Inset left: Jason Jones (Nebraska Attorney General”s Office). Inset right: Carrie Jones (Antelope County Sheriff’s Office). Background: The Cedar County Courthouse where Jason Jones was convicted of four murders in Hartington, Neb. (Google Maps).
A Nebraska man has been sentenced to death for killing a neighbor at his wife’s behest – a crime that led to four murders in one night.
In September 2024, Jason Jones, 46, was convicted on a total of 10 felony charges for the murders of 86-year-old Gene Twiford; his wife, 85-year-old Janet Twiford; their daughter, 55-year-old Dana Twiford; and another neighbor, 53-year-old Michele Ebeling.
In August 2025, the defendant’s wife, Carrie Jones, 46, was convicted of Gene Twiford’s murder. In November 2025, she was sentenced to life in prison for the first-degree murder conviction with an additional 21-30 years behind bars for accessory and evidence tampering.
Now, a three-judge panel has sentenced the husband to death.
“We are grateful for the work of the three-judge panel and their thorough and well-reasoned order,” Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers said in a press release. “The panel laid out the horrific details surrounding the quadruple homicide Jason Jones committed and explained why the death penalty is an appropriate sentence.”
In August 2022, the Twifords and Ebeling were found murdered in two separate homes in Laurel – a tiny town located some 130 miles northwest of Omaha. Both houses were set ablaze after the killings.
As it turned out, Carrie Jones had often complained to her husband about Gene Twiford verbally harassing her for years on end.
“This s—’s gotta stop or I’m gonna kill him,” the wife would later tell an investigator, according to Nebraska Public Media.
The investigation confirmed that the older man, who lived blocks away from the Jones family, had a reputation for verbally harassing others in the area and had even been asked to leave certain places.
The night before the slayings, Carrie Jones and Jason Jones had a violent argument during which the woman threatened her man with a gun and a knife and told him to deal with Gene Twiford or else she would do it herself. In his testimony during Carrie Jones’ trial, Jason Jones described his wife as “a very difficult woman.”
On the night of Aug. 4, 2022, Jason Jones broke into the Twiford home and shot the octogenarian to death. Not realizing Janet Twiford and Dana Twiford were also there, he shot them, too. He then set their house on fire. Next, he went to Ebeling’s house and killed her as well.
Carrie Jones had once told her husband she thought Ebeling was “weird” and complained she had stared at her, prosecutors said.
Jason Jones returned to his own home suffering from severe burns – which Carrie Jones described as “melting” and “gooey” – but did not seek medical attention for himself because the couple believed such efforts would raise suspicion about the source of his burns. The killer confessed the crimes to his wife, who then left him at home and went to work while he drifted in and out of consciousness.
The man was arrested less than 24 hours later.
Carrie Jones was arrested in December 2022. At the time of her arrest, prosecutors argued that but for the woman’s influence, the murders never would have occurred. In court, prosecutors asked: “Would we even be here if it weren’t for Carrie Jones?”
On Friday, District Judges Bryan Meismer of Dakota City, Timothy Burns of Omaha and Patrick Heng of McCook unanimously put Jason Jones on the Cornhusker State’s death row. He will be the 12th member of the ignominious group of convicted killers.
“The fact that four people lost their lives at the hand of the defendant on the night in question — and that a jury found that two of the victims were killed in an attempt to conceal the commission of a crime, or to conceal the identity of the defendant as the perpetrator of the crime — was given great weight by this panel,” Meismer said as he read the panel’s sentencing order aloud, according to the Norfolk Daily News. “These were terrible, despicable and unforgiving murders.”
Jamie Frevele contributed to this report.
