A south Carolina father who killed his five young children said he believed that his kids 'were going to kill him, chop him up and feed him to the dogs,' according to an arrest warrant released yesterday.
Police say that Timothy Ray Jones killed his children-aged eight, seven, six, two and one years old- at his home in Lexington, South Carolina then put their bodies in plastic trash bags and drove them around for nine days around the Southeast.
CBS reports that the warrant says that authorities found blood in his car and found handwritten notes about chopping up bodies after he was stopped at a DUI checkpoint in Mississippi on September 6.
Even though a warrant was released last week, Lexington County deputies kept some of the information hidden.
Daniel Jones, the district attorney of Smith County, Mississippi, who is not related to Jones Jr. says he thinks that the cuckolded father went crazy.
'I think he probably just went mad,' said the prosecutor
Jones faces charges for unlawful neglect of a child and he also faces five counts of murder.
Jones' attorney says he has been treated for mental illness in the past and they want a mental evaluation to performed on him as soon as possible.
Timothy Ray Jones Jr earned his computer engineering degree, worked at a $71,000-a-year job, had a wife of ten years and several young children.
Then, just over two years ago, he discovered his wife Amber was putting their children to bed in their South Carolina home and going to the neighbor's house and sleeping with the neighbor's 19-year-old son, according to divorce papers.
Jones moved out with the children and seemed friendly to his new neighbors, but began to withdraw to the point where the woman who lived next door thought he and his family had moved away.
Jones and his five children - aged eight, seven, six, two and one years old - disappeared a few weeks ago, but no one called police for days.
Authorities weren't convinced anything was wrong until they said an intoxicated, agitated Jones was stopped at a DUI checkpoint in Mississippi where officers found him alone, with blood and children's clothes in his SUV and the stench of death in the air.
He was described as 'high as a kite' on synthetic marijuana known as Spice, which is readily available in head shops and online.
Jones, 32, would lead investigators to his children's bodies, wrapped in five trash bags on an isolated Alabama hilltop, but it's still not clear why he killed his children, authorities said. Officials believe that he was acting alone.
ones' father, Timothy Jones Sr., stood outside his Amory, Mississippi, home a day after his grandchildren's bodies were found, and asked for prayers for his family and for the son he referred to as Little Timmy and Little Tim.
'Let it be known that people will come to their own conclusions and as parents we can understand that decision based on the circumstances,' the father said in a statement. 'But please remember that our Little Tim is a very loving father, brother and son.'
That was not the picture painted by Lewis McCarty, the acting sheriff in Jones Jr.'s home of Lexington County, South Carolina.
The lawman who started his career on patrol 50 years ago took a second to collect himself as he started to talk to reporters.
'I made a promise to these children's mother that I would bring these children home. And I was not going to go back on that promise,' McCarty said.
Jones is an ex-convict who went on a crime spree more than a decade ago in Illinois, prison documents and a family member confirmed on Thursday.
He was arrested on a cocaine possession charge March 30, 2001, in Carpentersville, Illinois.
Six months later, he was arrested for a crime spree that included stealing a car, burglary and passing forged checks, according to Michael Combs, chief of the criminal division of the McHenry County, Illinois, State's Attorney's Office. He was 19 years old at the time.
Divorce records listed the five children as Merah, eight; Elias, seven; Nahtahn, six; Gabriel, two, and Elaine Marie, one. Elaine Marie was born Abagail Elizabeth but the parents agreed to a name change, records show.
McCarty said the children were likely killed shortly after they were last seen in school and day care on August 28.
He didn't say how they were killed, or where, except that it wasn't in their home.
Jones put each child's body in its own trash bag and loaded the bodies into his Cadillac Escalade, McCarty said.
He drove hundreds of miles and crisscrossed several Southeastern states for days, apparently using bleach to try to mask the smell of the decomposing bodies, authorities said.
