48 Hours - Where is Diana Duve?

Episode Date: May 7, 2023

When a woman disappears with her boyfriend, investigators learn he was entrusted with millions at his bank job, but he also told outlandish lies about who he was. "48 Hours" contributor Michelle Miller reports.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to this podcast ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app today. Even if you love the thrill of true crime stories as much as I do, there are times when you want to mix it up. And that's where Audible comes in, with all the genres you love and new ones to discover. Explore thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. Listening to Audible can lead to positive change in your mood, your habits,

and even your overall well-being. And you can enjoy Audible anytime, while doing household chores, exercising, commuting, you name it. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca. In 2014, Laura Heavlin was in her home in Tennessee when she received a call from California. Her daughter, Erin Corwin, was missing. The young wife of a Marine had moved to the California desert

to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military. And when they do, the NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News, this is 48 Hours NCIS. Listen to 48 Hours NCIS ad-free starting October 29th on Amazon Music. she's my everything i need her back her name is diana duvet this is a photo of 26-year-old Diana Duvet of Vero Beach. I don't know what she is. Police describe her as 5'3", 120 pounds, brown hair. And I'm looking for her, but I don't know.

She was last seen leaving the Whatta Tavern restaurant around 1 a.m. Friday morning with a man they say is her boyfriend, 32-year-old Michael David Jones. Neither has been heard from since. I contact Lieutenant Harrelson and say I'm going to need help with this case because there's much more of this than just a missing persons case. We're in a million different directions trying to find her and him. His phone has been turned off. Her phone is now turned off. trying to find her and him. His phone has been turned off. Her phone is now turned off. Diana was out with some friends. They described her as enjoying herself,

but she was texting a lot. They just felt like it was a little out of the ordinary. She left her friends and then went and met up with Mike Jones at another establishment. It was called Whatta Tavern. They appeared to be having a good time as in having quite a few drinks. At one point, it appeared as though she was crying and visibly upset, but then kind of not. And when they were leaving, the bar staff said,

are you guys okay to get home? Mike said, I'm going to drive her home. Don't worry about it. What time was that? It was around 1.30 a.m. What time was that? It was around 1.30 a.m. I didn't wait for her that night. When I got up in the morning, there is text message there. Mom, I'm not coming home tonight. I texted her, Diana, where you at? Call me.

I went to work. Around 11.30, it just kind of shock went through me that, wait a second, she didn't call me. She was 26 years old, and she would call me every day. It set me off immediately. I was trying to tell everybody who would listen, if she's not calling me, it's because she can't. And then we begin to learn about Michael Jones. What we learned was he told many of his workmates, I'm not feeling that well. I'm going to be gone for a couple of days. I've got some things I've got to take care of. I thought that they were out of town for a wedding. I first met Mike Jones at a networking luncheon. He was a

charming guy. Mike and I dated, I want to say, like two to four months. He seemed pretty put together. He was smart. He was really funny. Mike told me that he was a trust attorney for PNC Wealth Management. He handled a lot of multi-million dollar accounts. A lot of people trusted him with a lot of money. Mike was very elaborate. His stories were big, celebrities involved, always knowing people everywhere we went. Mike told me that his sister was dating Jason Aldean and that he was adopted by Ronald Reagan's son. I think that he probably had stories about who he was,

depending on who he was talking to. Who he really is, to this day, I'm not sure we know. Just come home. Everybody love you. Everybody misses you terribly. To this day, I'm not sure we know. Just come home. Everybody love you. Everybody misses you terribly. All I cared about, find her. Where is my daughter? Where is Diana? Thank you. Did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder?

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It's just the best idea yet. We've interviewed all of these people. We've run down all the leads that we had. We're in a million different directions. On Saturday, June 21, 2014, Lieutenant Matt Harrelson and Sergeant Brad Metz with the Vero Beach Police Department were not having much luck trying to find out

what could have happened to Diana Duve and Mike Jones. Investigators went to Jones's apartment, but no one was answering the door. We did get a search warrant that day to get into Michael Jones's apartment to try to collect physical evidence or find Diana and hopefully it'd be, you know, next to nothing. When the investigators returned with a warrant, they were surprised to discover Lena and Bill Andrews, Diana's mother and stepfather, sitting outside in their car. Is that unusual? Oh my gosh, that's crazy. Lena is sitting at the house hoping for a sighting of her daughter. She's just beside herself. You know, she's crying, she's upset. She wants to go physically kick the door in.

