October 21, 2025 • 29 mins
On August 28, 2014, the peaceful atmosphere in Lexington County, South Carolina, turned into a nightmare. Five children who should have been at home were found dead at the hands of their own biological father—Timothy Jones Jr. This case shook America not only because of the number of victims but also because of the brutal and premeditated manner in which the perpetrator acted. From Walmart receipts, cold confessions, to DNA evidence inside the car, every detail reveals the dark side of a father who had lost his mind and empathy.
In this episode, you will learn how a man who appeared successful and religious transformed into a cold-blooded killer. We will explore his traumatic childhood, the failures of the social system that ignored warning signs, and the final moments before the five children lost their lives. A true story that raises the question: how can a father’s love turn into a deadly weapon?
In this episode, you will learn how a man who appeared successful and religious transformed into a cold-blooded killer. We will explore his traumatic childhood, the failures of the social system that ignored warning signs, and the final moments before the five children lost their lives. A true story that raises the question: how can a father’s love turn into a deadly weapon?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Who killed these little souls? The answer lies back in
the day of August twenty eighth, two thousand and fourteen.
It was a Thursday when three children were signed out
of Saxe Gotha elementary. Two more were picked up from
a near by daycare. These five siblings were on their
way home, and this trip should have been short, familiar, safe.
(00:24):
But that ride took a strange turn. Instead of heading
back to the modest trailer tucked off a dirt road
in Lexington County, South Carolina, the driver made a sharp,
unexpected detour. The car pulled into a wal Mart parking lot.
What happened next wasn't just strange, It was disturbing. He
(00:45):
forced the children out of the car, right there, in
the middle of a busy public space. He pushed them
out with all his force, and then he loaded them
back in. Why, no one knows. That same evening, at
seven twelve p m. Amber, the children's mother, placed a
call to the family home. One of the boys not
(01:08):
on answered. His voice came through the receiver, young and innocent.
Their conversation was brief, nothing out of the ordinary. But
Amber didn't know then it would be the last time
she ever heard her son speak after that, No more calls,
no returned messages, no contact. Somewhere between that moment and
(01:28):
the turning of the clock to midnight, behind the closed
doors of a quiet trailer in a small southern town,
five children disappeared. On September first, the same man was
seen at a dunkin doughnuts and spartanburg. His car rolled
past strangers, past gas stations. By September third, he walked
through the aisles of a wal Mart in West Columbia,
(01:51):
placing saws, large plastic bins, and bottles of muriatic acid
into his car. The receipts would later speak for themselves.
All the while, the children were being marked absent Friday
Monday Tuesday. No one saw them after that day, and
the man kept driving as if nothing had changed. That
(02:13):
same day, September third, Amber made the call to authorities.
Her children had missed a scheduled visit. She couldn't reach them.
Her gut twisted something was wrong, terribly wrong, But nothing happened,
not yet. It wasn't until September ninth, nearly two weeks
after the children disappeared, that the world finally learned they
(02:35):
were missing. But by then it was far too late.
The bodies had been discovered mutilated, unrecognizable until DNA confirmed
who they were. These five siblings were children to divorced
parents and the victims of their father, Timothy Jones Junior,
who had mercilessly killed them in a fit of rage.
(02:58):
Before the name Timothy Jane Jones Junior would forever be
burned into the memory of an entire nation, Before he'd
be described by prosecutors as a monster, and before the
unimaginable deaths of five beautiful children, he was just a boy,
a boy born into a broken world. It all began
(03:19):
in nineteen eighty one. Timothy Junior was the first and
only child of Timothy Jones Senior and Cindy Jones. Cindy
was only sixteen when she had him, barely more than
a child herself, and what followed was a storm of
dysfunction that seemed to lay the groundwork for something far
darker down the line. Timothy Senior would later speak out
(03:42):
about Cindy, calling her violent and unstable. She would scream,
lash out, and behave in disturbing ways. Cindy once cut
up clothing with knives. She fed baby Timothy laxatives when
he was still an infant. Although never a f rily diagnosed,
people around her believed she suffered from serious mental illness.
(04:06):
Whatever the truth, one thing was certain. She wasn't well,
and when Timothy Junior was just eighteen months old, she
vanished from his life completely. That abandonment followed him like
a shadow. His father remarried and tried to rebuild, but
Timothy Junior had already begun slipping down a different path.
(04:28):
In two thousand and one, at just twenty years old,
he was arrested in Illinois on a cocktail of charges
cocaine possession, check forgery, car theft. These weren't just reckless crimes,
they were desperate ones. He was sentenced to seven years
in prison. He served just two. Then came Amber Kaiser.
(04:50):
She was eighteen, a young woman from Pennsylvania when she
met twenty two year old Timothy in Chicago. On paper,
it might have looked like a fresh start, a chance
to build something better. They got married in two thousand
and four in DuPage County, Illinois, and from their union
came five children, May, Elias, not On, Gabriel, and Abigail.
(05:15):
Those five little kids had bright eyes, soft voices, and
dreams still waiting to be seen. They bounced from place
to place, Pennsylvania to Mississippi, then finally South Carolina. Timothy
earned a degree in computer engineering from Mississippi State University
in twenty eleven. He secured a good job at Intel
(05:37):
in Columbia a seventy one thousand dollars salary. He had stability, success,
and a full house. But a pretty picture doesn't mean peace.
They didn't live in some suburban dream home. Instead, they
settled in a cramped trailer in Lexington County. Amber stayed
home with the children, and slowly the cracks began to show.
