Dima Tower is a killer from Florida who was convicted of the murders of his adoptive parents
According to court documents Dima Tower was born in the Ukraine however he was eventually adopted by Florida couple Rob and Jennifer Tower
On the day of the murders officers saw Dima Tower covered in blood and attempted to shut the trunk of his vehicle. An officer attempted to make contact however Dima would take off. After a eight hour period Tower would be taken into custody
When officers searched the home of Rob and Jennifer Tower they would find the couple dead. Rob had puncture wounds to his chest and Jennifer head was covered in blood
Dima Tower would be arrested and convicted of the double murder and sentenced to life in prison
Dima Tower Case
A North Port man was found guilty and received a life sentence in prison on Friday for stabbing his adoptive parents to death in their home in 2023.
Dima James Tower, 24, committed the first-degree murder of Rob and Jennifer Tower, his adoptive parents, according to the verdict. He was also found guilty of fleeing/eluding law enforcement.
Tower grew up in Ukraine before his parents adopted him. When the North Port Police Department responded to the scene at the Tower’s home on Mallicoat Road in 2023, they said officers saw Tower bloodied and shutting the trunk of a vehicle. Officers tried to stop Tower, but he fled the scene in a black car.
After an eight-hour search after a chase, Venice police officers found him at the Shell Gas Station located on Knight’s Trail Road.
When officers entered the Tower’s home, they found the dead bodies of Rob and Jennifer lying on the living room floor. Rob appeared to have puncture wounds in his upper back, while Jennifer’s head was covered in blood, NPPD said.
Officers found blood on the couches in the living room, the bed in the master bedroom, the inside of the front door and the kitchen. A towel rag in the kitchen sink was also covered in blood.
North Port man receives life sentence in prison for 2023 murder of adoptive parents
Dima Tower News
A North Port man is set to spend the rest of his life behind bars after a Sarasota County jury handed down a unanimous guilty verdict Friday.
ABC7 first reported on the case of Dima Tower just hours after first responders arrived at his home to find a bloodbath. A trail of blood led from bedroom to living room, from living room to driveway, ultimately all the way down the driveway to a neighbor’s house.
Dima Tower wasn’t born with that name–he had been born in Ukraine, but his mother died when he was young. He swore in court that he actually didn’t know how young he was when she passed–somewhere around the age of 6.
That’s when Dima moved in first with his brother, then with an uncle. None of that lasted, though–after a few months, he hit the foster care system.
That’s where Dima was in 2015, when war broke out. The orphanage he lived in at the time was in his hometown, Luhansk, near the Ukrainian border. As chaos erupted across the country, the Ukrainian government moved all the orphans somewhere safer.
At the same time, a pair of Christian missionaries in Florida were taking trips around the world, guided by faith. In the words of their loved ones, while many work hard to take vacations, Robbie and Jennifer Tower cared much more about using their lives for good.
Their mission trips to Ukraine brought them face-to-face with a young Dima.
He was only in middle school when they first brought him over. In his own words, Dima was “a nobody from nowhere,” but he met the Towers in 2013 and became a U.S. citizen just two years later.
Witnesses recounted how happy the couple was when Dima got his citizenship. They reported the couple spoiling their child; as the pair couldn’t have a baby on their own, Dima was their one chance, and they were determined to make the most of it.
It wasn’t long, though, before Jennifer and Robbie, who had given their adoptive son a home, a car, and even their last name, soon lost him. Family and friends took the stand to tell Dima that the real reason he killed his parents was “because you don’t like rules, authority, or consequences.”
Dima moved out, came back, left again–all while his parents, according to witnesses, drained their savings and took out loans to help him make his way in this country. He told the jury that he hated his life in America, despite it all.
The idea to kill them, to end it all, didn’t come suddenly. Tower took to the witness stand, against the advice of his attorney, and confirmed for the State Attorney when she asked if he had planned the killings:
“Yes.”
At no point in the trial did Tower or his attorney argue that he was innocent. He confessed to investigators during his interrogation two years ago, and he confessed again in the courtroom this week.
This trial was all about intent. First-degree murder can only be applied to criminals who planned their killings out in advance, a point that the prosecutor was working hard to make, at least until Thursday.
That’s when Tower ignored the advice of his attorney, took the stand, and told the State Attorney that he came home on the night of the murder with a plan.
According to prosecutors, Dima walked in the front door that night with an idea already formed: he wanted to kill his parents. He later nursed that plan as he drank alone in his bedroom, and later, as he prowled through the house, knife in hand, up until he stood above Jennifer and Robbie in their bed, Dima didn’t deviate.
The forensic experts could only provide conservative estimates for how many times he stabbed his parents. Between the two of them, the Medical Examiner swore that Dima stabbed Jennifer and Robbie at least 140 times.
The prosecutor argued that with all that in mind, there could be no doubt: Dima Tower was guilty of first-degree murder. The jury deliberations were short.
Tower got one last chance to speak after the jury read out their verdict. They judged him guilty of all charges, and then, after they filed out, the now-convicted killer got one last chance to address the families of his victims.
Judge Krug warned Tower not to say anything that would insult the memories of the dead. Tower insisted he understood, but that he wanted to speak.
“Our feelings block out our intellect,” he began, starting in on all of the “irrational” testimony that experts and witnesses had given. “When I committed these acts or crimes…I lost my mind,” Tower told the crowd.
He began to ramble after that. Krug warned him multiple times, but Tower insisted that he was getting to his apology, so the judge let him speak–at least until he started talking about the poor parenting of his adoptive grandparents.
That’s when Krug shut Tower’s final testimony down. “What about the truth?” Tower shouted out, but the judge was finished with his interruptions.
“You seem to be an evil spirit,” Judge Krug told Tower, sentencing him to consecutive life terms in prison in addition to the five years for trying to outrace the police in his car.
As witnesses filed out and the audience dispersed, the bailiffs set right to work, fingerprinting a man now truly on his way to becoming the “nobody from nowhere” that he had claimed to be.
Phillip Tower said it perhaps most starkly on Friday, that Robbie and Jennifer were trying to help him be “somebody,” that he didn’t have to be a “nobody,” but that now, in the prison system where he would be assigned a number instead of a name, the patriarch of the Tower family told Dima that the one thing he wanted from the man who had once been his grandson was for Dima to change his name, to lose the last connection he had to the family he had forever, violently cut himself out of.
Tower does have an opportunity to appeal his conviction. ABC7 will report on any updates as new motions appear in court.
“An evil spirit:” Judge hands down maximum penalty to convicted killer