Before investigators went inside, they interviewed Lina. She told them that the last communication she had from her daughter was that text Diana sent in the early hours the previous day. She texted me at 1.45 a.m. I won't be home. It was in Russian, the language they spoke with each other. So Lena believed it had to be from her daughter. As the hours passed on Friday, with no sign of Diana, she grew increasingly desperate. You called Michael Jones? I did call Michael Jones, yes.

He was like, oh, don't worry. She's with me. Everything's OK. Oh, he said that? Yes. I was like, oh my god, Mike. You guys killing me. I am worried sick.

I need to talk to her. I want to hear her voice. I told him, give her a phone. All of a sudden, oh, she's sleeping. Well, wake her up, because I have to talk to her. All of a sudden, another excuse. She's at my place, but not there right now. I told him, you go home, you wake her up,

call me back in 30 minutes. But Jones never called Lena back, and she never heard from him again. She was my world. Diana was born in Moldova, a small country in Eastern Europe. Diana immigrated to America when she was 13 to join her mother, Lena, who had married Bill, an American. A girl that didn't speak English at all. Within two months, she was in a regular school class. In a few years, you couldn't even guess that she's not American. In 2011, Diana received her nursing degree. At the time she disappeared, Diana worked with cancer patients at the Sebastian River Medical Center. She really, really cared about her patients,

about patients' families. She's highly intelligent, always motivated. Chelsea DeMaio was Diana's best friend and former roommate. She's very easygoing, just fun to be around. In the summer of 2013, Chelsea says Diana met Jones at a bar in Vero Beach. Did she seem smitten from the start? No.

No? No. She never had an initial, oh, wow, Mike Jones. It seemed more like he definitely had his sights set on her. And she kind of eventually came around. Lena and Bill say they didn't know much about Jones, except that he worked for PNC Bank in wealth management and had gone to law school.

He was extremely polite, nice dressed, well-spoken. Seemed like the ideal boyfriend. And after just a couple of months of dating, Diana moved into Jones' apartment. She seemed happy, so we were okay with it. Chelsea says Diana and Jones quickly became inseparable. You would never see her without him, and she had never done that in relationships before.

Over time, Chelsea says she became concerned. There was a time where we were getting lunch. I remember she wanted to go somewhere where Mike wasn't going to see her or run into her or see her car. It was almost as if she would have been in trouble getting lunch with me. Chelsea says before she could sit down and have a serious talk with her friend, Diana and Jones had a domestic dispute that would officially end their relationship. It was April 30th, 2014, just two months before Diana would disappear.

Do you have a choice? Yeah, hey, I think I got a domestic for you. before Diana would disappear. Mike Jones' neighbor made this 911 call. trying to dominate the crap out of her. So it's just been verbal, right? Verbal. I can't hear any slaps or anything, but I'll tell you, it's not good. Officers responded, knocked on the door, made contact with both Diana and Mike Jones. According to the police incident report, Jones told them that the noise was from rough sex.

Diana told police everything was fine, but she asked him to wait for her as she grabbed her things and left. She called me in tears, leaving his apartment. I told her to just come straight to where I was, and she did, and she was still in her pajamas, hysterical. Had you ever seen her like that before? That upset? Never. Never. She was explaining that he was screaming at her,

that it had been going on for what felt like hours, and he just wasn't letting up. And if he finally got to the point where he had put his hands around her neck and started strangling her, I could clearly see that there were marks on her neck. So Chelsea says she took these photos, which show what appears to be hand marks on Diana's neck. I need to document this. I need to protect her. But despite Chelsea's efforts to get her to make a formal report,