(05:59):
Amber would later testify that Timothy had disturbing beliefs. He
was controlling, staunchly religious. To him, women were to be
seen and not heard. Children were to be quiet, obedient,
practically invisible. At one point, Amber claimed he even talked
about wanting a farm full of children, not because he
(06:21):
loved them, because he wanted to rule over them. It
wasn't just ideology. When police would eventually search his belongings
after the tragedy, they found religious materials, passages carefully highlighted
emphasizing corporal punishment, obedience, domination from the outside. The Jones
family might have seemed like any other conservative household, a
(06:44):
dad with a good job, a mom at home, kids
running barefoot in the yard. But inside the walls of
that Lexington trailer, darkness was festering, and the man at
the center of it all, Timothy Jones Junior, was quietly spying.
You see, monsters are rarely born overnight. There made peace
(07:05):
by peace. They make themselves experience by experience, until one
day they think they are above everything else. And when
Timothy finally showed what he is truly capable of, it
would shock the world. In the twisted Tale of Timothy
Jones Junior, the unraveling wasn't sudden. It was slow, agonizing,
(07:27):
and filled with signs that, looking back, feel like a
chorus of unanswered alarms. By May of twenty twelve, things
between Timothy and Amber Jones had already begun to fray
at the seams. Their marriage, once held together by the
fragile dream of stability and a shared home, was gasping
(07:48):
for air. After years of dysfunction and control, Amber had enough.
The couple separated, if only briefly, and what happened during
those two weeks would haunt him forever. Or at least
that's the narrative he'd cling to. When Jones returned to
their home, he claimed to have discovered something that to
(08:10):
him was unforgivable. According to his divorce attorney, Amber had
been putting the kids to bed, then slipping next door
to meet her paramour. The man was nineteen year old neighbor,
a teenager. To Timothy, it wasn't just betrayal, it was humiliation, abandonment,
a gaping wound that tore open old scars from his
(08:32):
turbulent childhood for a man obsessed with control who'd already
inherited a fear of being left behind. Jones began attending
sessions with a family therapist and marriage counselor, April M. Haymes,
But rather than healing, these sessions revealed more disturbing truths
about him. He didn't just feel betrayed, he felt broken.
(08:57):
Doctor Haymes later testified that Jones was terrified of being abandoned.
He was a man clinging to control, driven by childhood trauma,
and now his wife, his family unit was slipping away.
Timothy didn't just blame Amber for infidelity. He accused her
of neglect. He told authorities she wasn't caring for the
(09:18):
children properly. These claims prompted an investigation by South Carolina's
Department of Social Services DSS back in twenty eleven. When
they arrived, they found a disheveled home, disorganized, chaotic, but
not dangerous enough to intervene. The case was quietly closed,
(09:39):
but the emotional distance between Amber and Timothy was only
growing wider. Their marriage never recovered. Eventually, Timothy took the
children and left Amber behind. He moved them all to
Mississippi to live with his parents, people who had once
raised him in a similarly unstable environment, and during this
(10:00):
fragile time, the couple's final child, Abigail, was born, but
their marriage had deteriorated to the point where Jones demanded
a paternity test to confirm he was her biological father.
He was. It was one of the final blows to
a relationship already hanging by a thread. By October twenty thirteen,
(10:23):
the divorce was finalized, and then Timothy Jones was granted
full custody of all five children. Amber was given only
visitation rites and those had to be supervised by Jones himself.
How that kind of court arrangement came to be is
still a troubling mystery, but it happened. Timothy moved back
(10:43):
to South Carolina, Lexington County again, but not to a
fresh start. He and the children lived in another mobile home,
this one tucked along a dirt road in Red Bank.
It was remote, isolated, and suffocating. It wasn't just a home,
it was a risen of Jones's own design, where he
could maintain full control over his children's lives, with no oversight,
(11:06):
no questions. Amber's visits became rare. They didn't happen at
the trailer. Instead, she saw her kids at a Chick
fil A in Lexington, hardly a warm environment for bonding
with your children. The routine was rigid, phone calls at night,
supervised meetings, limited access to the outside world. Jones painted
(11:28):
himself as the responsible parent. He even let his children
attend Salvation Army Youth Knights on Sundays, a facade of
normalcy in a world that was anything but. Behind the
closed doors of that trailer. The situation was deteriorating fast.
Jones was investigated twice for child abuse in that final year,
(11:50):
two separate chances for someone to intervene. The first came
in May twenty fourteen, when one of the children reported
that their father had spanked them and forced them to
do exercises as punishment. Harsh but within the law. Since
there were no visible bruises, no marks, no problem, the
(12:12):
case was dismissed. But two weeks later another accusation surfaced.
This time it was chilling. A second complaint alleged that
Jones routinely beat his children, left bruises, that he wasn't
feeding them properly, that he deliberately kept them out of
public school, not for home schooling, but so no one
(12:32):
would see the bruises and ask questions. In the case notes,
a haunting line stood out. Dad appears to be overwhelmed
as he is unable to maintain the home. Yet again,
the case wasn't closed. It wasn't resolved either. It just lingered.
It sat in limbo. Investigators never had the chance to
finish their report because within weeks before that case could
(12:55):
be concluded, five innocent children would be dead. Systemic failure
at every level. The warning signs were there, the patterns
were documented, The cries for help were made, some whispered,
some loud, and still no one stepped in and as
Timothy Jones Junior became increasingly unhinged, fixated on obedience, haunted
(13:19):
by betrayal, and crumbling under the pressure of single parenthood,
his children became collateral in a storm he could no
longer control. On the night of August twenty eighth, inside
the family's home, he killed all five of those poor
little humans who were supposed to be under his protection.
