Jeremy Bryan Jones

In 1992, 20-year-old Jennifer Judd was murdered in Baxter Springs, Kansas. Jennifer had been married for only nine days when she was brutally stabbed in her home. Her husband, Justin, immediately suspected his friend Jeremy Bryan Jones, but investigators initially lacked enough evidence to arrest him. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss Jeremy Bryan Jones. Jones had a long history of violence, sexual assault allegations, drug abuse, and fleeing authorities. He eventually assumed the identity of John Paul Chapman. A fingerprint database error allowed him to avoid identification during multiple arrests in Georgia. You can help support the show through Patreon. We'd love to connect with listeners on social media. We are available on the following platforms: Facebook - Facebook Discussion group - Instagram - Threads - X Formerly Twitter - Blue Sky - Twitch - Tik Tok Criminology is an Emash Digital production hosted by Mike Ferguson and Mike Morford.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  Hello everyone, and welcome to episode 420 of the Criminology Podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson.

• 0:42Speaker 02

  And this is Mike Morford.

• 0:44Speaker 01

  Mr. Morford, how you doing, buddy?

• 0:46Speaker 02

  I'm doing good. It's Friday, ready to go for the weekend and get this episode recorded and then move on to some business I got set up for this weekend. What do you got going on?

• 0:56Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm just, I'm just happy that we're free of our technical difficulties that caused us not to be able to put out an episode last week. I mean, it's strange, but it does happen, right? Every now and then just something crops up that we can't avoid.

• 1:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, and this was one of those weeks, but we do have a nice back catalog of episodes and got some positive feedback about this week's episode that we released. So it's good to have some stuff in the bank that we can bring out and replace some old episodes that people like.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's, it's great to have something, right? If that happens to us. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shout outs. We had new support from Tara and Rhea Brown. So that's amazing. We really appreciate it.

• 1:43Speaker 02

  Well, Tara and Rhea, thank you so much, and thank you to everyone else that helps support the show. For anyone else that would like to, head over to patreon.com/criminology to get started.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  All right, let's jump into this week's episode, and we're talking about the crimes that were committed by a terrible man named Jeremy Bryan Jones, a convicted rapist and murderer and self-confessed serial killer. His crimes span over a decade, and many of the details of exactly what he did, they're disturbing, they're appalling, but to understand his criminal activities, we need to go all the way back to 1992.

• 2:22Speaker 02

  In early May of that year, Justin Judd and his girlfriend Jennifer Bryan got married. The two met and started dating each other while they were attending high school in Oklahoma, and they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together. After their wedding, they moved into a duplex in Baxter Springs, Kansas, so they could start an independent life together, but still be close to all their friends and family. On May 11th, just nine days after the wedding, things were getting back to normal for the couple. Justin headed out to work at about 6:30 that morning. The job was only five miles away, but he was leaving much later than he intended to. He had overslept. On his rush out the door, he ended up leaving his lunch behind. At around 8:30 or 9:00, Justin called Jennifer at home and asked her to bring his lunch to him.

• 3:06Speaker 02

  She told him she would, but she never showed up. There were a lot of errands she had to run and things she had to do, so it seems that he figured she just got busy and lost track of time, or forgot altogether. Either way, his shift ended at 2:30, and he went straight home.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  When Justin arrived home, he found Jennifer's car was parked in the driveway. The driver's door was open. His lunch was sitting on the passenger seat. This immediately didn't sit well with Justin. It seemed if she had been interrupted during her trip to bring Justin his lunch. He quickly and anxiously made his way into the house and found an unimaginable scene. His young bride, just 20 years old, was lying dead on the floor. It was clear that she had been brutally murdered, and there was blood everywhere. Justin frantically subbed police, who arrived on scene in minutes, and what they found backed up Justin's belief that his wife had been murdered.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Jennifer had been stabbed in the back and chest multiple times. There were small defensive wounds on both of her hands. This was a very vicious assault. The knife actually broke during the attack. The handle came clean off. Whoever killed Jennifer must have taken it with them, because it was not at the crime scene. And investigators never did find the handle. There was a knife missing from the block on the counter, and detectives decided that the murder weapon had come from the Judd's kitchen.

