2 men convicted in Florida 'Xbox murders' resentenced to death

Richard Tribou, Orlando Sentinel on Nov 3, 2025

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ORLANDO, Fla. – Two men convicted of killing six people in Deltona in 2004 in one of Central Florida’s most notorious mass killings known as the “Xbox murders” were given the death penalty again during a resentencing hearing Monday.

Troy Victorino and Jerone Hunter had their original death penalty sentences thrown out after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2016 said Florida’s death penalty system was unconstitutional. Both convicts’ death penalty sentences came from juries that were not unanimous.

A jury in May this year, though, recommended again they be given the death penalty during new sentencing hearings, but a judge had yet to give final ruling on that recommendation.

That came Monday morning at the Volusia County Courthouse when Judge Dawn Nichols with Florida’s 7th Judicial circuit confirmed the pair would head back to death row.

In July they had participated in a Spencer hearing with Hunter in the courtroom and Victorino present from a jailhouse feed. Their lawyers presented evidence that could help sway the judge to not follow the jury recommendation, but instead impose a sentence of life imprisonment.

The court heard testimony from a neuropsychologist as well as from the aunt of Hunter who talked about his childhood.

The two had been convicted in 2006 of first-degree murder in the deaths of Jonathan Gleason, 17; Michelle Nathan, 19; Erin Belanger, 22; Roberto Gonzalez, 28; Francisco Ayo Roman, 30; and Anthony Vega, 34. Two other suspects in the murders, Michael Salas and Robert Cannon, remain in prison with life sentences.

All four were accused of beating the six victims to death along with a dog with aluminum baseball bats inside a home on Telford Lane in August 2004. The case was dubbed by media as the “Xbox murders” because one of the motives according to prosecutors behind the crime was Victorino retrieving an Xbox from the house claiming it had been stolen.

All the victims died of blunt force trauma to the head, but had also suffered stab wounds, the medical examiner’s office said.

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