GA GA - Patricia 'Pat' Jones, 31, Macon, 30 Dec 1979

Just wondering if there has been any updates on this cold case. She was from Houston County Ga but murdered in Bibb County Ga. I remember when this happened and knew her family. I found this information on the case found at : http://www.13wmaz.com/news/top_story.aspx?storyid=35176 On December 30th, 1979, 31-year-old Patricia Jones disappeared from a north Macon bar, and was later found dead. investigators say all the clues led to dead ends then, but now they believe they can solve this cold case. Bibb County Investigator, Captain Mike Smallwood, says there's an empty lot on Forsyth Road where a bar called the "Pump House" used to sit. It's the place where Patricia or "Pat" Jones came with her roommate the night of December 30th to relax and drink with friends. But a couple of hours later, Jones said she wasn't feeling well. Around 12:30 a.m., Captain Smallwood says Jones left the bar to come out and sleep in a friend's truck. That friend and two others later told investigators that over the next hour they checked on her several times. The said the last time they saw her, it was 1:30 a.m. By 1:45 a.m., she was gone. Seeing no signs of trouble in the truck, Jones' friends walked down the street to look for her at "Nickles", a bar that is now a jewelry shop on Forsyth Road. MIKE SMALLWOOD: INVESTIGATOR "She wasn't at home. She wasn't with a friend, none of her friends knew where she was. Everywhere you turned you'd run into a brick wall. That's not good." Captain Smallwood says the next morning, police began to search for Jones in the north Bibb County area. They focused on the Forsyth Road, Tucker Road, Bass Road, and Thomaston Road area. Ten days after Jones' disappearance, a searcher headed down a dirt road that's now the entrance to the St. Andrews neighborhood. The road led him to the far side of a small lake. TIM STAR: CIVIL DEFENSE WORKER "We followed the road on around to a trash pile and we got within about 25 or 30 feet of the trash pile. We could see her body. It looked more like a mannequin at the time." Searchers found Patricia Jones' nude body dumped on top of a trash pile, and covered by window screens. Investigators saw stab wounds in her chest, and said she died as a result of blunt force trauma to her head. Robby Johnson, a former Bibb County investigator, says searchers found Jones' clothing next to Foster Road later that same day. ROBBY JOHNSON: FORMER BIBB INVESTIGATOR "I knew we were in trouble. I knew we were in big trouble because of the length of time that had already passed. You can go on a crime scene and look around and see stuff. Say, I can solve this. You can tell what happened here. We never knew what happened on this one." Johnson says they never found the crime scene, but he along with other investigators believe whoever killed Jones, burned the evidence in a fire set at "Nickles" the same night. CHARLIE BISHOP: FORMER MACON INVESTIGATOR "There was an apartment above that establishment, and like I said, it was in close proximity to the Pump House location." County commissioner Charlie Bishop, who was head of Macon Detectives at the time, says he had suspects but not enough evidence to arrest. CHARLIE BISHOP: FORMER MACON INVESTIGATOR "The person is out there that did this crime. So they always need to have it on their mind that a lot of times, it takes a long time to bring somebody to justice." Bishop says he believes he knows who killed Pat Jones, but other investigators have different theories. Bishop thinks the case can be solved with evidence taken off Jones' body. He wouldn't identify the suspect or the evidence police have, but says he believes today's technology could be the key to a conviction. If you have any information on the death of Patricia Jones, call Captain Mike Smallwood at the Bibb County Sheriff's Office. You can reach him at 478-621-5644. It is sad for this to have happened to such a nice family and I did not want the case forgotton.

An interesting case with a lot of possible clues. It is very likely that LE spoke with the murderer during their investigation.

Does anyone see similarities in victim, circumstances, location, timeframe, etc. with other cases?


--------------------------------------
A 27-Year Search for Justice
By: Lorra Lynch

See photos of Patricia and of the bar at the below link. Video as well as printed story.

Source:
13WMAZ.com Eyewitness News Headline

LINK:
http://www.13wmaz.com/news/top_story.aspx?storyid=35176

Richard said:

An interesting case with a lot of possible clues. It is very likely that LE spoke with the murderer during their investigation.

Does anyone see similarities in victim, circumstances, location, timeframe, etc. with other cases?


--------------------------------------
A 27-Year Search for Justice
By: Lorra Lynch

See photos of Patricia and of the bar at the below link. Video as well as printed story.

Source:
13WMAZ.com Eyewitness News Headline

LINK:
http://www.13wmaz.com/news/top_story.aspx?storyid=35176

Click to expand...

Unfortunately, it looks as if the one link that was here for this case no longer works, and I've not been able to find any others (fairly brief search, though).

I'm from the central Georgia area but I don't remember this case. I would have been in college in Atlanta at the time, so maybe that's why. I do remember The Pumphouse, was in there a couple of times a few years after this happened.

Richard, this did vaguely ring a bell of memory about another case, but it took me a while to find it. It is the 1981 murder of Evelyn Joy Ludlum. May be best characterized on the internet by the many references to the man who was convicted and executed, Ellis Wayne Felker, possibly being innocent. (I don't know enough about the case and trial, etc., to really have an opinion there.)

Anyhow, Joy was apparently attending what was then Macon Junior College and was working as a cocktail waitress at a Holiday Inn in Warner Robins -- believe she was from Macon but maybe was also living in Warner Robins at that time. I think Felker was from Warner Robins. So you have a Macon-Warner Robins link (they are pretty close to each other, so not too unusual, really) as in the Pat Jones case, also a bar connection. I believe Joy's body was found in a creek -- think I just read in Twiggs County (so a third county comes in -- because Macon is in Bibb County and Warner Robins in Houston County).

I'm not "pro death penalty", myself, but the site linked below probably gives a pretty good summary, I think, of the case and evidence as presented (many other "innocence"-type sites will point out where the flaws/missteps may have been). Just search "Ellis Wayne Felker" at this site:

http://www.prodeathpenalty.com/georgia.htm

I can't tell from the two other posts in this thread whether Pat was sexually assaulted -- did the now non-working link say whether she was, does anyone remember?

ETA: Felker was executed in 1996, so he wouldn't be the suspect mentioned in the quotes from the old link about Pat Jones -- but, in the event Felker WAS innocent, maybe the perp could have been the same in both cases, is what I was thinking.

Bumping. Any new information?