He said it started after one of the boys, Natan,
(13:41):
damaged an electrical outlet. That mistake sent him into a rage.
He forced the child to do intense physical exercises, what
he called P two, until the boy collapsed. In his
own words, he said he petied his ass until he
couldn't handle it any more. He claimed Naton died in
(14:02):
bed afterward, but later forensic experts didn't agree with that
version of events. They believed Natan had been strangled that night.
He didn't stop. After Naton died, he turned to the others.
In his confession, he said he strangled the children one
by one. His eldest daughter, Mara, watched him kill one
(14:24):
of her brothers, so he strangled her too. He admitted
using a belt on the youngest ones, saying their necks
were too small for his hands. He wrapped their bodies
in black trash bags and used bleach to mask the smell.
Then he kept them with him. DNA expert Stephanie Stanley
later confirmed the identity of the children through genetic samples
(14:47):
found in both the car and the home. The bodies
had been stored in his vehicle the entire time, but
since the man was legally their guardian, no Amber alert
was issued. Their disappearance didn't make headlines until it was
far too late.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Well, we'll tell you we already have. It's a unique case.
By the time you reached a verdict was murder with
those five kids, you had already established and we had
proven these two aggravating circumstances. First, of two or more
persons were murdered. Five a defendant of one act suing
(15:26):
one scheme or course of conduct that fits. Yes, for
every child, Yes, each one of them falls into that category,
beyond any reasonable doubt. And the second one was even easier,
(15:47):
the murder of a child eleven years of age were
under the oldest child in this case was eight years
old mirror.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
The discovery was grim off a rural dirt road near Camden, Alabama,
five small bodies were found stuffed into black trash bags.
They had been left there under the sun for nearly
a week. By the time they were recovered, the damage
was done. The heat the bags and exposure to the
elements had sped up decomposition, maggots and animals had gotten
(16:26):
to the remains. Doctor Janis Ross, who later conducted the autopsies,
described the condition of the bodies as advanced decay. The
trash bags, she explained, acted like ovens in the sun,
trapping heat and moisture, making everything worse faster. Timothy was
finally stopped on September sixth during a routine traffic checkpoint
(16:50):
in Mississippi. He was behind the wheel of a Cadillac Escalade.
To the officers, he looked off odd, erratic, possibly violent.
At first, they thought he might just be under the influence,
but when they ran his South Carolina plates, everything changed.
Alerts lit up about five missing children. Inside the car,
(17:13):
officers found more than just a strange man. They discovered blood, bleach, maggots,
materials commonly used to cook meth, even handwritten notes disturbing
guides step by step detailing how to mutilate a body.
He was also high on synthetic marijuana at the time.
(17:34):
In the following days, he led investigators and f b
I agents to the remote site where the children had
been dumped. It would later come out in court that
this wasn't the original plan. He had intended to drive
all the way to the Mexican border to dispose of
the bodies, but somewhere along the way, the smell of
(17:55):
death grew too strong. The heat, the stench, it was
too much, so he pulled over an Alabama and left
them there. The details uncovered during the autopsies painted a
horrifying picture one no parent, no human should ever have
to hear. Elias was the first to be examined. His
(18:15):
small body was wrapped in two separate trash bags. He
was still wearing his short sleeved sax Gotha elementary shirt.
A fractured neckbone confirmed what the rest of his injuries
had already suggested strangulation. Mara was next. She was found
unclothed with devastating tissue loss across her body. Her left
(18:38):
hand was missing entirely. Gabriel's autopsy revealed two parallel marks
across the side of his neck lines that matched what
would be made by a belt or a wide strap.
The signs were unmistakable. He had been strangled with something
other than hands. Abigail, the fourth autopsy, had an empty
stomach and was the least decomposed of the five. That
(19:01):
two said something she might have been the last to die.
Then there was not on his body bore deeper signs
of violence. Doctor Janice Ross ruled the cause of death
for all five children as asphyxiation manual strangulation. Each one
was listed as a homicide because of the advanced decomposition.
(19:24):
She couldn't pinpoint exact times of death, but only one
of the children had food in their stomach. That detail
alone raised chilling possibilities some of them may have been weak,
possibly starving before they were killed. Later, the man behind
it all was extradited back to South Carolina. At first,
(19:45):
he gave no explanation, no reason, nothing, just silence. Eventually, though,
fragments began to surface. He spoke of anxiety, of paranoia,
of betrayal. He told investigators he feared the children were
going to kill him, chop him up, and feed him
to the dogs. That was his reason. He was placed
(20:09):
on suicide watch. In the courtroom, Timothy Jones's own voice
told the story.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
Final what happened with my kids?
Speaker 4 (20:18):
Okay, you understand that you just can passed to a
cronause you understand that your confessional will be used against
you a core. Did you can pass voluntarily?
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (20:30):
Did anyone threaten you if you didn't confess? Can you
speak a little louder?
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Note now his confession was played out loud for the jury.
On the tape, he admitted, plain and clear that he
wasn't forced to talk. The only thing, he said, the
investigators promised was a good burial for his five children.
And then, without hesitation, he said it, he killed them
right there in their family's mobile home on South Lake
(20:58):
Drive in Lexington. Jones claimed it all started with Naughton.
He said the boy had broken an outlet, and to
punish him, he made him do push ups and squats
way too many later, Jones said he found his son
dead in bed. That moment, he said, changed everything. He
(21:18):
described it as a snap, like his mind flipped. Any
normal person would have called the police, he told the investigators.
