforcement because of the potential for a violent confrontation between the occupant and the offender.
A school shooting occurred on November 8, 2005 at Campbell County Comprehensive High School in Jacksboro, Tennessee, United States, when a 15-year-old freshman student shot the school principal and two assistant principals. One assistant principal, Ken Bruce, died as a result of the shooting.
Gerald Eugene Stano was an American convicted serial killer. Stano murdered at least 22 young women and girls, confessed to 41 murders and the police say the number of his victims may be closer to 88.
Robert Tyrone Hayes is an American serial killer who has been convicted of three murders in the Daytona Beach, Florida, area between December 2005 and February 2006. DNA tests have also linked him to a fourth murder committed in March 2016. In addition, he remains the prime suspect in the murder of another woman in December 2007.
The Union Correctional Institution, formerly referred to as Florida State Prison, Raiford Prison and State Prison Farm is a Florida Department of Corrections state prison located in unincorporated Union County, Florida, near Raiford.
Gary Ray Bowles was an American serial killer who was executed in 2019 for the murders of six men in 1994. He is sometimes referred to as The I-95 Killer since most of his victims lived close to the Interstate 95 highway.
The FEAR militia was an American terrorist group of between four and eleven individuals that the State of Georgia alleged in 2012 to have planned to destroy a dam and poison apple orchards in Washington State, set off explosives in Forsyth Park in Savannah, Georgia, and assassinate President Barack Obama. Four of the individuals charged were soldiers stationed at Fort Stewart, Georgia. The group killed two people in an attempt to prevent them from revealing their plans to the public. The group used the Army to recruit militia members, who wore distinctive tattoos that resemble an alpha and omega symbol.
John Allen Burt was an American Christian fundamentalist, anti-abortion activist, domestic terrorist, and convicted child molester who called himself the "spiritual adviser" to murderers Michael Griffin and Paul Hill and other anti-abortionists. Burt ran "Our Father's House", which began as a Christian ministry and shelter for unwed mothers, later evolving into a private religious reformatory boarding school for "troubled" teenage girls. In 2003, he was arrested for molesting a 15-year-old girl who was living there. He was convicted and sentenced to 18 years in prison, where he died in 2013.
On June 18, 2018, 20-year-old American rapper and singer-songwriter Jahseh Dwayne Ricardo Onfroy, known professionally as XXXTentacion, was murdered in Deerfield Beach, Florida. Onfroy was fatally shot and killed by 22-year-old Michael Boatwright after being robbed in his car by Boatwright and his accomplices Trayvon Newsome, Dedrick Williams, and Robert Allen outside RIVA Motorsports, an upscale seller of motorcycles and watercraft in Deerfield Beach. Authorities charged the four men with first-degree murder and robbery with a firearm.
The "Baby Lollipops" murder was the murder in 1990 of three-year-old Lazaro Figueroa by his mother Ana Maria Cardona in Florida. The body of Lazaro was found abandoned, and identified through house-to-house inquiries. The case was widely covered in US media, who called the initially unidentified boy "Baby Lollipops", after the design on the T-shirt he was wearing when found.
Tammy Lynn Belanger is an American child who disappeared while walking to school in Exeter, New Hampshire, in November 1984. Police believe she was abducted.
On June 2, 2020, David Dorn, a 77-year-old retired police captain, was fatally shot after interrupting the burglary of a pawn shop in The Ville, St. Louis. The incident during riots in St. Louis, Missouri over the death of George Floyd. Stephan Cannon, who was 24 years old at the time of the incident, was convicted of his murder on July 20, 2022.
Gary Michael Hilton, known as The National Forest Serial Killer, is an American serial killer responsible for four known homicides between 2007 and 2008 committed in three states, all of which occurred within the premises of national forests. Sentenced to death in Florida and to life imprisonment in Georgia and North Carolina, Hilton remains a suspect in several other killings, including that of Judy Smith.
Willie James Hodges is an American murderer and suspected serial killer who has been convicted of a 2001 murder in Florida, to which he has been linked to via DNA evidence, and remains the prime suspect in two additional murders in Alabama and Ohio with which he has never been charged. Originally sentenced to death for the Florida conviction, the sentence was later overturned following Hurst v. Florida and he was subsequently resentenced to life imprisonment.
Bert Leroy Hunter was an American serial killer. He is best known for committing the double murder of an elderly woman and her son in Jefferson City, Missouri, in 1988, together with accomplice Tomas Grant Ervin.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