Diana chose not to press charges. She just wanted to move her things out and remove herself from the situation, and that's what we did. Diana moved back in with her parents and did not tell them that Jones had tried to strangle her. I think she was just trying to protect me so I wouldn't worry, and she thought that she handled it. In her mind, it was over. But Lena says Jones continued to pursue Diana. She would tell me he texted me. Looks like he doesn't understand that I broke up with him. Now with a search warrant almost 48 hours after Diana was last seen with Mike Jones,

investigators entered his apartment. You can see the sheer fear and panic in Lena's eyes. I said, Lena, I promise you, I'm going to get your daughter back for you one way or another. I vividly remember that I was walking back and forth in the front of this apartment. Neighbors, people that I don't know, all coming out. This girl just came and hugged me and said, oh, everything's going to be okay. And I looked at her and said, no, it won't. In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island.

It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn, and it harboured a deep, dark scandal. There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reach the age of 10 that would still avert it. It just happens to all of them. I'm journalist Luke Jones, and for almost two years, I've been investigating a shocking story that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn. When there's nobody watching, nobody going to report it, people will get away with what they can get away with.

In the Pitcairn trials, I'll be uncovering a story of abuse and the fight for justice that has brought a unique, lonely Pacific island to the brink of extinction. Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Hot shot Australian attorney Nicola Gaba was born into legal royalty. Her specialty? Representing some of the city's most infamous gangland criminals. However, while Nicola held the underworld's darkest secrets, the most dangerous secret was her own.

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Listen to Informant's Lawyer X exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. And listen to more Exhibit C true crime shows early and ad-free right now. We want to find Diana. We want to reunite her with her parents. We want to make sure she's okay. As detectives searched Mike Jones' apartment, they were hopeful they would find Diana Duve, but they were met with disappointment.

We didn't find a lot. We didn't find any belongings that we felt were Diana's. We didn't find any sign of her. But they were not discouraged. Sergeant Metz was motivated by that promise he made to Diana's mother, Lena, that he would find her daughter. What really drove me to keep pushing forward was a mother begging you, please find my daughter for me. They knew that in order to find Diana, they needed to

find Mike Jones. Investigators grew concerned when they learned that about 12 hours after Jones was last seen with Diana at the Whatta Tavern bar, he was captured on surveillance footage visiting a PNC bank in Vero Beach. When he went to the PNC bank, he withdrew $2,500 in cash and then told many of his workmates, he said, you know, I'm not feeling that well. I'm going to be gone for a couple of days. I've got some things I've got to take care of. Investigators grew even more alarmed when they learned that Jones had a criminal record. Prior to moving to Vero Beach, he had been charged with aggravated

stalking for threatening to kill an ex-girlfriend near Fort Lauderdale in 2012. 911, what is your emergency? This is the 911 call from that incident. emergency. This is the 911 call from that incident. My ex-boyfriend just called me and told me that he has packed his gun and then as soon as I walk outside the gunshot will go off in my head. What happened? My ex-boyfriend threatened to kill himself tonight and then when I told him that we were not getting back together he told me he would kill me. I'm very afraid. I've seen him angry before. He pleaded no contest, and as part of a plea deal, Jones was given five years probation

in lieu of jail time. He was required to stay in the Vero Beach area and could be arrested if he left without getting permission from his probation officer. I spoke to the probation officer who told us if we come in contact with him, that's probable cause. We can't arrest him for a probation violation at minimum at that point. All of a sudden, we found out that he's convicted felon, that he's on probation. Lena says she and Bill were blindsided by the news.

It's something that was extremely unexpected. Nobody knew about it. Investigators continued to work the case, but were running out of leads. So they turned their attention to analyzing cell phone tower pings from Diana and Jones' phones. We had to kind of like overlay two separate maps to be able to see where she may have been and where he was prior.

I was getting pretty tired, and something told me, just give it a couple more minutes. And this is why I would say that divine intervention was definitely at play here. Within a few minutes, I found something that was really odd. Sergeant Metz noticed there was only one ping from Jones' phone off a cell tower located in the Fort Pierce area, approximately 25 minutes from Vero Beach. So Metz had dispatch alert local authorities there to be on the lookout for Jones' gold Honda and Diana's black Nissan.