But I took the coward root, he said. He started
following voices in his head. He even blamed what he
called a demonic gremlin. After Naton, he strangled the other
four children one by one. He admitted putting all five
(21:42):
of their bodies into the trunk of his vehicle at first,
without even using plastic bags. At one point, he confessed
he thought about cutting up the bodies or burning them.
He even wrote those plans down, but he said he
couldn't go through with it. His voice trembled in parts
of the tape, coversing.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
And give life for no reason at all, without stating
a reason. You have that power if you think that
fits this case, and say you find mitigating circumstances that
mean life is automatic. No, No, you can find both
(22:24):
aggravating and mitigating circumstances and give death. The law allows
that you can find both and give death. He's going
to tell you there's other evidence. You generally call it
character evidence, evidence about that man over there, what kind
of person he is? Bad stuff that doesn't replace or
(22:50):
be used for aggravating circumstances. But you get that you've
already found aggravating circumstances. It's going to be to evidence
what kind of man is? Tim Jones Jr. You got
a good glimpse in the first phase, but you heard
a lot in the last few days. What kind of
(23:12):
human being he is, what kind of person he is?
And you also got got to get a glimpse of
who those little children were. He had seen their face,
as you had heard their names. But you got to
know a little bit about that's victim impact evidence. So
(23:35):
who is Tim Jones Junior? Who is this man? Well,
you know right out of the gate as you sit here.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
He is a murderer. He broke down crying in court
as it played. He said the murders weren't planned. He
called it a what just happened moment, as if it
had all spun out of control. But investigators and experts
saw something different. They found notes in his car, hand
written instructions on how to mutilate bodies. They found bleach blood,
(24:08):
even tools used to make meth. There were materials for disposal,
and receipts from Walmart showed he'd bought plastic bins, saws,
and acid after the killings. And then came the testimony.
One prison guard recalled how Jones said he choked her
till she turned purple. When talking about his daughter, He
(24:31):
said she walked in and saw what he had done,
and he couldn't let her go. Another guard said Jones
told him nat On was just messing with a light
socket when he grabbed him and strangled him. His daughter
walked in right after that. Then came the rest. The
court's psychiatrist explained that Jones didn't have schizophrenia like his
(24:54):
defense tried to argue. Instead, he was diagnosed with a
drug induced psychotic dess sword.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
Well, I see I see people.
Speaker 4 (25:03):
What kind of people? Do you say?
Speaker 3 (25:04):
It is normal every day people. I don't talk to
him because if you guys are, you're gonna say, start
talking to me, not them. Dude, if you pay attention,
what's going on?
Speaker 2 (25:12):
My saw?
Speaker 3 (25:13):
I get so nutty. I start talking to him.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
Did you did this happen the day of the crime?
If what did you see the day of the chrome?
Did you see people?
Speaker 5 (25:24):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (25:24):
I ain't talking about the you know the voe. I'm sorry,
this goes back to the voices. Okay, yeah, I've alwayes
ran rampant in my head. You had there was no
space for logic to talk. They were so loud that
the quiet and the I understand.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
Do you have any ideas or believes that other people
think are crazy? If so, what are they freemason or
free mason. Okay, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
They probably think my thoughts about exercise or nuts. But
I mean I tend to think people should take care
of themselves. Okay, I'm old school in the sense that
I think kids should get theirs busted by a teacher.
I don't like the fact. And here's one of my problems.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
This is what the DSS was about.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
Yeah, when I grew up, I didn't worry about kids
bringing guns to school and blowing the hell of each other.
As a teacher, that didn't.
Speaker 6 (26:10):
Happen because there was a healthy fear and you got
corrected by parts. These day and age kids bring guns
to school because I don't think that they're corrected at home,
and they take other people's lives because they got no
respect for authority. I said, I will not let my
kids go out and go blasting people away because I'm
not teaching them and respect human life.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
On the night of the murders, he'd been using synthetic
marijuana and watching violent movies. One moment, he was watching
a rape scene from American History X. The next moment
listening to a song called Butterfly Kisses that detail mattered
because it showed he understood the world around him, He
knew right from wrong.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
And whatever faults you see in him, he loves his son.
He protected them, he spoiled him. Did you hear his grandmother? Yeah,
Tim Jones is a selfish man, as for a grand
baby on trial for his life. But she knew that's
the truth. He's selfish. Tim Jones Junior grew up knowing.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
He grew up knowing.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
That he can manipulate his family.
Speaker 5 (27:19):
For he is.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
He grew up knowing that. And maybe you can say, wow,
he has such a hard hife, folks. He had the opportunity,
he had the gifts to be something so much more.
His life is all about choice.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Through all of it, his voice, his planning, his actions,
one thing became clear. Timothy Jones made a conscious decision
to kill his children, and when he was finally caught
driving around with their decomposing bodies in the trunk, it
was too late to take any of it back. After
fifteen grueling days in court filled with gut wrenching testimon
(28:00):
disturbing confessions, and heartbreaking details, a jury finally made its.
Speaker 5 (28:05):
Decision, with the jury in the above entitle case have
found beyond a reasonable doubt the existence of the following
statutory aggravating circumstances to it, two or more persons were
murdered by the defendant by act or pursuant to one
scheme or course of conduct, and the murder of five
(28:28):
children eleven years of age you're younger.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
On June fourth, twenty nineteen, Timothy Jones was found guilty
of murdering all five of his children, but the case
didn't end there. Just over a week later, on June thirteenth,
the jury returned again, this time to decide his fate.
