Bio

Danny Lee Jones was born on August 24, 1964, in the United States. Court records described a background involving childhood abuse, long-term substance abuse, head trauma, and drug and alcohol impairment at the time of the murders. These factors were presented as mitigation during sentencing, but the trial court found they were not strong enough to outweigh the aggravating circumstances.

By 1992, Jones was living in Bullhead City, Arizona, and had resumed a friendship with Robert Weaver. Robert lived with his wife, Jackie, their seven-year-old daughter Tisha Weaver, and Robert’s grandmother, Katherine Gumina. Jones was unemployed at the time and had learned that Robert owned a gun collection worth about $2,000. Prosecutors later argued that Jones decided to kill and rob Weaver in order to steal the guns.

Murder Story

On March 26, 1992, Danny Lee Jones spent time with Robert Weaver in Weaver’s garage in Bullhead City, Arizona. Inside the home, seventy-four-year-old Katherine Gumina was watching television, while seven-year-old Tisha Weaver was nearby working on schoolwork. At about 8:40 p.m., Jones attacked Robert from behind, striking him in the head with a baseball bat while Robert sat on an overturned bucket in the garage.

After Robert was knocked down, Jones went inside the home and attacked Katherine Gumina, striking her hard enough to fracture her skull. Tisha witnessed the attack and ran to her parents’ bedroom, where she hid under the bed. Jones searched for her, dragged her out from under the bed, beat her, and then asphyxiated her with a pillow.

Jones then took Robert’s gun collection and began loading the weapons into Gumina’s car. While doing so, he discovered that Robert had regained consciousness and was trying to escape. Jones chased him down and struck him several more times in the head with the bat. Robert and Tisha were dead by the time first responders arrived. Gumina survived for approximately seventeen months before dying from the injuries Jones inflicted. Arizona had already charged Jones before Gumina’s death and chose not to amend the indictment afterward.

Jones was convicted on September 13, 1993, of two counts of premeditated first-degree murder and one count of attempted premeditated first-degree murder. On December 9, 1993, he was sentenced to two consecutive death sentences for the murders of Robert and Tisha Weaver, plus a consecutive life sentence for the attack on Katherine Gumina. The Arizona Supreme Court affirmed his convictions and sentences on May 7, 1996.

Years later, Jones challenged his death sentence in federal court, arguing that his trial counsel had been ineffective during sentencing. The Ninth Circuit granted relief, but on May 30, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed that ruling and held that Jones had not shown a reasonable probability that the added mitigation evidence would have changed the death sentence.

Jones was not executed. According to the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation & Reentry, Danny Jones, ADCRR #092576, died on June 24, 2025, at ASPC-Tucson. He was 60 years old.