OK OK/MO/LA/AL- Jeremy Bryan Jones

A suspected serial killer jailed in Alabama may provide Douglas County authorities with a break in their investigation into the murders of two women, 11Alive News learned Friday.

Douglas County sheriff’s deputies are now in Mobile, Ala., questioned 31-year-old Jeremy Jones in the murders of 38-year-old Tina Mayberry and 16-year-old Amanda Grenwell today.

Grenwell’s body was found earlier this year along a Douglas County road. The suspect at one time lived in the same trailer park as Grenwell.

The other victim was found stabbed to death on Halloween night 2002 in front of Gipson’s restaurant and lounge. Jones was apparently a regular there.

Friends of Jones’ ex-girlfriend characterized him as abusive.

“He was very physically abusive, sexually abusive towards her. She had a stack of ‘I’m sorry’ cards from over a year, so it was really a classic abuse partner type deal,” said Linda Loffick. She added that Jones was “always on drugs.”

Authorities in seven states are looking at Jones as a possible suspect in a string of unsolved killings.

http://www.11alive.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=52701

A federal firearms charge against suspected serial killer Jeremy Bryan Jones is expected to block any attempt to transfer him out of Alabama to Georgia or New Orleans to face trial first on separate murder charges.

The 32-year-old Jones is charged with capital murder in Mobile County in the September 18th rape and killing of 44-year-old Lisa Nichols of Turnerville

http://www.timesdaily.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050421/APN/504210704

Serial killing suspect Jeremy Bryan Jones denied killing anyone and said during a television interview aired Wednesday night that authorities in several states have made up alleged confessions.

``How am I in jail? Wrong place, wrong time,'' Jones told WGCL-TV in Atlanta in a telephone interview from the Mobile County Jail in Alabama, where he faces capital murder charges in the Sept. 18 death of Lisa Marie Nichols, 45, of Turnerville. The victim's body was burned in a rural mobile home near Mobile.

http://www.accessnorthga.com/news/hall/newfullstory.asp?ID=93415

Authorities in Oklahoma and Kansas are still gearing up to sift through years of trash dumped down four mining pits near Galena.

In Alabama, they're preparing to drain a swamp.

One thing is for certain about suspected serial killer Jeremy Jones' purported "confessions": They are time-consuming and expensive to check out. But, apparently plausible enough to the investigators who have talked with him to warrant both the time and the expense.


Jones also told the Globe that he never confessed to the killing of a prostitute in Louisiana, one of the three murders with which he is charged, and that he's never even been in Louisiana. He claims he was with the woman in Georgia, who wants to marry him, on the day of that murder, and that DNA testing New Orleans investigators conducted does not tie him to the murder.

Jones also told the Globe he did not murder the woman in Alabama as he is charged with doing, and that he just happened to walk in on the man who actually killed her just after he'd shot her.

Investigators close to the case say Jones tells them one thing and the media another because he is eager to maintain a facade of innocence before his mother and girlfriend in Georgia. But Jones says investigators have been trying to lead him into confessing to murders he did not commit.

http://www.joplinglobe.com/story.php?story_id=193169&PHPSESSID=4c4d7e7481ac50c38eaf6b54c45bfdf6

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/11935375.htm

“Alabama authorities notified Sooter they had a guy with ties to Oklahoma that used the same mode of operation used in the Freeman case and he might want to talk him,” Lorene Bible said.

Sooter, a member of the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation and Rogers County District Attorney Gene Haynes went to Mobile, Ala. to question Jones where he’s being held on murder charges there as well as murder charges in Louisiana and Georgia.

But it was Sooter with whom Jones connected.

During 17 to 18 hours of interviewing, Jones told Sooter he hadn’t expected the girls and wasn’t prepared to kill the girls, Sooter said.

Jones told Sooter he walked in, went to the bedroom, shot Danny, then Kathy, scattered clothes on the floor, doused them with an accelerant, torched them and left.

“He gave himself a 30-second window to get in, shoot them, set the fire and get out,” Sooter said.