• 4:43Speaker 02

  There were no signs of sexual assault, and nothing was missing from the home. It seemed that whoever killed Jennifer came with murderers or a goal. There were also no signs of forced entry, but that doesn't mean she willingly let anyone inside. Someone may have spotted her outside the house when she was putting Justin's lunch in the car, because investigators found it on the passenger seat, as if she had been getting ready to head to Riverton to drop it off. She could have been chased back into the home. In the 1990s, most homes had a phone in the kitchen. She could have been running to make a call when the killer caught up with her and used what they had nearby, knives from the block on the Judd's kitchen counter. Justin related an incident to police that happened shortly before Jennifer's murder.

• 5:26Speaker 02

  Someone had been trying to get into their home, it was banging on the door. It frightened Jennifer, and she hid behind the couch. We don't really have a lot of details about this incident, like whether the person at the door was saying anything or looking for someone in particular, but due to the timing, it didn't sit well with Justin, and police thought it could be connected to the murder.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  And more, if you know, everything that we talk about, right, on this podcast is scary in one way or another, this one in particular hits close to home for me. You know, I have two girls. Both of them are, you know, in their early twenties. My oldest just got married, is in the process of buying a home. So when we hit these cases where, you know, a victim is around the same age, or in a similar circumstance, it, it hits even harder to me, because I'm thinking, that could be my child. That's a scary thought.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's very frightening and very sad, because this is a young couple starting off their lives together, and they think they have a long journey ahead of them, and it's, it's cut short after just nine days of being married. So very tragic.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  Well, and the other thing that, you know, jumps out to me is, is Justin and the emotions that, you know, he must have been going through, obviously, at the time that he finds Jennifer, but then even after that, right? At what point does, you know, the guilt sink in? Because you know it's going to. You know, does he have thoughts that, you know, if only I hadn't asked her to bring the lunch? Or, you know, those types of things, which normally, you know, they're not true, but how do people keep them from kind of sinking in? Because they're just going to, there's no way around it.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's probably some survivor's guilt that if he was home and didn't go to work that day, or maybe if he had devated at all, maybe something could have changed this outcome, and it's probably something that's stuck with him.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Police asked Jennifer's family if they had any idea who might want to harm her, and they told police that they believed Jennifer had a stalker, and it was the stalker who killed her. Justin, too, believed that someone was obsessed with Jennifer, and that their marriage sent this person over the edge into a blind rage. It could be a complete coincidence, but the crime scene may back that theory up a bit. Jennifer was stabbed nine separate times, one for each day she had been married. Or maybe it would have been a higher number. If the knife handle hadn't broken off, it could mean nothing, or it could mean everything.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  If investigators could find the right suspect, then maybe they would be able to figure out why she was killed. If the number of stab wounds did intentionally correspond to the number of days since the wedding, it could have also been someone who was obsessed with Justin and not Jennifer. The amount of stab wounds, at the very least, seemed to indicate that it could have been a crime of passion. If the killer was a woman, it could help explain why there were no signs of sexual assault. It might also explain why Jennifer wasn't more on guard when she was home alone, especially considering that scary incident where someone was trying to get inside.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  But no sign of sexual assault didn't rule out a man as Jennifer's killer. He could have had that as a goal, but once she had been killed, the plan possibly changed. The priority may have become getting away from the scene without being spotted by a witness, rather than fulfilling their fantasy.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  But Justin had a name to share with police. He suspected his friend, 18-year-old Jeremy Bryan Jones. He'd always felt that Jones had a thing for Jennifer. Justin knew Jones had a violent streak, too. Jones and his girlfriend stayed with Justin when they moved from Oklahoma to Baxter Springs. They argued all the time, and most of the arguments ended with Jones hitting or otherwise harming his girlfriend. Justin called the cops more than once, but Jones' girlfriend refused to press charges. After Jennifer's murder, investigators brought him in for questioning, but they didn't feel that there was enough evidence to be able to arrest him. He denied any involvement in Jennifer's murder or interest in her romantically. He and his girlfriend ended up breaking up shortly after he was questioned.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  Jones left Baxter Springs and ended up moving around often, working odd jobs as he could land them.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  So this Jones guy seemed promising to police. And it had to say a lot about him that his own friend suspected. Jones was not exactly a squeaky clean guy before Jennifer's murder. He actually showed signs of trouble when he was a young child, becoming socially withdrawn and aggressive and refusing to apply himself in school. He pretty much kept to himself, though that was mostly because other people just really didn't want to have anything to do with him. He started using drugs and became an alcoholic when he was still in high school. He was expelled from two different schools over it and didn't go on to graduate.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  But he was more popular during his later school years, particularly with young girls. This led to a pretty big ego. And according to the Atlanta Constitution, Jones once told someone he could, quote, "talk the panties off a nun." This is a very violent guy. Before he was expelled from high school, he was arrested for assaulting another student and beating up his mother in the process. The charges ended up being dropped, which, as we'll see, is a common theme with Jones. And I'll be honest with you, Mor, if that's a common theme that I see, not just in the cases that we do, but I think I've said it before.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  I watch a lot of, like, police body cam videos and things like that on YouTube. And always at the end of it, they tell you what happened to the person. And you can have people that just do horrible things. And at the end of it, you're shocked at what the punishment actually was.

