Killer executed for stabbing Miami inventor, wife to death at business decades ago

MIAMI — The drifter who confessed to killing an inventor and his wife was executed Tuesday night, more than three decades after the double murder in their Miami business.

Victor Tony Jones, 64, died by lethal injection at 6:13 p.m. at the Florida State Prison in Raiford, according to the Florida Department of Corrections. He declined to make a final statement.

Jones was sentenced to death for the Dec. 19, 1990, murders of Jacob “Jack” Nestor, 67, and Matilda “Dolly” Nestor, 66, at the couple’s business just east of Wynwood. A Miami jury sentenced Jones to death by electrocution on March 1, 1993, court records show.

“The brutal nature of the murders led the jury to recommend death. I think it was a just punishment,” said John Kastrenakes, who prosecuted the case while working for the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office and is now a retired Palm Beach circuit court judge. ”It’s taken 35 years for the state of Florida to finally get justice in the case.”

Jones was the 13th inmate executed in Florida this year, surpassing Florida’s previous record of eight executions in 2014. He is the first person from Miami-Dade that Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a death warrant for this year. The governor signs all death warrants before an execution.

Before the execution, Jones met with a spiritual adviser, according to the Florida Department of Corrections. He had no other visitors. Jones’ last meal was fried chicken, collard greens and sweet tea, reports say.

Husband fights back after stabbing

Jones landed on Death Row after stabbing the couple inside their business, Nestor Engineering Associates, 148 NE 28th St., in the area now known as Edgewater, according to the Miami Herald archives.

Jack worked on inventions and metal sculptures. His most famous creation was the vertical window blind, according to the Herald’s archives. The bulk of Jack’s patents were for medical devices, among them a knife used for hair transplants and a prosthetic device for overcoming male impotence.

During his confession, Jones said the Nestors hired him to clean around their business — and told detectives what led up to the killings.

“Every Hanukkah, [the Nestors] would bring in a person from the neighborhood to do menial work around the business,” Kastrenakes told the Herald Tuesday.

Jones confronted Dolly, demanding money for the work he had done, according to the Herald’s archives. But Dolly refused, saying he wasn’t finished. That’s when Jones pulled out a knife and stabbed Dolly to death in the bathroom.

The drifter, in his detailed confession, said he then ambushed Jack with a knife as the inventor worked in the front of the shop.

During the struggle, Jack — despite being stabbed — shot Jones in the forehead with a small-caliber pistol, police say. At the time, the area was a rough neighborhood, Kastrenakes said, which led Jack to keep a .22 caliber firearm on his belt.

“He fought him off, this 20-year-old man, for like 20 minutes at least until he gave way. But before he did, he shot him,” the Nestors’ daughter, Irene Fisher, told Local 10.

When officers responded to the building, Jones was on a couch shirtless, with Jack’s pistol under his arm — and the couple’s wallets and credit cards in his pockets, court documents say. Blood was smeared throughout the business.

“He (Jack) was able to shoot Victor Tony Jones, and he became disoriented in place,” Kastrenakes said. “They caught him right there in the business.”

At the time the Nestors were killed, Jones had been out of prison for less than a month after serving time for robbery and burglary, among other crimes.

In their last-ditch efforts to stay Jones’ execution, his defense attorneys said he was among the hundreds of survivors of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys and the Okeechobee School, now-shuttered state reform schools in Florida where children were raped, beaten and tortured.

In March 2024, the Florida Senate passed a bill, signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, to pay $20 million to compensate victims of the two schools. Court records indicate Jones was eligible for the compensation, although it’s unclear if he received the money.

In a statement after the execution, Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty expressed sympathy for the Nestors’ loved ones but condemned the state for executing an “intellectually disabled Black man” who was abused at a state-run institution as a child. “After decades of denying any harm done at these “reform’’ schools, Florida finally acknowledged one of the most shameful chapters in its history — that it brutalized its young charges and caused them permanent and irreparable harm,” the statement said. “This execution exposes the hollowness of Florida’s apology to these victims and deepens its legacy of cruelty and hypocrisy.”

Couple’s son survived 9/11 attack

For Kastrenakes, the evidence against Jones was strong and overwhelming, leading to “no question about his guilt.”

But the former prosecutor said he feels a sense of sadness that justice was delayed for the couple’s son, Michael Nestor, who attended the trial every day and died of cancer in 2020. Michael, a longtime U.S. Customs agent, survived the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and was credited with saving the lives of his employees and a woman he carried down the stairs.

“Unfortunately, this process takes so long that people forget the [gravity of the] crime and the victims,” Kastrenakes said.

The Herald was unable to reach Fisher. Fisher told USA Today the Nestors were “spectacular” parents who supported her and Michael’s dreams of performing on Broadway. Both of the siblings achieved their dreams, with Fisher swing dancing and Michael dancing in “West Side Story.”

Fisher also said she was attending the execution with her niece, Michael’s daughter.

“It’s going to finally be done,” Fisher told USA Today. “It shouldn’t have taken that long, and I wish my brother was alive to see it.”

Record-breaking execution spree

Samuel Smithers and Norman Grim are the next Death Row inmates slated to be executed on Oct. 14 and 28, respectively.

Already executed this year were: David Pittman on Sept. 17; Curtis Windom on Aug. 28; Kayle Bates on Aug. 19; Edward Zakrzewski on July 31; Michael Bell on July 15; Thomas Gudinas on June 24; Anthony Wainwright on June 10; Glen Rogers on May 15; Jeffrey Hutchinson on May 1; Michael Tanzi on April 8; Edward James on March 20; and James Ford on Feb. 13.

Tanzi, convicted of the 2000 murder of Miami Herald employee Janet Acosta in the Florida Keys, was the only other executed Death Row inmate linked to South Florida.

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