A South Carolina man who was convicted of killing all five of his children has been handed the death penalty, despite pleas for mercy from the victims’ mother, BBC News reported.
Timothy Jones Jr., 37, was found guilty by a Lexington County jury last week before being sentenced to death by the same jury late Thursday afternoon.
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In his closing arguments, prosecutor Rick Hubbard said Jones has been selfish all his life.
He told jurors Jones attempted to break up his father’s second marriage because of a lack of attention, and he spent his own marriage controlling his ex-wife’s every decision. After she left him, he couldn’t handle losing that control, and so he instead turned his attention to controlling his children, Hubbard said.
Jurors heard that Jones was brutal in his parenting of his five children, all under the age of 9.
With custody of his kids, Jones mistreated them and was especially brutal if any made any indication they would rather be with their mother instead of him.
An ex-girlfriend testified in court against Jones and claimed he was a strict parent with a bad temper and savage means of discipline.
As she told the court, he frequently used a belt to whip his kids over seemingly minor things, like spilling drinks. He’d also been known to make them stand in the corner “on their tippy toes all day long” as a form of punishment.
During the sentencing arguments, prosecutors implored jurors to recall the horrific way in which Jones murdered his own children.
In 2014, the father of five carried out a gruesome killing of his kids, aged one to eight, while they were in his custody at his home. He has confessed to killing 6-year-old son Nahtahn first in a “white hot rage” after the boy broke an electrical outlet but chose to tell his mom over the phone first, rather than his dad.
Jones forced the youth to exercise as punishment until he collapsed and died from exhaustion.
Following Nahtahn’s death, Jones left the home and his son to go run errands.
He took his eldest daughter with him as he went to buy cigarettes, leaving the other three children at home with their brother’s body.
When he returned home, he decided to carry out murdering the other four children.
Speaking to the members of the jury, prosecutor Hubbard said, “He’s done what you folks are going to have to do. He deliberated. ‘I am a one man jury and I have before me life or death.’ He sentenced his kids to death.”
Over the next several hours, Jones carried out a horrifying attack on his own children inside his home.
He confessed to strangling 7-year-old Elias with his bare hands and chasing 8-year-old Merah before catching her and choking her. He used a belt to choke 2-year-old Gabriel and 1-year-old Abigail, claiming in his confession that his hands were “too big.”
Jones then placed the bodies of his children into the back of his SUV and drove around rural Alabama for nine days.
Eventually, he stopped and placed the bodies inside five black garbage bags which he then dumped on a dirt road near the town of Camden.
He was later arrested during a traffic check in Smith County, Mississippi, after an officer claimed he smelled an odor of decomposition inside the car.
Following his arrest, authorities found a series of handwritten notes inside Jones’ car.
The notes appeared to detail the various ways he considered disposing the evidence, which was the bodies of his children.
One note read, “Head to campground…Melt bodies!… Saw & bones to dust or small pieces.”
Another: “1.Fidelity…Day one burn up bodies…Day two burn up bones.”
Hubbard implored the jury to think about those garbage bags during their deliberation.
Photos showing the inside of the bags were entered into evidence but weren’t explicitly shown to jurors. However, they were allowed to look at the photos during their deliberation if they wanted to.
“If you have any doubt for the appropriate sentence for that man, look in the bag!’ Hubbard said.
Hubbard argued that sentencing Jones to life in prison “is just sending Timmy to his room, [making] him think about what he has done.”
However, in a stunning turn of events, the victims’ mother and Jones’ ex-wife, Amber Kyzer, took the stand on Thursday to ask jurors to let him live.
“He did not show my children any mercy by any means,” she said. “But my kids loved him and if I’m speaking on behalf of my kids and not myself, that’s what I have to say,”
Jones had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
His defense team argued that Jones suffered from undiagnosed schizophrenia which was made worse by drug and alcohol abuse, but jurors rejected these arguments.
During his closing argument, Jones’ defense lawyer Casey Secor asked the jury to focus on how loved he is by his family.
Even after the killings, Secor said, Jones’ mother, father, and siblings all took the stand to ask jurors to spare his life.
“How much more death does the Jones family have to endure? How many more funerals does this family have to go to? How many more tears do they have to shed? How much more heartache to they have to endure?” Secor said.
After less than two hours of deliberation, jurors returned to the courtroom to announce their verdict.
The jury voted unanimously to hand down the death penalty, a sentence which Jones reportedly showed no emotion upon hearing. Meanwhile, his father hung his head in his hands while other members of his family cried.
After the sentence was handed down and the trial concluded, the prosecutor remarked on what will stay with him from the trial.
Hubbard told reporters that he won’t soon forget 6-year-old Nahtahn’s suffering at the hands of his abusive father.
He said, “That little 6-year-old bore a lot for a long time.”
h/t: Fox News