• 12:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, some people seem to be like Teflon and they can get away with stuff and have troubling histories of being involved with different crimes. And somehow they don't wind up doing time for it. How many times have we talked about cases where they're out when they should have been behind bars and they do other terrible stuff?

• 12:32Speaker 01

  And in those situations, my thought is always, you know, what are you kind of telling that person? Yes, you've done terrible things, but we're going to give you a slap on the wrist. So what does that mean moving forward? You know, where's the deterrence? I think for a lot of these people, there just isn't any. And they believe that they can continue to do what they want. And even if they're caught, okay, it's just not going to be that big a deal. I think that's a bad precedent. I really do.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, when you see a pattern of someone doing this over and over again, and there's no punishment, what stops them from doing it again?

• 13:16Speaker 01

  And actually, I think you just hit on maybe one of the biggest things. It's not always the first time, right? Somebody gets in trouble. It can be the sixth, seventh, eighth time. And still, nothing really happens to them. It's almost like, you know, why are we not taking into account all of these previous incidents? And we're seeing a pattern here, so we have to step up the punishment. But a lot of times, it just doesn't happen.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  In 1995, Jones was charged with rape, but was released on bail. And he took the opportunity to flee the area. In 1996, he was charged with sexually assaulting a woman in Oklahoma. He was also hit with a charge of unlawful possession of methamphetamine. While he was in custody, another woman contacted investigators and informed them that he had held her at gunpoint during an assault. Authorities moved forward with prosecuting the drug charge, and Jones was sentenced to two years in an Oklahoma prison. When he was released on parole after less than a year, authorities decided to charge him with the sexual assault. Sadly, as was so often the case, the victims were both too afraid to testify against him, so the charges ended up being reduced.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  This led to a sentence of five years of probation with no jail time. Jones was also ordered to see a psychiatrist and give a DNA sample. He refused to keep up with requirements, preferring to just leave the area instead.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  In 2000, two more women came forward and claimed that Jones sexually assaulted them. Since he was on probation, this was obviously a huge violation. So his probation status was revoked and an arrest warrant was issued. But as usual, he decided to flee the area. Around the same time, he met a woman in a Joplin, Missouri bar, who was very sympathetic to the sob story he gave her about the system being unfair and the deck being stacked against him. He lived with her for a while and eventually was able to pay 50 bucks for permission and the documents he would need to use her son's identity.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  Her son was behind bars, so he wasn't really using it at the time. So when Jones got to Tuscaloosa, Alabama in December of 2000, he started going by the name John Paul Chapman. He didn't stay in Tuscaloosa long. He found his way to Mobile, where he ended up living with a man named Mark Bentley and his family. They got along well together until Jones started doing more and more drugs. One friend told the Atlanta Constitution that "the monster came out when he was on meth." Eventually, they were forced to kick him out.