I'm on my way home, get in bed, and then my phone rings. Fort Pierce PD had located Mike Jones' car. Jones's gold Honda was located in the parking lot of a Hampton Inn. Hotel surveillance footage showed that Jones had checked into the hotel almost 24 hours after Diana went missing. He appeared to be alone. According to the front desk staff, Jones paid in cash for two nights and instructed them not to tell anyone he was there and not to transfer any calls to his room. You don't know what you're going to find when you get in that room. You know, your heart's racing.

You've been going for two days straight, and now you're this close from getting who you believe is a possible suspect and also hopefully finding Diana. Around 11.30 p.m., using a key card given to them by the front desk, Metz and Harrelson entered Jones' hotel room. He seemed surprised. He was surprised to see us, absolutely. He was sitting on one of the double beds with like a v-neck t-shirt on and some shorts and smoking a cigarette, and he was talking on a phone, on a cell phone. It was a

burner phone, a phone that is difficult for police to trace. All right, Mike, you have a pretty good reason why we're here, I'm sure. This is audio of Sergeant Metz speaking to Jones in his hotel room. I'll tell you unequivocally, I don't know where she is. Don't have the slightest clue. I'm trying to find her. Why won't he just give me

the information I'm looking for? Your girlfriend's missing. This is somebody that you professed that you loved and professed that you cared about. You should be helping law enforcement try to find her. I said, if you're not willing to give us any information, I said, you're going to jail right now for the violation of probation. Metz and Harrelson were relieved to place Jones behind bars,

but they still had no idea where Diana was or her car. You go from very high because you found him and you're bursting in the room to like, here we are back again. Investigators decided to trace the purchase of that burner phone Jones had been using and learned that he bought it at a Walmart located about an hour north from the Hampton Inn. When they pulled their surveillance footage from the Walmart,

they made a startling discovery. It's a little grainy, but it appeared to be Diana's car. In this surveillance footage from the morning after Diana went missing, her Nissan entered the Walmart parking lot, parked. Then you see what appeared to be Mike Jones wearing a red baseball hat walk into the store, buy the burner phone, and then walk out. There was no sign of Diana. But despite buying the burner phone, Jones occasionally still turned on his primary phone. He would turn it on and then use it for something and then turn it back off.

Let me go through these pings one last time. I said, maybe I'm missing something here. I found one. I mean, maybe we can catch lightning in a bottle twice. So Metz and Harrelson analyze Mike Jones's primary cell phone pings one more time, looking for any pings in and around the area of the Walmart.

He and I are kind of looking at it together. I'm like, well, this one's strange. He goes, well, what do you mean? I said, well, what's he doing up in Melbourne? It appeared that Jones had picked up a call in the Melbourne area, almost one hour north of Vero Beach. So local police were alerted and asked to search that area for Diana's car. And just 30 minutes later,

detectives received a call they had been desperately waiting for. They had found her vehicle. Three days after Diana had gone missing, her car was located in a Publix parking lot in Melbourne, Florida. We jump in the car, we're rocking and rolling. And there she was. Crazy. Crazy. Crazy. We're on the ragged edge.

You know, we haven't slept. You know, because you're just, you're moving. It was around 4.30 a.m. when investigators arrived at a Publix parking lot where Diana Duvet's black Nissan had been discovered. Lieutenant Harrelson feared they would find her body here. And I told Brad, I said, she's in the trunk. I said, I don't know. I said, it's just so cliche.

It's something like out of a movie. It didn't make much sense to me. But when they opened the trunk, Lieutenant Harrelson's premonition turned out to be true. There are certain things in this job that you can't unsee, you can't unlive. You'll never forget. No. I remember putting my hands on my knees and kind of just putting my head down.

It was not the way I wanted to find her. And I opened the door, and here's chief police in complete uniform. The saddest thing in my life was seeing him come out the door. And he told me if he found her, they found her. To lose her like this, it's indescribable. As painful as it was, this was no longer a missing persons case, but a homicide. An autopsy would later reveal Diana had suffered blunt force trauma to the head and had been strangled to death. Investigators believed they had a strong case connecting Jones to the parking lot where Diana was found. But something was gnawing at them. How did Mike Jones leave the area without a car?

