“I promise you I’m going to get your daughter back for you …” Vero Beach Police Sergeant Brad Kemetz told Lena Andrews the day after her 26-year-old daughter, Diana Dove, disappeared in June 2014.
Dove was last seen leaving a local bar in Vero Beach, Florida, with her on-again, off-again boyfriend, 32-year-old Michael “Mike” Jones. Dove’s mother told Sgt. Kemetz This is going to be more than a missing persons case. “You could see the fear and panic in Lena’s eyes,” she said.
Facebook/Diana Dove
Dove came to the United States from the small Eastern European country of Moldova when she was 13 to rejoin her mother, Lena, who had moved to Florida to marry businessman Bill Andrews. Lena and Bill sat down with CBS News correspondent Michelle Miller to talk about the ordeal they went through after their daughter went missing. Their interview is part of “Where’s Diana Dove?,” an all-new “48 Hours,” airing May 6 at 10/9c on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.
It’s a cautionary tale that Lena Andrews believes every parent should watch. “If it happened to Diana, it could happen to (anyone).”
Lena Andrews says 13-year-old Diana adapted quickly to her new life in Florida. “A girl who doesn’t speak English at all. Within two months, she’s in a regular school class and within a few years, you won’t even guess she’s not American.” Dove also made friends easily. “He’s very easy going, fun to be around,” said Chelsea DeMaio, Dove’s best friend and former roommate. And Duve really cares about people. She earned a nursing degree and worked with cancer patients at a nearby hospital.
In the summer of 2013, Dove met Mike Jones at a local bar. Jones was well known around Vero Beach. He was a regular at local fundraisers. His outgoing personality helped him land major clients for his work as a wealth manager at the local PNC Bank, where he managed multimillion dollar accounts. He received rave performance reviews from his employer. In his last review, Jones was praised for his “strong morals and leadership qualities”. Lena Andrews remembers being very impressed when she first met him. “He was extremely polite. Nicely dressed, well spoken.” Her husband Bill felt the same way. “He seemed like the ideal boyfriend,” Bill said.
Patrick Dove/USA TODAY Network; Facebook/Diana Dove
Within months, Dove and Jones moved in together. But Duve’s close friend Chelsea DeMaio soon noticed something different in his behavior. “You’ll never see him without her. And he’s never done that in a relationship before.” One day he gets a panicked phone call from Dove. “She left her apartment and called me in tears. I told her to come straight to where I was, and she did. And she was still hysterical in her pajamas,” DiMaio said.
Duve told DeMaio that he and Jones had an argument, and that he had been yelling at him for what seemed like hours. Then, Dove said he put his hands around her neck and began choking her. DiMaio tried to convince Dove to file a police complaint against Jones, but he refused. Dove breaks up with Jones, moves out of her apartment and moves back in with her parents. He never told them what happened that night.
But Lena Andrews says Jones continues to pursue Dove. “He would tell me, ‘He texts me. He doesn’t seem to understand that I broke up with him.’ ” But in the hours before Dove disappeared, she was texting with Jones. They agreed to meet at a local bar. When Dove didn’t call or come home the next day, Andrews called Jones. “And she was like, ‘Oh don’t worry. She’s with me. Everything’s fine.’ “Andrews then asked to speak to Dove, but Jones avoided it and said he would call him back. He never did. Lena and Bill Andrews rush to his apartment to discover that he has also disappeared.
CBS News
Police knew the key to finding Dove was finding Jones. Kemetz, now working on the case with Lt. Matt Harrelson, did a deep dive on Jones and quickly discovered that he was not the man people thought he was. Lena and Bill Andrews told reporter Michelle Miller they were shocked by the news. “Suddenly we found out he was a convicted felon,” Dr. Lena Andrews.
In 2012, Jones was charged with aggravated stalking for threatening to kill an ex-girlfriend near Fort Lauderdale, before moving to Vero Beach. He pleaded no contest and remains on probation. The search for Dove took on a new urgency.
Investigators were running out of leads until Sgt. Kemetz and Lt. Harrelson decide to check the cellphone tower pings from Dove and Jones’ phones. They noticed a ping from a cell tower 25 minutes south of Vero Beach that seemed out of place and decided to check it out.
Their ideas are settled.
Local authorities located Jones’ car in the parking lot of the Hampton Inn. Surveillance video revealed he checked into the hotel. Harrelson tells how Miller felt just before entering Jones’ room. “You don’t know what you’re going to find when you walk into that room. You know, your heart is racing, you’ve been going for two days straight and now you’re so close to finding someone you trust. A possible suspect and hopefully finding Diana. “
But Dove wasn’t there. And Jones refused to talk to police. He was arrested and jailed for parole violation. They still didn’t know where Dove was. “You stay so high because you found him and you’re busy in the room to like here that we’re back,” Harrelson said.
Once again, Kemetz and Harrelson reverted to cellphone pings. They found a burner phone Jones had been using and learned he bought it at a Walmart store an hour away from the Hampton Inn where he was staying. They screened hours of surveillance footage until they hit paydirt — video of Jones driving Dove in the parking lot. But Dove was not seen in the car. They again turned to local authorities to be on the lookout for Dove’s car. They found it in less than an hour.
It was around 4:30 a.m. when Kemetz and Harrelson arrived at a Publix parking lot where Dove’s black Nissan was discovered. Harrelson feared the worst. “And I told Brad, I said, ‘He’s in the trunk.'” Kemetz was praying it wasn’t true. He had a young daughter at home and remembered Lena Andrews’ promise. “What really drove me forward was a mother begging you, ‘Please find my daughter for me,'” Kemetz said.
He finds Dove, but it’s too late. He was dead, in the trunk of the car. An autopsy would later reveal that she had suffered blunt force trauma and had been strangled to death. “There are things in this job that you can’t see…,” Harrelson told Miller.
Lena Andrews will never forget the moment she heard they had found Diana. “I opened the door and here was the police chief in full uniform … to lose him like that … it’s indescribable.”
But that wasn’t the end for Kemetz and Harrelson. They still had work to put together all the evidence they had gathered to help the State Attorney build a murder case against Jones.
Watch and see the outcome of the decision to go to death in that case on the May 6 broadcast of “Where’s Diana Dove?”
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