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  In May of 2002, Jones made his way to Georgia. He stayed with Craig Baxter, a man he met at a motel in Mobile just two months earlier. Craig, who was from Douglasville, was in the Mobile area for work when Jones walked up to him and started a conversation. They became friends. Craig Baxter's wife, Jan, told the Atlanta Constitution that at the time, she was feeling uneasy about Jones. She said he kept weird hours and was gone a lot at night. The Backsters ended up kicking Jones out when he stopped paying rent and his behavior became too erratic due to drug use. Jones was still living in Georgia on Halloween when 38-year-old Tina Mayberry was attacked outside of Gibson's Restaurant and Lounge in Douglasville.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  Tina, dressed up as Betty Boop, was leaving the bar and walking to her car when someone stabbed her multiple times. She ran back into the tavern for help, but it was too late. She died two hours later. We'll talk more about Tina's murder later, but it's important to know that Jones went to Gibson's often, and friends knew he was there that Halloween. He wasn't just in the state or the city the night she was killed. He was at the very same establishment where she was murdered.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  In early 2003, Jones assaulted a woman he brought home from a local bar. The friends he was staying with noticed how quickly the woman left, but they didn't really think anything of it until the police called looking for Jones. According to the Atlanta Constitution, despite claims that he tried to strangle and rape the woman, his friend John McIntosh, who he was staying with at the time, said he vouched for him, and nothing came of the woman's accusation. John, a neighbor of the Backsters, who took Jones in after he was kicked out of their home, actually got Jones a job at his workplace, Young Refinery.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  To be fair, Jones, still using the name John Paul Chapman, passed a background check when he applied for the job. He ended up being a welder for the company. McIntosh's wife, Carrie, never liked Jones and said he would say derogatory things about women, about putting them in their place, about smacking them down. While living with McIntosh in Douglasville, Jones met a woman named Vicki Freeman at his regular spot, Gibson's. They started dating and moved into an apartment together in Villa Rica, Georgia. Vicki Freeman told the Atlanta Constitution that Jones, who was still living as Chapman at the time,

• 18:45Speaker 01

  was a kind, gentle, and very loving person who always put her first and always thought of her. But other women continued to catch his attention. Losing weight on your own can feel like a fight you keep losing. Weight Loss by Hers offers access to the FDA-approved Wegovy pill and the Wegovy pen. Wegovy is the first ever GLP-1 weight loss medication available in a pill. And it also comes as a pen, so you've got options. With Wegovy, you can lose up to 20% of your body weight. People lost an average of 14% body weight at 64 weeks in a clinical trial of Wegovy alongside diet and exercise. To get started with Wegovy, just go to forhers.com

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• 20:16Speaker 01

  So more of, you know, we've talked about what type of guy Jeremy Bryan Jones was. He wasn't a good guy. He got in trouble quite a bit. There's no doubt that he committed a number of crimes against women. And a lot of people said he had very negative feelings towards women, and he actually voiced those opinions. But here you have a woman in Vicki Freeman, who said, you know, he was a kind, gentle, loving person, always thought of her,

• 20:55Speaker 01

  put her first. It's such a dichotomy of who, you know, we know this guy was at the time. Now, did he really feel that way about Vicki? Was he putting on an act? I don't know. It's also amazing to me that, you know, this guy is taken in by a number of people who he doesn't really know that well. He meets them at a bar or some other place. One of them actually helps him get a job. But a big part of this is him using someone else's identification and information, right? John Paul Chapman. Well, that's going to make

• 21:39Speaker 01

  it quite a bit easier to get a job, to dodge law enforcement, because he is wanted at this point in time, I think from a couple of different states.

