Florida | Attorney’s Office seeks death penalty for woman accused of murdering ex-lovers

TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA)—The State Attorney’s Office is seeking the death penalty against a woman who is accused of killing her ex-lovers.

Susan Avalon, 55, was charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of her 55-year-old ex-boyfriend in Tampa.

Avalon is also accused of killing her ex-husband, David Scott in Manatee County on the same day, the State Attorney’s Office said.

“He was very caring, very kind. He was extremely funny,” said Julia Scott, David’s daughter. “He was really like a rock for us. I miss being able to go to him and tell him stuff that’s happening because he always was really supportive.”

Scott says her father worked hard to protect his children. She said he shared five children with Avalon. They divorced and Scott says she often worried about what her mother would do.

“We were very cautious about exposing, like, any information about ourselves, because it was always a possibility that she was to have found us or try to get in contact with us and try to take this away from our dad and everything,” said Scott.

8 On Your Side asked if she could’ve ever imagined something like this would happen to her family.

“It was definitely something we had thought about. that could have happened,” said Scott.

After the death of Avalon’s ex-husband on Dec. 17, 2025, authorities in Manatee County asked the Tampa Police Department to conduct a welfare check on the ex-boyfriend.

When officers arrived at the home in Hillsborough County, they found the back glass door shattered and the victim dead inside from a gunshot wound, according to the State Attorney’s Office.

Witnesses reported they saw Avalon and her vehicle in a driveway near the home around the time of the shooting, and investigators found several pieces of evidence that they said connected her to the murder.

“While our case focuses on one victim here in Hillsborough County, we know this tragedy did not end with one life. Two families are grieving, and we are committed to seeking justice while standing with everyone impacted by this senseless violence,” said State Attorney Suzy Lopez.

Prosecutors in this case have to identify statutory aggravating factors under Florida law to seek the death penalty.

“I felt relieved because it’s something that I had hoped would happen,” said Scott when asked how she felt about the state seeking the death penalty. “My goal in speaking to her in court would be to make sure she knows that what she did was wrong and she had made a mistake because he was better to us than she ever was.”

According to the State’s Attorney’s Office, those factors include that this crime was committed in a cold, calculated, and premeditated manner, that the crime was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel, that it occurred during the commission of burglary, and that the defendant was involved in a contemporaneous violent felony.

Avalon is set to appear in court for a status hearing on July 9.

The case in Manatee County will be prosecuted separately at a later date.

Source: wfla.com, Ashley Suter, April 21, 2026

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

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