They agreed that the crime involved aggravating circumstances, meaning it
(28:53):
was especially cruel, heinous, and beyond forgiveness. They sentenced him
to death. Jones became one of only two men sentenced
to death in South Carolina that year. He's still sitting
on death row, awaiting execution. Timothy Jones is now another
name etched into the long dark ledger of death row.
(29:13):
A father who became his children's executioner, and who now
waits in silence for justice to finish its course. Who
comes to help the children whose own protectors are their
biggest enemies,
Who killed these little souls? The answer lies back in
the day of August twenty eighth, two thousand and fourteen.
It was a Thursday when three children were signed out
of Saxe Gotha elementary. Two more were picked up from
a near by daycare. These five siblings were on their
way home, and this trip should have been short, familiar, safe.
(00:24):
But that ride took a strange turn. Instead of heading
back to the modest trailer tucked off a dirt road
in Lexington County, South Carolina, the driver made a sharp,
unexpected detour. The car pulled into a wal Mart parking lot.
What happened next wasn't just strange, It was disturbing. He
(00:45):
forced the children out of the car, right there, in
the middle of a busy public space. He pushed them
out with all his force, and then he loaded them
back in. Why, no one knows. That same evening, at
seven twelve p m. Amber, the children's mother, placed a
call to the family home. One of the boys not
(01:08):
on answered. His voice came through the receiver, young and innocent.
Their conversation was brief, nothing out of the ordinary. But
Amber didn't know then it would be the last time
she ever heard her son speak after that, No more calls,
no returned messages, no contact. Somewhere between that moment and
(01:28):
the turning of the clock to midnight, behind the closed
doors of a quiet trailer in a small southern town,
five children disappeared. On September first, the same man was
seen at a dunkin doughnuts and spartanburg. His car rolled
past strangers, past gas stations. By September third, he walked
through the aisles of a wal Mart in West Columbia,
(01:51):
placing saws, large plastic bins, and bottles of muriatic acid
into his car. The receipts would later speak for themselves.
All the while, the children were being marked absent Friday
Monday Tuesday. No one saw them after that day, and
the man kept driving as if nothing had changed. That
(02:13):
same day, September third, Amber made the call to authorities.
Her children had missed a scheduled visit. She couldn't reach them.
Her gut twisted something was wrong, terribly wrong, But nothing happened,
not yet. It wasn't until September ninth, nearly two weeks
after the children disappeared, that the world finally learned they
(02:35):
were missing. But by then it was far too late.
The bodies had been discovered mutilated, unrecognizable until DNA confirmed
who they were. These five siblings were children to divorced
parents and the victims of their father, Timothy Jones Junior,
who had mercilessly killed them in a fit of rage.
(02:58):
Before the name Timothy Jane Jones Junior would forever be
burned into the memory of an entire nation, Before he'd
be described by prosecutors as a monster, and before the
unimaginable deaths of five beautiful children, he was just a boy,
a boy born into a broken world. It all began
(03:19):
in nineteen eighty one. Timothy Junior was the first and
only child of Timothy Jones Senior and Cindy Jones. Cindy
was only sixteen when she had him, barely more than
a child herself, and what followed was a storm of
dysfunction that seemed to lay the groundwork for something far
darker down the line. Timothy Senior would later speak out
(03:42):
about Cindy, calling her violent and unstable. She would scream,
lash out, and behave in disturbing ways. Cindy once cut
up clothing with knives. She fed baby Timothy laxatives when
he was still an infant. Although never a f rily diagnosed,
people around her believed she suffered from serious mental illness.
(04:06):
Whatever the truth, one thing was certain. She wasn't well,
and when Timothy Junior was just eighteen months old, she
vanished from his life completely. That abandonment followed him like
a shadow. His father remarried and tried to rebuild, but
Timothy Junior had already begun slipping down a different path.
(04:28):
In two thousand and one, at just twenty years old,
he was arrested in Illinois on a cocktail of charges
cocaine possession, check forgery, car theft. These weren't just reckless crimes,
they were desperate ones. He was sentenced to seven years
in prison. He served just two. Then came Amber Kaiser.
(04:50):
She was eighteen, a young woman from Pennsylvania when she
met twenty two year old Timothy in Chicago. On paper,
it might have looked like a fresh start, a chance
to build something better. They got married in two thousand
and four in DuPage County, Illinois, and from their union
came five children, May, Elias, not On, Gabriel, and Abigail.
(05:15):
Those five little kids had bright eyes, soft voices, and
dreams still waiting to be seen. They bounced from place
to place, Pennsylvania to Mississippi, then finally South Carolina. Timothy
earned a degree in computer engineering from Mississippi State University
in twenty eleven. He secured a good job at Intel
(05:37):
in Columbia a seventy one thousand dollars salary. He had stability, success,
and a full house. But a pretty picture doesn't mean peace.
They didn't live in some suburban dream home. Instead, they
settled in a cramped trailer in Lexington County. Amber stayed
home with the children, and slowly the cracks began to show.
(05:59):
Amber would later testify that Timothy had disturbing beliefs. He
was controlling, staunchly religious. To him, women were to be
seen and not heard. Children were to be quiet, obedient,
practically invisible. At one point, Amber claimed he even talked
about wanting a farm full of children, not because he
(06:21):
loved them, because he wanted to rule over them. It
wasn't just ideology. When police would eventually search his belongings
after the tragedy, they found religious materials, passages carefully highlighted
emphasizing corporal punishment, obedience, domination from the outside. The Jones
family might have seemed like any other conservative household, a
(06:44):
dad with a good job, a mom at home, kids
running barefoot in the yard. But inside the walls of
that Lexington trailer, darkness was festering, and the man at
the center of it all, Timothy Jones Junior, was quietly spying.
