A man convicted of shooting a couple in the back of the head inside an SUV in Burtonsville was sentenced Friday to life without parole for a second time. Prosecutors said he owed one of the victims money for drugs.
Judge David Lease gave Gregory Jones two consecutive life terms without parole, plus 30 years. Lease handed down the same sentence in 2022, after Jones’ first conviction. An appeals court later overturned that conviction and ordered a new trial.
Shot from the back seat
Police found Ashley Dickinson, 34, and Joshua Frazier, 29, dead in Dickinson’s Audi on Feb. 15, 2018. The SUV was still running on Aldora Circle. Frazier lived in Woodbridge, Virginia, and Dickinson lived in Alexandria, Virginia.
Prosecutors said Jones fired once into the back of each victim’s head from the back seat.
Meeting in Burtonsville
Police said Dickinson drove Frazier to Burtonsville to collect money Jones owed him from an earlier heroin deal. Prosecutors said Frazier had no idea what was coming. In text messages before the meeting, he called Jones “fam.”
How police found Jones
Investigators said Jones did not act alone and identified his cousin, Tyshon Jones, as a second suspect. Two days after the killings, law enforcement shot and killed Tyshon Jones during an encounter at a West Virginia nightclub. Police said Gregory Jones also fired shots there and fled.
Investigators later matched shell casings from the nightclub to casings recovered from the Audi, helping lead police to Gregory Jones. Police arrested Jones, of Martinsburg, West Virginia, in Gaithersburg the next month.
Two trials
A jury first convicted Jones in December 2021. An appeals court threw out that verdict over testimony from the state’s firearms expert. New case law had limited how courts can use that type of evidence.
In December 2025, a second jury found Jones guilty again. The jury convicted him of two counts of first degree murder and one count of conspiracy. It also convicted him on two firearm charges.
State’s Attorney John McCarthy spoke after the December verdict. The families “have had to endure not one, but two trials,” he said.
Lease ordered the sentences to run consecutively to any sentence Jones is already serving. That includes 30 years for a 2017 home invasion and robbery in Germantown. The robbery case is not connected to the killings.
