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Prosecutors dropped a murder charge against Jonathan Justin Speegle on Nov. 5, 2009, in the death of Nichole Hammond, who fell from a 16th-floor balcony at the Marriott World Center near Walt Disney World.

Hammond, 30, of St. Cloud, was sharing the hotel room with her boyfriend when she fell, according to the Orange County Sheriff's Office. She died shortly after midnight on Dec. 31, 2008.

Speegle, then 27, called 911 to report that Hammond had gone over the balcony railing. According to an arrest affidavit, he later gave investigators several different versions of what happened. In a recorded statement, he said he was walking toward the bathroom when he heard Hammond scream and turned to find her gone. He told relatives he was already in the bathroom when she fell, and told a neighbor he heard the scream as he was walking back toward the balcony.

A bartender at the hotel's High Velocity bar told investigators the couple had argued about 30 minutes before the fall, and a guest in an adjoining room reported hearing the same dispute, according to the Orlando Sentinel. An autopsy found Hammond's blood-alcohol level was 0.18 percent, more than twice the level at which a driver is presumed impaired in Florida. Investigators also noted that Hammond, who stood 5-foot-1, would have needed a stool or help to climb over the balcony railing on her own.

Speegle was arrested about three weeks later, on Jan. 23, 2009, in Lawton, Oklahoma, and charged with first-degree murder. He was released on $50,000 bail and pleaded not guilty. In May 2009, a grand jury indicted him on a second-degree murder charge instead, and he was arrested a second time, which his attorney, Mark NeJame, called a mistake given that bail had already been set.

Assistant State Attorney Ken Lewis said investigators lacked the forensic evidence to reconstruct the scene or refute the defense's account of events. "A man was arrested on very questionable information," NeJame said, adding that Speegle had nothing to do with Hammond's death. Speegle's GPS ankle monitor was removed the day the charge was dropped, and he planned to seek reinstatement of the property appraiser's license that had been suspended after his arrest. Hammond, a single mother, left behind a daughter who was 8 at the time of her death.