So we just started cold calling some of these taxi agencies. And I said, hey, did you get a fare for the Vero in the last couple of days? And man, we hit one. And I was like, wow. You know, like that's just like, that doesn't happen every day. So we got lucky on that one. Around 8 a.m., after Jones dropped off Diana's car, a man called for a taxi down the street. I showed up and there was a guy outside with a red hoodie on and he got in the passenger side of the vehicle.

During the hour long ride, they briefly chatted. I asked him questions like, what brought you down here? And he said, oh, well, I came here with a friend of mine, you know, and so then I asked him, I said, how come you didn't get a ride back with your friend to Vero Beach? And he said, well, they got into an argument and she's very pissed with him. The former cab driver who asked us not to use his name says that he dropped the man off across the street

from this apartment in Vero Beach. It was Mike Jones' apartment. The kicker was he was able to pick him out of a lineup too, which really helped our case. And just two days after they found Diana's body, He was able to pick him out of a lineup, too, which really helped our case. And just two days after they found Diana's body, they had enough evidence to officially charge Mike Jones with her murder. He would plead not guilty.

He didn't show any emotion. He didn't ask any more questions. He just sat there. You there, Mike? Yeah, I request my right to counsel. Turn out your right to remain silent. Okay. I'll be up in no more than nothing else, Sadie. Assistant State Attorney

Brian Workman was assigned to prosecute the case along with State Attorney Thomas Bacodal. As they started digging, they soon learned that Mike Jones was no ordinary suspect. He doesn't fit the mold of your average violent murderer. Jones was well-educated with a master's and law degree, and he was a respected member of the Vero Beach community. It was shocking that Mike would have done this.

I think it blew everybody's mind. Stuart Pierce was friends with Jones. Mike Jones was a guy that you wanted to be friends with. He was clean cut, real nice guy. He first met him at a networking luncheon shortly after Jones had moved to Vero Beach in the summer of 2013. We saw him everywhere that there was to be seen. Cufflinks and a well-start shirt. Jones was often seen at local charity events. Here is a guy who was able to work his way into the community here. I mean, he was doing charitable activities. He actually showed up and walked for the very same domestic violence organization that I'm a board member for. Jones was also active in the bar scene and had made many friends in a short period of time.

Investigators interviewed some of them on audio tape. I would say that he was ambitious. I could trust him with things that I would trust my family with. Michael was a genius. One of the smartest people I'd ever, you know, dealt with. And when it came to work, Jones thrived at his job in wealth management at PNC Bank.

He brought people in who had a lot of money, and he had performance reviews, emails that went back and forth between PNC personnel raving about his job performance and how great he was doing there. In his last performance review from four months before Diana was murdered, his boss wrote, Michael has shown that he has strong ethics and leadership qualities. He is a big asset for PNC. This guy's a master manipulator. This guy was running multi-million dollar counts for a bank as a convicted felon.

So he was able to con a bank. We reached out to PNC Bank to ask if they knew Jones had a record and was on probation for stalking that woman near Fort Lauderdale in 2012. They declined to comment. His friends, however, had no idea. But what they did know about Jones's past is there were a lot of stories. I remember the stories like every time there was a zinger. Ellie Sexton dated Jones shortly before he started dating Diana. Mike told me that his sister was dating Jason Aldean.

And he told me that he was adopted by Ronald Reagan's son. Mike drove a gold Honda Accord that was probably 10 years old. But he told me that he had a penthouse in Fort Lauderdale, that he had a Porsche, that he just didn't want to damage. Well, Mike Jones told me that he was adopted and that he played some minor league baseball. But one time hanging out on the beach and seeing him throw a football made me think that he'd probably never played minor league baseball.

Nothing in his life was the truth. Who he really is, to this day, I'm not sure we know. Prosecutors were certain of one thing, that Mike Jones was a murderer. And now, as they prepare to go to trial, they learn that Diana was one of Mike Jones' many victims. The only difference is the others got away. My family has all said, you know, you skipped death. Say a woman's name with whom he had a relationship and there is abuse.