• 21:52Speaker 02

  There's no question that wherever this guy went, he left a trail of people that, you know, had kicked him out, had cut ties with him, had seen a different side of him. But somehow, this Vicki Freeman was taken in by him, you know, and it's definitely interesting, as you mentioned, if you get like 19 people out of 20 that say this person was a scumbag, but the 20th person says, no, he was kind and gentle and loving. You know, I wonder, is that because that person has been duped? Or are they so hoping to see the best in someone that they just overlook some of these qualities? It's definitely interesting to think about.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  And, and the other thing that really jumps out at me is you have these guys who are kind of befriending Jones. But all of these people's wives get the worst feeling about him. And I think that's pretty telling, because obviously, we know they were spot on.

• 22:56Speaker 02

  And I think that just goes to show that when you have a gut instinct and you get bad vibes from somebody, sometimes you have to pay attention to that. In October 2003, Jones was arrested for disorderly conduct after exposing himself to a young neighbor in the complex named Brittany Godfrey. On multiple occasions, once her mother had left for work, leaving 18-year-old Brittany alone in the apartment, Jones would show up and try to get in. Brittany told the Atlanta Constitution, one day he'd be at the front door, the next day the back. She and her mother also discovered something terrifying. Outside of Brittany's room near her window, they found a box containing rope, roll of tape, and binoculars. It's important to note that Jones told investigators in

• 23:41Speaker 02

  Georgia that he was John Paul Chapman, but he couldn't lie about his fingerprints. He thought this would be the end for him. But the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, the national database used by the FBI, didn't flag his prints for whatever reason. He was released with a newfound confidence.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  And Jones was actually arrested three different times in Georgia while he was living as John Chapman. Each time, the database missed that his fingerprints matched those of a fugitive. This glaring mistake, called a glitch, actually made Jones feel unstoppable. Every time he got caught for something, he wondered if his time was up, if he'd be made to face the charges he was running from. Instead, he would be released. No one was the wiser to his real identity. So why would he stop when he was always able to get away with it? According to the LA Times, the FBI acknowledged that law enforcement lost

• 24:44Speaker 01

  an opportunity to prevent future criminal activity by this individual due to this error. Now, the error was identified. The database ended up making a duplicate file because the prints were run with a new name. Jones's fingerprints were uploaded to the system as Chapman. So instead of coming back with identified prints from someone with a different name, it just made a new file, putting Jones's fingerprints with the name John Chapman. Once this file existed, the prints wouldn't flag a match for the false identity due to this

• 25:24Speaker 01

  duplicate file. So the system, you know, was fed prints with the name Chapman, and it just kind of ran with it, unfortunately. The Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, commonly referred to as AFIS, has since been mostly replaced with a different system called Next Generation Identification. So all this time, Jones had been slipping through the cracks, and eventually, he started to show Vicki Freeman, the person who believed in him, his true colors. According to the Atlanta Constitution, she once called the

• 26:03Speaker 01

  police because she was scared he was going to hurt her really bad. Like in so many relationships where domestic violence is involved, Vicki decided not to pursue any further action. No charges were pressed. Jones, aka Chapman, faced no consequences. And we know this happens, and it's happened, you know, frequently over the years. There are a lot of reasons for it. You know, I, I think in many cases, Morph, people are scared. You know, they're going through a traumatic situation. They're scared to pursue it because they don't have

• 26:43Speaker 01

  that guarantee that something is really going to happen to this person. And if it doesn't, what does that mean for them?