You see, monsters are rarely born overnight. There made peace
(07:05):
by peace. They make themselves experience by experience, until one
day they think they are above everything else. And when
Timothy finally showed what he is truly capable of, it
would shock the world. In the twisted Tale of Timothy
Jones Junior, the unraveling wasn't sudden. It was slow, agonizing,
(07:27):
and filled with signs that, looking back, feel like a
chorus of unanswered alarms. By May of twenty twelve, things
between Timothy and Amber Jones had already begun to fray
at the seams. Their marriage, once held together by the
fragile dream of stability and a shared home, was gasping
(07:48):
for air. After years of dysfunction and control, Amber had enough.
The couple separated, if only briefly, and what happened during
those two weeks would haunt him forever. Or at least
that's the narrative he'd cling to. When Jones returned to
their home, he claimed to have discovered something that to
(08:10):
him was unforgivable. According to his divorce attorney, Amber had
been putting the kids to bed, then slipping next door
to meet her paramour. The man was nineteen year old neighbor,
a teenager. To Timothy, it wasn't just betrayal, it was humiliation, abandonment,
a gaping wound that tore open old scars from his
(08:32):
turbulent childhood for a man obsessed with control who'd already
inherited a fear of being left behind. Jones began attending
sessions with a family therapist and marriage counselor, April M. Haymes,
But rather than healing, these sessions revealed more disturbing truths
about him. He didn't just feel betrayed, he felt broken.
(08:57):
Doctor Haymes later testified that Jones was terrified of being abandoned.
He was a man clinging to control, driven by childhood trauma,
and now his wife, his family unit was slipping away.
Timothy didn't just blame Amber for infidelity. He accused her
of neglect. He told authorities she wasn't caring for the
(09:18):
children properly. These claims prompted an investigation by South Carolina's
Department of Social Services DSS back in twenty eleven. When
they arrived, they found a disheveled home, disorganized, chaotic, but
not dangerous enough to intervene. The case was quietly closed,
(09:39):
but the emotional distance between Amber and Timothy was only
growing wider. Their marriage never recovered. Eventually, Timothy took the
children and left Amber behind. He moved them all to
Mississippi to live with his parents, people who had once
raised him in a similarly unstable environment, and during this
(10:00):
fragile time, the couple's final child, Abigail, was born, but
their marriage had deteriorated to the point where Jones demanded
a paternity test to confirm he was her biological father.
He was. It was one of the final blows to
a relationship already hanging by a thread. By October twenty thirteen,
(10:23):
the divorce was finalized, and then Timothy Jones was granted
full custody of all five children. Amber was given only
visitation rites and those had to be supervised by Jones himself.
How that kind of court arrangement came to be is
still a troubling mystery, but it happened. Timothy moved back
(10:43):
to South Carolina, Lexington County again, but not to a
fresh start. He and the children lived in another mobile home,
this one tucked along a dirt road in Red Bank.
It was remote, isolated, and suffocating. It wasn't just a home,
it was a risen of Jones's own design, where he
could maintain full control over his children's lives, with no oversight,
(11:06):
no questions. Amber's visits became rare. They didn't happen at
the trailer. Instead, she saw her kids at a Chick
fil A in Lexington, hardly a warm environment for bonding
with your children. The routine was rigid, phone calls at night,
supervised meetings, limited access to the outside world. Jones painted
(11:28):
himself as the responsible parent. He even let his children
attend Salvation Army Youth Knights on Sundays, a facade of
normalcy in a world that was anything but. Behind the
closed doors of that trailer. The situation was deteriorating fast.
Jones was investigated twice for child abuse in that final year,
(11:50):
two separate chances for someone to intervene. The first came
in May twenty fourteen, when one of the children reported
that their father had spanked them and forced them to
do exercises as punishment. Harsh but within the law. Since
there were no visible bruises, no marks, no problem, the
(12:12):
case was dismissed. But two weeks later another accusation surfaced.
This time it was chilling. A second complaint alleged that
Jones routinely beat his children, left bruises, that he wasn't
feeding them properly, that he deliberately kept them out of
public school, not for home schooling, but so no one
(12:32):
would see the bruises and ask questions. In the case notes,
a haunting line stood out. Dad appears to be overwhelmed
as he is unable to maintain the home. Yet again,
the case wasn't closed. It wasn't resolved either. It just lingered.
It sat in limbo. Investigators never had the chance to
finish their report because within weeks before that case could
(12:55):
be concluded, five innocent children would be dead. Systemic failure
at every level. The warning signs were there, the patterns
were documented, The cries for help were made, some whispered,
some loud, and still no one stepped in and as
Timothy Jones Junior became increasingly unhinged, fixated on obedience, haunted
(13:19):
by betrayal, and crumbling under the pressure of single parenthood,
his children became collateral in a storm he could no
longer control. On the night of August twenty eighth, inside
the family's home, he killed all five of those poor
little humans who were supposed to be under his protection.
He said it started after one of the boys, Natan,
(13:41):
damaged an electrical outlet. That mistake sent him into a rage.
He forced the child to do intense physical exercises, what
he called P two, until the boy collapsed. In his
own words, he said he petied his ass until he
couldn't handle it any more. He claimed Naton died in
(14:02):
bed afterward, but later forensic experts didn't agree with that
version of events. They believed Natan had been strangled that night.
