COLUMBIA, S.C.—Lawyers defending a father charged with killing his five children turned Wednesday, May 22, to brain science in an effort to spare their client from the death penalty.
The insanity defense case for Timothy Jones Jr. began after a week of emotional testimony in which the children’s sobbing mother had to be aided from the courtroom and jurors heard disturbing discussions of strangulation marks and decomposing bodies. The children, ages 1, 2, 6, 7, and 8, were killed in their Lexington home.
In videotaped testimony replayed Wednesday, Dr. Travis Snyder showed MRI images and other photos of Jones’s brain taken in April 2018, four years after the slayings. The images showed what appeared to be an indentation in Jones’s skull that his lawyers have said was caused by a car crash Jones was in as a teenager. Snyder then showed other images of the brain that showed places where there had been bleeding and other damage.
“Given his injuries, it’s possible the electrical functions of his brain were not working properly,” Snyder said.
The doctor added that the damage he saw was similar to that seen in brains of people diagnosed with schizophrenia. Defense attorneys have said Jones had the disorder, but it had never been diagnosed, and that his mother has been in a mental institution for 20 years.
Snyder also testified that people with damaged brains can still graduate from college or regulate their emotions. The defense team said in opening statements that while Jones had an $85,000 job as a computer engineer, he had a thin grasp of reality. He experienced a psychotic break, they said, due to the infidelity of his ex-wife, the children’s mother; the difficulty of raising five young children on his own; and a feeling he was failing to live up to his religious beliefs.
Prosecutors called more than 30 witnesses to the stand, including school administrators, the family’s babysitter, police officers, and the ex-wife, Amber Kyzer.
In his confession to police, Jones said he forced the middle child, 6-year-old Nahtahn, to exercise for hours as punishment after he broke an electrical outlet. He said when he found the child dead, at some point after Nahtahn had gone to bed, he flew into a range and strangled the other four kids.
“Melt bodies!”
“Sand bones to dust”
“Dissolve and discard”
Hand-scribbled notes found inside Timothy Jones Jr.’s vehicle after his 2014 arrest lay out plans for discarding the bodies of his 5 children, prosecutors say.https://t.co/N2d1ZAkhwI
— The Post and Courier (@postandcourier) May 17, 2019
Jones said the oldest child, 8-year-old Mera, said, “Daddy, I love you,” as her father wrapped his hands around her neck, FBI agent David Mackey testified.
After all the children were dead, Jones wrapped their bodies in plastic and started searching on his smartphone for tips on how to dispose of bodies and get away with crimes, police officers testified.
He drove aimlessly for several days around the Southeast U.S. with the bodies in the back of his SUV before putting them in garbage bags and leaving them on a hillside in Camden, Alabama, prosecutors said.
When he was arrested in Smith County, Mississippi, officers found a checklist written in the car that included “melt bodies” and “saw down bones.”
When investigators asked him about it during his confession, Jones started to cry.
“I tried to saw a leg and I couldn’t bring myself to do it,” he said.
The mother of five slain South Carolina youngsters sobbed and broke down on the witness stand during her ex-husband’s trial. Timothy Jones Jr. is charged with murder in the 2014 deaths of their children. https://t.co/txPboexFZD
— AP South U.S. Region (@APSouthRegion) May 21, 2019
By Jeffrey Collins