As prosecutors continue to unearth more details about Mike Jones, they say there was a clear pattern in how he treated his ex-girlfriends. He's Prince Charming. In the door, right? But then slowly he'll begin telling them what to wear, what friends to hang out with. He's calling incessantly. He's showing up at restaurants. He's reading her phone.

A couple of the women that we talked to, he would hold them in place for long periods of time. He was very controlling. Ellie Sexton only dated Mike Jones for a few months, but says she witnessed his violent temper. Mike never got physical, but there were a few times that he just had some jealousy behaviors. I do remember him screaming in my face one time and getting really close to me and feeling fear. And investigators also learned that Mike Jones' stories about his past were flat-out lies. He's a pathological liar.

In a personal essay he wrote for college admission, Jones claimed that he was born into poverty to uneducated and abusive parents. He wrote that he was placed with several foster families and eventually was adopted. What is the truth about his upbringing? What do you think? He was spoiled rotten. His parents bought him motorcycles. They put him in private school.

And it wasn't until his parents told him that they weren't going to pay for any more education, meaning law school. That was the point where he broke it off with them, manipulating, trying to get what he wanted. We reached out to Jones's family, but we never heard back from them. We reached out to Jones' family, but we never heard back from them. And the manipulation continued while Jones attended a graduate law program at the University of Miami. According to an email to his fellow students in 2010, Jones claimed that he was battling prostate, pancreas, and stomach cancer, and other alleged medical conditions that prohibited him from often attending classes. We have no record of any type of cancer diagnosis in his background or anything like that.

But despite Mike Jones' dark past of lies and abusing other women, prosecutors could only tell a jury about his abuse of Diana and her murder. You should be convicting somebody for the crime that they committed, not based upon what they've done in the past. And when it was time to go to trial, they had to make an important decision, whether to go for the death penalty. Boy, that was a tough one.

We sat down with Lena and we said, listen, when we take this step, it's a whole different process. He explained that the proceedings could drag on for years. And even if one juror did not believe Jones deserved the death penalty, he would be given a life sentence instead. I wanted death penalty, absolutely. He lost his right to live when he killed her, when he killed Diana. Brian and I agreed with him and thought that this is the route we need to take.

In October of 2019, Mike Jones' trial finally began in Vero Beach. Mike Jones' trial finally began in Vero Beach. During opening remarks, prosecutors told the jury that Mike Jones abused Diana mentally and physically during their short six-month on-and-off-again relationship. She would talk about her feelings and the things that he had done and how he would be demeaning, and he would flip it. He would flip the scripts and he would flip it. He would flip the scripts and start blaming her and accusing her and suggesting that it's her fault. What he

was doing was gaslighting her. To back up their claims of physical abuse, prosecutors called Diana's friend Chelsea DeMaio and showed the jury the photos she took after that domestic incident when Jones allegedly strangled Diana. I could clearly see that there were marks on her neck. As disturbing as that was, Bacadal explained that after that domestic incident, Diana had secretly started seeing Jones on and off again. This is what happens in domestic violence. People want to know,

why would she go back? And it's because of the control. And he had total control over her. Prosecutors said no one knows what they talked about in the early hours of Friday, June 20th, 2014, when they left the bar together and went to Jones's apartment. Now, they had been drinking that evening, and of course that has an impact on your judgment. But Bacadal thinks Diana was trying to end the relationship for good. She was telling him that night, it's over. I have no doubt in my mind that this was the end of this relationship.

In fact, according to Lena, Diana had upcoming plans to go out west to visit a friend. And when he got wind of that, that was it. Prosecutors said they believed Jones lost his temper, and that's when he beat and strangled her. He had beaten her so badly that he knew at that point in time he could not let her go. He knew that if she were to leave the house that night and been covered in bruises, a jig was up for this guy, and he couldn't allow that to happen. And so he resorted ultimately to murder. The state admitted they didn't know exactly what time the murder took place,

but said blood evidence showed that Jones placed Diana's body in the trunk of her car while it was parked in his garage. Next to the threshold where the garage door comes down where the concrete meets it, we found like two very small droplets of blood. Whose were they? Diana's. When it was the defense's turn to lay out their case, they told the jurors that in fact no one really knew exactly what happened after Jones and Diana left the bar on June 20th. They raised the possibility that Diana's death could have been an accident. Jones' defense team declined our request for an interview.