He didn't stop. After Naton died, he turned to the others.
In his confession, he said he strangled the children one
by one. His eldest daughter, Mara, watched him kill one
(14:24):
of her brothers, so he strangled her too. He admitted
using a belt on the youngest ones, saying their necks
were too small for his hands. He wrapped their bodies
in black trash bags and used bleach to mask the smell.
Then he kept them with him. DNA expert Stephanie Stanley
later confirmed the identity of the children through genetic samples
(14:47):
found in both the car and the home. The bodies
had been stored in his vehicle the entire time, but
since the man was legally their guardian, no Amber alert
was issued. Their disappearance didn't make headlines until it was
far too late.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Well, we'll tell you we already have. It's a unique case.
By the time you reached a verdict was murder with
those five kids, you had already established and we had
proven these two aggravating circumstances. First, of two or more
persons were murdered. Five a defendant of one act suing
(15:26):
one scheme or course of conduct that fits. Yes, for
every child, Yes, each one of them falls into that category,
beyond any reasonable doubt. And the second one was even easier,
(15:47):
the murder of a child eleven years of age were
under the oldest child in this case was eight years
old mirror.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
The discovery was grim off a rural dirt road near Camden, Alabama,
five small bodies were found stuffed into black trash bags.
They had been left there under the sun for nearly
a week. By the time they were recovered, the damage
was done. The heat the bags and exposure to the
elements had sped up decomposition, maggots and animals had gotten
(16:26):
to the remains. Doctor Janis Ross, who later conducted the autopsies,
described the condition of the bodies as advanced decay. The
trash bags, she explained, acted like ovens in the sun,
trapping heat and moisture, making everything worse faster. Timothy was
finally stopped on September sixth during a routine traffic checkpoint
(16:50):
in Mississippi. He was behind the wheel of a Cadillac Escalade.
To the officers, he looked off odd, erratic, possibly violent.
At first, they thought he might just be under the influence,
but when they ran his South Carolina plates, everything changed.
Alerts lit up about five missing children. Inside the car,
(17:13):
officers found more than just a strange man. They discovered blood, bleach, maggots,
materials commonly used to cook meth, even handwritten notes disturbing
guides step by step detailing how to mutilate a body.
He was also high on synthetic marijuana at the time.
(17:34):
In the following days, he led investigators and f b
I agents to the remote site where the children had
been dumped. It would later come out in court that
this wasn't the original plan. He had intended to drive
all the way to the Mexican border to dispose of
the bodies, but somewhere along the way, the smell of
(17:55):
death grew too strong. The heat, the stench, it was
too much, so he pulled over an Alabama and left
them there. The details uncovered during the autopsies painted a
horrifying picture one no parent, no human should ever have
to hear. Elias was the first to be examined. His
(18:15):
small body was wrapped in two separate trash bags. He
was still wearing his short sleeved sax Gotha elementary shirt.
A fractured neckbone confirmed what the rest of his injuries
had already suggested strangulation. Mara was next. She was found
unclothed with devastating tissue loss across her body. Her left
(18:38):
hand was missing entirely. Gabriel's autopsy revealed two parallel marks
across the side of his neck lines that matched what
would be made by a belt or a wide strap.
The signs were unmistakable. He had been strangled with something
other than hands. Abigail, the fourth autopsy, had an empty
stomach and was the least decomposed of the five. That
(19:01):
two said something she might have been the last to die.
Then there was not on his body bore deeper signs
of violence. Doctor Janice Ross ruled the cause of death
for all five children as asphyxiation manual strangulation. Each one
was listed as a homicide because of the advanced decomposition.
(19:24):
She couldn't pinpoint exact times of death, but only one
of the children had food in their stomach. That detail
alone raised chilling possibilities some of them may have been weak,
possibly starving before they were killed. Later, the man behind
it all was extradited back to South Carolina. At first,
(19:45):
he gave no explanation, no reason, nothing, just silence. Eventually, though,
fragments began to surface. He spoke of anxiety, of paranoia,
of betrayal. He told investigators he feared the children were
going to kill him, chop him up, and feed him
to the dogs. That was his reason. He was placed
(20:09):
on suicide watch. In the courtroom, Timothy Jones's own voice
told the story.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
Final what happened with my kids?
Speaker 4 (20:18):
Okay, you understand that you just can passed to a
cronause you understand that your confessional will be used against
you a core. Did you can pass voluntarily?
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (20:30):
Did anyone threaten you if you didn't confess? Can you
speak a little louder?
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Note now his confession was played out loud for the jury.
On the tape, he admitted, plain and clear that he
wasn't forced to talk. The only thing, he said, the
investigators promised was a good burial for his five children.
And then, without hesitation, he said it, he killed them
right there in their family's mobile home on South Lake
(20:58):
Drive in Lexington. Jones claimed it all started with Naughton.
He said the boy had broken an outlet, and to
punish him, he made him do push ups and squats
way too many later, Jones said he found his son
dead in bed. That moment, he said, changed everything. He
(21:18):
described it as a snap, like his mind flipped. Any
normal person would have called the police, he told the investigators.
But I took the coward root, he said. He started
following voices in his head. He even blamed what he
called a demonic gremlin. After Naton, he strangled the other
four children one by one. He admitted putting all five
(21:42):
of their bodies into the trunk of his vehicle at first,
without even using plastic bags. At one point, he confessed
he thought about cutting up the bodies or burning them.