But the girls were a surprise, Sooter said, Jones wasn’t expecting them to be there.

When the girls ran out of the house Jones hollered for them to get in the truck and they would go get help, Sooter said.

Jones drove the girls to Galena just northeast of Baxter Springs, shot them and threw their bodies in a pit.

Jones — who couldn’t remember which pit — marked on a map four possible locations, Sooter said.

http://www.claremoreprogress.com/archive/article20497

A judge sent serial killings suspect Jeremy Bryan Jones for a mental evaluation and said he expects Jones' capital murder trial, with the jury sequestered, to begin as scheduled Aug. 15, but possibly not in Mobile.

Circuit Judge Charles Graddick said he will rule on a defense motion to move the trial to another city after a survey of 400 potential Mobile County jurors is completed by the defense in the next few weeks.

Assistant Attorney General Don Valeska did not call any witnesses at Monday's change-of-venue hearing but said the significant media coverage of the case has been generated in part by Jones' own media interviews.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-06-21-SerialKiller_x.htm

The search for the bodies of Ashley Freeman and Lauria Bible will start Tuesday afternoon in Kansas, Cherokee County Undersheriff Kent Soucy said.

Soucy said the search team will include members of the Cherokee County Sheriff's Department, the Craig County (Okla.) Sheriff's Department, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation and an FBI agent. The KBI also has hired NecroSearch International, a Colorado nonprofit organization that specializes in searches for clandestine graves.

Freeman and Bible have been missing since Dec. 30, 1999, when Freeman's parents, Danny and Kathy Freeman, were shot to death and their mobile home outside of Welch, Okla., was set on fire.

Craig County Sheriff Jimmie Sooter has said that Jeremy Jones, a former Miami, Okla., man who is jailed in Mobile, Ala., told him and an OSBI agent that he killed the Freemans over a debt owed to a friend. Sooter said Jones told them that he drove by the burning trailer, pretending to be helpful, when the 16-year-old girls ran out. He said Jones told them that he drove the girls to Kansas and killed them, throwing their bodies down a mine pit.

Jones recently told the Globe that he hasn't confessed to any murders, and that authorities would be wasting their time with a search. He also was curious about why the search had been postponed.

http://www.joplinglobe.com/story.php?story_id=194397&c=87

Acting on the word of a suspected killer now being held in the Mobile Metro Jail, law officers in Oklahoma used a camera Tuesday to begin searching a water-filled mine shaft for the remains of two missing Oklahoma teens.

"He was believable," Sooter said. "He knew some things about the crime scene that people shouldn't have known. We just have to go look and see if he's telling us the truth."

Investigators started the search at 2 p.m. Tuesday by lowering a camera on a cable into an abandoned water-filled mineshaft. Cadaver dogs were expected to begin searching the area Wednesday morning.

Smith said searchers would not be using ground-penetrating radar provided by a Colorado group that specializes in finding buried bodies because the site has been used as a trash dump.

http://www.wpmi.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=83720C72-D89B-4E96-A2D0-A6426B693F07

The search for two Oklahoma teenagers missing for more than 5 1/2 years was called off Thursday after three days without turning up any evidence, a Kansas Bureau of Investigation official said.

Lorene Bible, mother of Lauria Bible, said authorities told her they have received several new tips in Kansas and Oklahoma.

http://www.kansas.com//mld/kansas/news/state/12024620.htm

The mother and half brother of a suspected serial killer face drug and weapons charges following a search of their home in Miami (MY-AM'-uh), Oklahoma.

Jeanne Beard is the mother and Jesse Beard the half brother of Jeremy Jones, who's charged with murder in Alabama, Georgia, and New Orleans.

Jones is being held without bond in the Mobile County Metro Jail. He awaits trial in the 2004 murder of a Turnerville woman.

Jones has also been investigated for the disappearance of two 16-year-old Oklahoma girls in 1999 and the killings of their parents. The two girls have never been found. http://www.wsfa.com/Global/story.asp?S=3940417&nav=0RdE