They tried to act like that, you know, he was an upstanding citizen in our community. You know, he had a solid job. Why would he do this to her? It was almost insulting sometimes for them to even try to act like he wasn't the monster that we knew him to be. After seven days of testimony, the case went to the jury. The prosecutors felt confident. I expected a guilty verdict, but I didn't expect it to happen as quickly as it did. How quickly did it come back? Like 45 minutes.

That says something. That says a lot. That says that somebody finally saw through Michael Jones's... But they knew there were many challenges ahead. Now the jury would have to decide whether Mike Jones would live or die. What did you tell Lena right after the trial? I remember hugging her. I specifically remember telling her, now the heavy lifting comes.

Be ready. What do you think is the most outlandish lie that Mike Jones told? Go inside the investigation at 48hours.com. She had so much good in her heart. And he knew that. Nearly a month after the verdict, the same jury that convicted Mike Jones of first-degree murder would now decide whether he would live or die.

The penalty phase is everything about the defendant. Prosecutor Bacodal warned Lena that the sentencing hearing would be difficult to sit through. The poor defendant, all of the issues faced by the defendant throughout his life, to the absolute and utter exclusion of her daughter. The defense called medical experts who testified Jones had received multiple blows to his head, possibly from doing motocross as a teen, and he suffered brain damage. One expert testified that Jones's frontal lobe, which regulates decision-making and impulse control, had been damaged and caused a significant

cognitive defect. They wanted the jury to believe that he had this major or minor cognitive deficit. The problem is, in order to have that particular deficit, you can't do things like balance a checkbook, pay rent. And here's a guy who went to law school and managed multimillion-dollar accounts. When it was time for her victim impact statement, Lena surprised everyone and confronted Jones face to face. How can you do that with your bare hands to the person that you supposedly love? How can anybody do that?

How? She brought Diana to life in that courtroom. And if we were going to get the death penalty, it was going to be on the back of that testimony. It was just a mother's love for her child. It was big. Throughout the entire trial, Jones showed no emotion. He absolutely had zero remorse. Absolutely zero. Throughout the entire trial, Jones showed no emotion.

He absolutely had zero remorse. Absolutely zero. Even as his sentence was about to be read. His attorneys, they had their faces in their hands, they were leaning on the tables, and he just sat there like a statue. Mike Jones received a life sentence, much to the prosecutor's disappointment. For me, it was devastating because we didn't finish the job that we had promised Lena and the family. I realized at that moment, if I can't get death in this case, what case? Do you remember how many for, how many against? Yeah, I remember. I'll never forget.

It was 11-1. The defense was playing for one holdout the entire time. That's all they need. We needed to be perfect. He's still going to die in jail, one way or another. And he's never going to hurt another girl again. At the end of the day, my daughter, Diana, she's not coming home. She's not.

And he's still alive. still alive. Graduation day, she was happy. All her adult life started. It was a good day. Lina wants people to remember and learn from her daughter's story. If this has happened to Diana, it's gonna happen to anybody. If you feel something is not right, listen to yourself because something is not right. Today, after all these years, Diana's bedroom looks exactly the way she left it. It's one of the older pictures of Diana when she was a baby in Moldova. She really didn't want to take this picture.

She was a little bit grumpy here. I'm thinking about Diana the minute I wake up. She's the last thing I'm thinking about when I fall asleep. Every single day. And this is forever. about when I fall asleep every single day. And this is forever. That's how it's going to be. He wasn't there. Convicted of murder.

This man has spent 28 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. And no judge has given me a chance to be heard. A surprising twist. How prosecutors finally won his freedom. A chance to be heard. A surprising twist. How prosecutors finally won his freedom. Follow and listen to the 48 Hours Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you like this podcast, you can listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app.

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