He even wrote those plans down, but he said he
couldn't go through with it. His voice trembled in parts
of the tape, coversing.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
And give life for no reason at all, without stating
a reason. You have that power if you think that
fits this case, and say you find mitigating circumstances that
mean life is automatic. No, No, you can find both
(22:24):
aggravating and mitigating circumstances and give death. The law allows
that you can find both and give death. He's going
to tell you there's other evidence. You generally call it
character evidence, evidence about that man over there, what kind
of person he is? Bad stuff that doesn't replace or
(22:50):
be used for aggravating circumstances. But you get that you've
already found aggravating circumstances. It's going to be to evidence
what kind of man is? Tim Jones Jr. You got
a good glimpse in the first phase, but you heard
a lot in the last few days. What kind of
(23:12):
human being he is, what kind of person he is?
And you also got got to get a glimpse of
who those little children were. He had seen their face,
as you had heard their names. But you got to
know a little bit about that's victim impact evidence. So
(23:35):
who is Tim Jones Junior? Who is this man? Well,
you know right out of the gate as you sit here.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
He is a murderer. He broke down crying in court
as it played. He said the murders weren't planned. He
called it a what just happened moment, as if it
had all spun out of control. But investigators and experts
saw something different. They found notes in his car, hand
written instructions on how to mutilate bodies. They found bleach blood,
(24:08):
even tools used to make meth. There were materials for disposal,
and receipts from Walmart showed he'd bought plastic bins, saws,
and acid after the killings. And then came the testimony.
One prison guard recalled how Jones said he choked her
till she turned purple. When talking about his daughter, He
(24:31):
said she walked in and saw what he had done,
and he couldn't let her go. Another guard said Jones
told him nat On was just messing with a light
socket when he grabbed him and strangled him. His daughter
walked in right after that. Then came the rest. The
court's psychiatrist explained that Jones didn't have schizophrenia like his
(24:54):
defense tried to argue. Instead, he was diagnosed with a
drug induced psychotic dess sword.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
Well, I see I see people.
Speaker 4 (25:03):
What kind of people? Do you say?
Speaker 3 (25:04):
It is normal every day people. I don't talk to
him because if you guys are, you're gonna say, start
talking to me, not them. Dude, if you pay attention,
what's going on?
Speaker 2 (25:12):
My saw?
Speaker 3 (25:13):
I get so nutty. I start talking to him.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
Did you did this happen the day of the crime?
If what did you see the day of the chrome?
Did you see people?
Speaker 5 (25:24):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (25:24):
I ain't talking about the you know the voe. I'm sorry,
this goes back to the voices. Okay, yeah, I've alwayes
ran rampant in my head. You had there was no
space for logic to talk. They were so loud that
the quiet and the I understand.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
Do you have any ideas or believes that other people
think are crazy? If so, what are they freemason or
free mason. Okay, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
They probably think my thoughts about exercise or nuts. But
I mean I tend to think people should take care
of themselves. Okay, I'm old school in the sense that
I think kids should get theirs busted by a teacher.
I don't like the fact. And here's one of my problems.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
This is what the DSS was about.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
Yeah, when I grew up, I didn't worry about kids
bringing guns to school and blowing the hell of each other.
As a teacher, that didn't.
Speaker 6 (26:10):
Happen because there was a healthy fear and you got
corrected by parts. These day and age kids bring guns
to school because I don't think that they're corrected at home,
and they take other people's lives because they got no
respect for authority. I said, I will not let my
kids go out and go blasting people away because I'm
not teaching them and respect human life.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
On the night of the murders, he'd been using synthetic
marijuana and watching violent movies. One moment, he was watching
a rape scene from American History X. The next moment
listening to a song called Butterfly Kisses that detail mattered
because it showed he understood the world around him, He
knew right from wrong.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
And whatever faults you see in him, he loves his son.
He protected them, he spoiled him. Did you hear his grandmother? Yeah,
Tim Jones is a selfish man, as for a grand
baby on trial for his life. But she knew that's
the truth. He's selfish. Tim Jones Junior grew up knowing.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
He grew up knowing.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
That he can manipulate his family.
Speaker 5 (27:19):
For he is.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
He grew up knowing that. And maybe you can say, wow,
he has such a hard hife, folks. He had the opportunity,
he had the gifts to be something so much more.
His life is all about choice.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Through all of it, his voice, his planning, his actions,
one thing became clear. Timothy Jones made a conscious decision
to kill his children, and when he was finally caught
driving around with their decomposing bodies in the trunk, it
was too late to take any of it back. After
fifteen grueling days in court filled with gut wrenching testimon
(28:00):
disturbing confessions, and heartbreaking details, a jury finally made its.
Speaker 5 (28:05):
Decision, with the jury in the above entitle case have
found beyond a reasonable doubt the existence of the following
statutory aggravating circumstances to it, two or more persons were
murdered by the defendant by act or pursuant to one
scheme or course of conduct, and the murder of five
(28:28):
children eleven years of age you're younger.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
On June fourth, twenty nineteen, Timothy Jones was found guilty
of murdering all five of his children, but the case
didn't end there. Just over a week later, on June thirteenth,
the jury returned again, this time to decide his fate.
They agreed that the crime involved aggravating circumstances, meaning it
(28:53):
was especially cruel, heinous, and beyond forgiveness. They sentenced him
to death. Jones became one of only two men sentenced
to death in South Carolina that year. He's still sitting
on death row, awaiting execution. Timothy Jones is now another
name etched into the long dark ledger of death row.
(29:13):
A father who became his children's executioner, and who now
waits in silence for justice to finish its course. Who
comes to help the children whose own protectors are their
biggest enemies,
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