According to police, the suspect killed his estranged wife and her co-worker, then slipped into the Atlantic and has not been found.

VERO BEACH, Fla. — A double murder outside a public library in Vero Beach turned into a weeks-long search after police said a 64-year-old man shot his estranged wife and another man in a parked truck on March 24, then went to the beach, entered the ocean and disappeared.

What began as a shooting call shortly after 7 a.m. became a case with no arrest, no body and no clear ending. Police identified Jesse Scott Ellis as the suspect in the deaths of Stacie Ellis Mason, 49, and Danny Ooley, 56, and later obtained two warrants charging him with premeditated first-degree murder. Investigators said the attack grew out of a marital breakup and an apparent affair, but the search that followed opened a second mystery: whether Ellis drowned, escaped or is still moving undetected.

Police said officers were sent to the back parking lot of the Indian River County Main Library, 1600 21st St., at 7:01 a.m. after callers reported gunfire. They found Mason and Ooley dead at the scene. Ooley was inside his truck, and investigators later said both victims had been shot while seated there. Chief David Currey said the shooting was targeted, not random, and described it as tied to a marital dispute. By the end of that first day, the case had already stretched from downtown Vero Beach to the shoreline several miles away. Ellis, who police said had been married to Mason for 13 years and was in the middle of a separation or divorce, was quickly named the focus of the investigation. Within days, the case shifted from identifying a suspect to trying to answer a harder question: where he went after the gunfire stopped.

That search took investigators to South Beach Park, where police found a Ford F-150 linked to Ellis at 12:45 p.m. March 24. Before that, police said, Ellis had driven there after the killings, entered the water before 8 a.m. and swam far enough offshore that county fire rescue crews responded by boat about 8:30 a.m. Currey said rescuers did not know they were dealing with a homicide suspect. The man told people at the beach he had a cramp and was OK, then got up and kept walking, the chief said. Police later released a still image from video that they said appeared to show Ellis shirtless on the beach at 11:10 a.m., walking south. Currey said investigators showed that image to friends and relatives, who believed it looked like Ellis. That sequence suggested, police said, that he may have made it back to land, moved along the beach and possibly returned to his truck before officers located it.

The evidence recovered from the vehicle added to the sense that the beach was not the end of the story. Investigators said they found wet shorts, a wet shirt, an empty holster, a .380-caliber magazine and personal items including a wallet, passport, driver’s license and credit cards. Currey said officers also found handwritten pages and journal-style writings from early and mid-March that described emotional distress and included statements suggesting Ellis wanted to harm himself and Mason. At the shooting scene, police recovered 21 spent shell casings. The chief later said the victims had been “executed,” a word that underscored how investigators viewed the attack. Still, key parts of the case remain unsettled. Police have not publicly detailed when Ellis bought or loaded the weapon they believe was used, whether anyone else saw him change clothes, or whether he left the barrier island by vehicle, on foot or with help from another person.

The deaths of Mason and Ooley also hit Indian River County government at the center of its workday. County officials identified Ooley as the assistant director of Public Works, a job he reached after nearly 25 years with the county. Mason had worked for the county since 2014 and most recently served as a traffic analyst technician. Their killings happened outside the main library near county offices and the courthouse, in a public setting where workers were arriving and the day was just starting. County leaders called the loss profound and said counseling was offered to employees. The detail that both victims were longtime public servants gave the case weight beyond the private turmoil police say drove it. This was not only a domestic violence investigation. It was also a public workplace tragedy that unfolded in one of the city’s civic centers, during morning hours, in a lot used by people reporting to work.

Procedurally, the case moved fast even as the suspect did not surface. Police announced a person of interest on March 24, continued serving search warrants and, by March 26, said Ellis was wanted on two counts of premeditated first-degree murder. Currey told reporters March 27 that Ellis should be considered a threat to himself and possibly others. Since then, the public picture has changed little. No arrest has been announced, and later local reporting said questions remained nearly three weeks after the shooting. That leaves several next steps hanging over the case: whether a new sighting produces an arrest, whether additional video fills the gap between the ocean rescue and the truck discovery, and whether investigators eventually release more from the writings found in the vehicle. Until one of those things happens, the murder case and the manhunt remain locked together.

A woman who helped the swimmer reach shore later became part of the case’s strange final image: a suspected killer, exhausted on the sand, speaking calmly after a morning that police say began with gunfire. That contrast has helped keep the story alive in Vero Beach. Neighbors, county workers and beachgoers were left with one scene downtown and another on the water, connected by only a few hours and an unbroken line of unanswered questions.

Currently, no arrest had been announced publicly, and the next milestone is any police update that confirms whether Jesse Scott Ellis was found, sighted again or formally placed before a court on the two murder warrants.

Author note: Last updated April 17, 2026.