The door to the bar was flung open as a woman dressed as Betty Boop crawled inside covered in blood. A few minutes before she had enjoyed a Halloween party and now she had a deep cut on her neck that prevented her from speaking and calling for help. Those present tried to revive her and stop the bleeding without success. Shortly after, Tina passed away on the way to the hospital.
According to investigators, the woman was robbed in the parking lot for no apparent reason, no clues, and no suspect. Two months later, her murderer killed again, this time with more viciousness and violence. It was about Jeremy Jones, a womanizer, redneck and conqueror in the style of Ted Bundy, with twenty victims and strange disappearances behind him due to various police errors.
Jeremy Brian Jones was born on December 4, 1973 in the small city of Miami (Oklahoma) where he was raised in cotton by his mother and stepfather. In fact, our protagonist always feared the reaction of his mother to her criminal exploits, which is why he tried to hide and camouflage them with his particular personal charm.
This is how Jeremy, from his childhood, developed a manipulative and ladylike character with the women around him. He was sweet, sociable and friendly and he bragged about it, even with the most impossible ones. “I can even talk to a nun’s panties,” he once said. Not so toward the men he continually pitted against. Hence, at school he chose to behave like “a bully.”
Added to this was the consumption of narcotic substances, such as methamphetamine, and the continued abuse of alcohol. He got addicted. In addition, the young man began to flirt with the criminal world, perpetrating robberies, thefts and raids.
His long record also included domestic violence, indecent exposure and sexual assault for which he was arrested on several occasions and in different states. He even had to attend sex offender classes after being convicted of two rapes years before committing his first murder.
On May 11, 1992, Jeremy assaulted his neighbor’s wife, Jennifer Judd, raping and stabbing her several times in her kitchen. When her husband went to the house, worried because he had not come to work, he found the gruesome scene. Despite the efforts of the investigators to locate the person responsible, they did not find a single clue.
His next victims were a couple, his daughter and a friend of hers: he shot the adults in the trailer where they lived and set the cabin on fire, while he kidnapped the girls, raped and fired several shots, to later throw their bodies in the abandoned mine shaft. After Jennifer’s crime, the young man had learned not to leave witnesses.
However, the Oklahoma police were on his heels, although he had nothing to do with said murders, but for a crime of rape. This is how, in December 2000, the authorities activated a search and arrest warrant against Jeremy and he decided to change his life and also his identity.
To do this, he cajoled the mother of a former prison mate, who provided him with her son’s birth certificate and social security card. From that moment on, Jeremy went on to live under the assumed name of John Paul Chapman and began his journey through various cities in Georgia and Alabama to find a place as a welder and worker at an oil refinery.
On the other hand, thanks to his ability to please the bosses, he managed to get them to take pity on him by allowing him to stay in their properties (basements or trailers) without paying a single dollar.
People saw him as the typical neighbor, “a nice guy” who “has a barbecue with you, who you call at three in the morning to help you get your car out of a ditch,” Jeremy himself declared in an interview. However, despite his conquering arts, he also caused a certain rejection in the female sector.
During his criminal journey, Jeremy raped and strangled one of his latest conquests, but the woman miraculously managed to escape and report it to the police. Now, the young man managed to convince the authorities that everything had been consented to and, since his fingerprints also did not correspond to his false name, the police had no record of his criminal career. A hoax that would cause the disappearance and death of more victims.
One of them was Tina Mayberry, murdered after attending a party on Halloween night in 2002. Jeremy slit her neck and the woman died before reaching the hospital. Two months later, 16-year-old Amanda Greenwell also disappeared without a trace. Her body was found a month later in a state of composition: she had been raped, stabbed and strangled.
On April 15, 2004, Patrice Endres went to work at her beauty salon when an unknown person kidnapped her. Jeremy took her at knifepoint to a place secluded from her, raped and killed her, then dumped her body in a stream. Her remains were found 600 days later, but in another county. No witness was able to recognize the possible perpetrator of the events. It was Jeremy himself who would confess after his arrest.
One of the creepier finds was the decomposed torso of a prostitute in Missouri. It was June 28, 2004 and her name was added to the list of disturbing murders. The investigators continued to give blind sticks. They had no leads, witnesses or evidence.
The latest victim of the fake John Paul Chapman was Lisa Marie Nichols, 45, a tenant of her former boss Mark Bentley. On September 18, 2004, after Hurricane Ivan passed through Alabama, Jeremy visited the woman, taking advantage of reconstruction work in Mobile, to rape, shoot and burn Lisa.
In his testimony, Mark Bentley described how they entered the smoke-filled house with a flashlight and discovered the body. “I thought I knew you, but I didn’t”, he told Jeremy that he was staying in another room of the house. “You knew me. You just didn’t know me when I was high, ”he replied.
After his arrest, the agents questioned the criminal, who went on to tell them in detail about twenty murders perpetrated in the last decade. “He is a stalker, he gets excited with his victims,” ??explained Sergeant McRae, one of the agents who took a statement from Jeremy Jones and who assured that the detainee enjoyed the killing. “Someday I will be a free man. I will write a book and laugh my ass off,” he told them.
The trial against this Ted Bundy-style murderer began in October 2005 in Alabama and, during the hearing, Attorney General Troy King called the defendant a “monster” for being “capable of lying without remorse, of killing without remorse. The only remorse I saw him show was for himself, which shows the kind of man he is.”
His deputy, Corey Maze, also a prosecutor, came to describe the murder of Lisa Marie as follows: “He violated her home. He violated her freedom. He raped her body. He didn’t stop there. He raped her soul.” Even the psychiatrist who evaluated him, Dr. Charles Herlihy, made a report highlighting his profile as “very calculating, but explosive when he doesn’t get what he wants”, as well as being a sociopath unable to adapt to a normal life.
On October 26, the jury found Jeremy Jones guilty of capital murder for the rape and murder of Lisa Marie Nichols and recommended that he receive the death penalty. His defense efforts to allege the “extreme mental and emotional problems” of his sponsor, whom he called “sick” due to his addiction to alcohol and drugs, were useless.
A month later and before Mobile County Judge Charles Graddick handed down his verdict, the defendant asked to speak to release a “God will have the last word.” For his part, the magistrate described Jeremy as “a danger to civilized society” and decreed the death penalty by lethal injection.
Since then, authorities have searched for the bodies of more victims killed by Jones with no result. For this reason, family members ask not only for the confession of the serial killer, but also for evidence of what he has done. “It’s the only way to close the chapter,” they say.