Fox reported that Jones was caught on surveillance camera making a stop at a Dunkin Donuts in Spartanburg, South Carolina on Labor Day. It is believed Jones had the bodies of his dead children in the truck at the time.
The suspect left his SUV by a dumpster as he went into the store to buy an iced coffee and six donuts, Fox claimed.
Jones stopped at an isolated hilltop in central Alabama and left them near Pine Apple, 20 miles off Interstate 65 and about 65 miles south of Montgomery, authorities said.
He then kept driving for several more hours until he reached a DUI checkpoint in Smith County, Mississippi, about 500 miles from his hometown.
An officer said he 'smelled the stench of death' along with chemicals used to make methamphetamine and synthetic marijuana. There was blood, bleach and maggots in the car.
A check of Jones' license plate showed his ex-wife had reported him and the children missing three days earlier when he failed to bring them over for visitation.
He slowly acknowledged what happened to his children, and led police to their bodies , authorities said. Only then did authorities go public with the case.
We were trying to balance the children and the investigation against the releasing of information,' McCarty said.
South Carolina Law Enforcement Division Chief Mark Keel said authorities did not issue an Amber Alert because the case didn't meet the criteria - Jones had legal custody of his children.
Bob Lowery, a vice president at the National Center for Missing Exploited Children, agreed.
'The joint custody issue and his having primary custody does complicate the matter,' Lowery said. 'He has every right to have those children.'
Jones graduated with a degree in computer engineering from Mississippi State in 2011. Records from his October 2013 divorce show he was working for Intel at the time and the company confirmed he was still employed there when he disappeared.
The court records also showed a troubled life, both for Jones and his children. The divorce included multiple allegations of adultery against Jones' wife Amber, including accusations she sneaked over to her neighbor's home after putting the kids to bed.
A therapist who saw Jones during the divorce described him as 'highly intelligent' and responsible, yet emotionally devastated and angry over his wife's actions.
Jones got primary custody of the five children after the divorce and moved from one ramshackle mobile home to another in Lexington.
His wife didn't work outside the home or have a driver's license, according to court divorce records. She moved in with the neighbor.
At first he was friendly and waved at neighbors and his children played outside. But they all slowly started disappearing from view, said neighbor Dorothy Wood.
'I didn't even hear them playing outside anymore. I thought they had moved,' Wood said.
Food and other garbage were piled up outside Jones' mobile home south of Lexington. The yard was overgrown, with broken toys strewn about.
A sign on front door said, 'Is there life after death? Trespass here and find out' with a photo of a gun.
In Lexington, there was an abuse complaint against Jones lodged on August 7, but when deputies and an official with the Department of Social Services went out to the house, they interviewed the children and didn't see anything to alarm them. Officials wouldn't say who made the complaint.
The children's mother, Jones' ex-wife, is in shock and distraught, McCarty told reporters.
'I want you to know that she lost five vital body parts,' he said. 'A very nice person, a very sweet lady.'
Marlene Hyder and her husband, Johnny Hyder, said Jones and his wife moved into the house next to the family about seven years ago in Batesburg-Leesville, South Carolina, 25 miles west of Columbia.
Johnny Hyder said the children were often dressed in dirty clothes and were seen home at all hours of the day because Tim Jones had said he didn't believe in the public schools. Hyder said Jones was constantly looking for a reason to argue and often threatened to call the police.
He said Jones approached him with a gun on his hip one day and was angry about something, but Hyder couldn't remember what it was. When Hyder said he was going to call police, he said Jones told him it was only a BB gun.
Marlene Hyder said Jones threatened to kill one of their dogs when it briefly went onto his property.
She said: 'He was a nut'.
Mrs Hyder said she also remembered a day when one of the Jones' younger children came over to the Hyders' house and tried to drink out of one of their outdoor spigots.
He was dirty and disheveled and ran back to his house when she tried to speak to him, she said.
A 'no trespassing' sign was posted near the driveway of a house where the Hyders said Tim Jones' ex-wife still lived with the other neighbor.
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