Photo: getty
He has pleaded not guilty.
By Bernadette Giacomazzo — Written on May 23, 2019
Few crimes are more gruesome than crimes against children, which is what makes the Timothy Jones Jr. murder trial that much more gross — and heartbreaking.
The trial of Timothy Jones Jr. is currently underway, and if convicted, he faces the death penalty.
Let’s look at what we know about his horrifying crimes. And we will warn you that what we’re about to describe is graphic.
1. The night of the murder.
According to The State, Timothy Jones Jr. allegedly killed his five children — three boys and two girls — and stuffed their bodies into garbage bags. He then stuffed the bags in the trunk of his Cadillac Escalade, drove around for more than a week, and finally stopped in rural Alabama, where he dumped their little bodies in shallow graves.
Timothy Jones Jr.’s father, Timothy Sr., seemed to defend his son against his gruesome crimes.
“We do not have all the answers and we may never have all of them,” he told reporters, according to the outlet. “But anyone who knows Little Tim will agree that he is not the animal that he will be portrayed through the media.”
2. He had a plan to “melt down” his children’s bodies.
You can’t make this stuff up: according to The Sun, Timothy Jones Jr. Googled a series of ways to dispose of bodies before he killed Merah, 8, Elias, 7, Nahtahn, 6, Gabriel, 2, and Abigail, 1.
The outlet reports that after extensive searching, he wrote notes to himself that included awful directions like “Head to campground. Melt bodies! Saw & bones to dust or small pieces…sanitation plant.”
He also included directions for how to “burn up the bodies” and “sand down the bones.”
3. He sent them to Disney World before murdering them in cold blood.
In news that is impossible to comprehend, People Magazine reports that Timothy Jones Jr. sent his five children to Disney World with a sitter before murdering them in cold blood.
The outlet also reports that Jones said he killed the children because his middle child, Nahtahn, broke an electrical outlet in the home. He killed Nathan by beating him to death, and strangled the other children.
He also said that he subsequently heard “voices” in his head, telling him to kill the children “before they chopped him up and fed him to the dogs.”
4. He has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that, according to WLTX 19, Timothy Jones Jr. has entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. He claimed that he was a law-abiding, God-fearing Christian man who made a great living as an engineer and was college educated for almost all his adult life. Then, in 2014, when he divorced his wife — who is also the mother of the five murdered children — he started “losing it.”
If he is found not guilty by reason of insanity, he will spend the rest of his life in a psychiatric institution. If, however, he is found guilty, Timothy Jones Jr. will face the death penalty.
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Bernadette Giacomazzo is an editor, writer, and photographer whose work has appeared in People, Teen Vogue, Us Weekly, The Source, XXL, HipHopDX, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Post, and more. She is also the author of The Uprising series. Find her online at www.bernadettegiacomazzo.com and www.longlivetheuprising.com.