A father who murdered his five children was sentenced to death on Thursday.
A jury sentenced Timothy Jones Jr, 37, to be executed after deliberating for less than two hours to determine whether he would die or live the rest of his life in jail.
Timothy Jones Jr, 37, strangled four of his children, Merah, 8, Elias, 7, Gabriel, 2, and Elaine, 1, and after forcing his 6-year-old son Nahtahn to exercise until he died as punishment for breaking an electrical outlet in August 2014 in Lexington, South Carolina.
Jones was convicted of murdering his children on June 4 after pleading guilty by means of insanity. During the sentencing portion of his trial, the jury heard from defense lawyers and witnesses attempting to assert that Jones was just a victim of mental illness who snapped.
Witnesses gave harrowing testimony about his mother’s schizophrenia and three generations of rapes, molestation by relatives, violence, drugs, voodoo rituals, prostitution, and fights in Jones’ family.
But in the end, the jury decided unanimously that Jones should be put to death. Authorities said Jones killed the first child by making him exercise until he collapsed.
Several hours later, he strangled his other four children, using a belt to choke his two youngest children to death. Numerous witnesses took the stand in the days leading up to Jones’ conviction and recalled his strange,
increasingly erratic behavior leading up to the murders. The drastic decline of Timothy Jones Jr – who transformed from religious father with a good job to a physically abusive cultist – was exactly what his father feared.
‘This is the Tim I was scared I would see one day. I mean, he’s got some relatives, his mother, unfortunately they’re not right, you know…It’s just bad DNA I guess.
He’s sick, man, that’s all there is to it,’ Tim Jones Sr said. Tim Jones Sr later told the court that he thought his son was losing his mind. He summed up his son’s relationships, religious choices, and the way he disciplined his children as ‘a train wreck.’
After the murders, authorities found handwritten notes in Jones car that seemed to detail ways to dispose of the evidence that read ‘melt bodies!’ and ‘saw bones to dust or small pieces.’
One of the lists read: ‘Head to campground…Melt bodies!… Saw & bones to dust or small pieces.’ Another said: ‘1.Fidelity…Day one burn up bodies…Day two burn up bones.’ Jones buried the bodies in a hillside near Camden, Alabama after driving around with the children’s bodies in his car for over a week, authorities said.
Both Jones’ lawyers and his ex-wife Amber Jones claimed the killings happened because Timothy Jones was high on synthetic weed – although the jury did not see it that way.