• 26:52Speaker 02

  And if Vicki was afraid enough to call the police, saying that he might hurt her really bad, then what might he do if, you know, she pressed charges, you know? So I totally understand her fear and, and choosing not to pursue things, making them worse for her. On Valentine's Day in 2004, 47-year-old Catherine Collins was found dead in a vacant lot near the French Quarter in New Orleans. She had been stabbed. All we really know about her is that she was originally from California and had been doing sex work in New Orleans. Just a month later, in March, 16-year-old Amanda Ann Greenwell disappeared from her residence in Douglas County, Georgia. She was last seen at Arbor Village, a mobile

• 27:36Speaker 02

  home park in Douglasville, where Jones and his girlfriend Vicki Freeman were also living at the time. Amanda's body was found in the woods just a month later. She had been strangled. Her neck was broken, and she had been stabbed. Amanda's father, Rick, knew Vicki and had spoken to her multiple times. This makes it seem likely that Jones knew Amanda, too. In April 2004, 38-year-old Patrice Andress disappeared from her beauty salon in Forsyth County, Georgia. The nature of the business somewhat hindered evidence collection. Sheriff Ted Paxton told the Atlanta Constitution, "In some places, you can collect hair samples as evidence, but my God, it's a hair salon. There was hair everywhere. There were fingerprints

• 28:18Speaker 02

  on top of fingerprints. Just the setting itself was one of our biggest obstacles."

• 28:23Speaker 01

  In September of 2004, Jones decided to move back to Mobile so that he could try to make easy money working construction. After Hurricane Ivan blew through the area, on September 17th, he called Vicki Freeman and told her he was turning his life around. Still in Georgia, Vicki says she told him to get a place to live, and she would soon be joining him. But just days after that call, Jones ended up in police custody, though authorities still thought he was John Paul Chapman. That's because on September 18th, the day after that phone call, authorities responded to reports of a mobile home on

• 29:04Speaker 01

  fire in Turnerville. Inside the burning trailer, 45-year-old Lisa Nichols was dead. It wasn't the smoke or the flames that killed her, though. She had been sexually assaulted and shot in the head three times. It turns out that when Jones called Vicki to tell her the news about getting a job in Mobile, he was using the phone in Lisa Nichols' trailer. She had the unfortunate luck to live next to Mark Bentley, Jones's friend and former employer. Jones had unexpectedly arrived on the 16th, and Bentley didn't turn him away. A hurricane was coming. After all, the Bentleys weren't going to stay in their mobile home

• 29:49Speaker 01

  during the storm. They were going to a, a family member's home. But Jones had nowhere else to go, so they let him stay.

• 29:58Speaker 02

  Alone in their home, Jones had time to go through their closets where he found a gun. When the Bentleys returned home after the storm, nothing seemed odd, although the hurricane had wiped out electricity in the area. Lisa Nichols came home too. Jones noticed her and asked Mark Bentley about her. This is how he learned that she lived alone right next door. The next day, Jones ended up alone. Kim Bentley was gone with her kids and Mark was out buying burgers. Due to damage from the hurricane, not many places were open and the lines of places that were, were extremely long. So Jones had some time. He grabbed the gun from the closet and took a six pack of beer next door to Lisa's.

• 30:39Speaker 02

  He broke in, sexually assaulted her, shot her, and then used gasoline, which he got from cans at the Bentley's home to start a fire. By the time Mark Bentley got home, Jones was just stepping out of the shower. But at around 10:00 PM, Mark caught Jones outside with gas cans. He claimed that he was putting gas into a four wheeler to take a night ride, but Mark told him to knock it off and go inside. The next morning, Lisa's body was found by family members who ran to the Bentley's for help. Jones said a strange thing. He had learned from an uncle who fought in Vietnam, that there was a method they used to get rid of bodies. They would douse them in gasoline and set them on fire. Hours later, Jones left the Bentley home and he didn't come back.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  So more for just seeing, you know, more examples of just how vicious Jeremy Brian Jones is. And he's also very opportunistic. I think you'd have to say that. The other thing is, he has a habit of kind of blowing town, right? As soon as something happens, that sticks out to me as well.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it certainly looks suspicious that the next door neighbor's murdered, her house is set on fire. And this guy, Jeremy Brian Jones, has flown the coop. And the night before, his, the place where he was staying, the guy saw him with gas cans. You know, it doesn't paint a picture of someone that's innocent. It paints just the opposite picture.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  I'm also quite surprised that this guy let him back in the home. I get it, you know, there, this big hurricane, Ivan was coming and all of that, but you know, we talked earlier about the, the wife having real suspicions and real negative thoughts about this guy. I did, I just know from myself, if there was someone that my wife did not like and told me that and was suspicious of, that wouldn't be a person that I would be letting inside my home. But I get it, they were leaving, he didn't have any place else to go. They probably felt bad for him, but.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  And I wonder if Jones used that to his advantage to try and calm people or play on their sympathies to, to get his way and, and make him in a better position to be able to commit crimes like this.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think he did, as a lot of habitual criminals do, right? We can talk about people's intelligence or IQ scores and all of that, but a lot of these people are cunning when it comes to committing their crimes. You know, like I said, being opportunistic, looking for the right scenario or the situation that they feel is going to be beneficial for them. I think in those areas, you know, they are often quite, I don't know if intelligent

• 33:54Speaker 01

  is the word, but street smart, street savvy, whatever you want to call it. I think a lot of criminals are good at that part. Now they might not be able to pass a standardized test, but when it comes to that, they show some smarts. On September 21st, Jones, as John Chapman, was arrested and held without bail on charges of capital murder. A can of beer with his fingerprints on it had been recovered from Lisa's home. Jones's true identity was revealed when he made phone calls to his mother and close friends from the Mobile County Jail.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  Investigators tracked them all down and interrogated them about who he was and where he had been. He was also charged with the murders of Amanda Ann Greenwell and Catherine Collins. When questioned by detectives, Jones ended up confessing to crimes that weren't even on their radar, going back to the 1990s. He even confessed to a murder that authorities believed was an accident. On September 11th, 1999, 19-year-old Justin Hutchings died in Pitcher, Oklahoma. His death was determined to have been caused by a large overdose of drugs.

• 35:17Speaker 01

  But according to Jones, they met on the street for a drug deal, drank alcohol together, and then he intentionally injected Justin with a lethal amount of drugs called a hotshot.

• 35:31Speaker 02

  Another crime Jones copped to happened in February 1996. On February 21st of that year, authorities were called to the scene of a mobile home on fire in Delaware County, Oklahoma. 30-year-old Daniel Oakley and 41-year-old Doris Harris were dead inside. They were clearly dead before the fire started. They had both been shot. The same morning, a local man named Danny Ray Honeycutt was pulled over in Daniel's car. He was clearly impaired and appeared to be fleeing the area in a stolen car, so he was arrested. Investigators weren't able to tie him to the murders though. He had an alibi that was confirmed and there were unidentified finger and palm prints in Daniel's car. Honeycutt wasn't charged in the murders, but did serve time on a drug charge.

• 36:15Speaker 02

  Jones told detectives he was responsible for the murders of Daniel Oakley and Doris Harris. The unidentified prints in Daniel's car, however, did not match Jones.

• 36:25Speaker 01

  So Jones is caught, right? They finally figure out his true identity and then all of a sudden they start tying him to other murders. But then he begins confessing to murders that they hadn't tied him with, some of which they didn't even think were murders at all. And I always wonder about that more if, I mean, normally I feel like people have a bigger number of murders than what they're willing to admit to. I think that's, that happens in most cases, but every now and then you see a person who

• 37:10Speaker 01

  once they're caught, wants to take credit for a large number of murders, some of which they probably aren't even involved with. And I don't understand the reasoning behind it.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is an odd phenomenon when people, instead of trying to distance themselves or cover up crimes, they are copping to other crimes that they probably weren't even involved with. And that maybe speaks to their need for attention, maybe they're narcissist, they want some kind of power and they want the police to know who they are. So they just start randomly blurting out crimes that they may have had nothing to do with.

• 37:56Speaker 01

  And I think the, the most famous example is, is Henry Lee Lucas, but I look at him a little differently. You know, he, he wasn't going anywhere. He wasn't getting out. And at a certain point, you know, he just started confessing to all these murders, many of which he couldn't possibly have done, but he was getting things for doing it, right? Whether it was milkshakes or just kind of the, the adoration of law enforcement. They almost looked at him as though he was doing this great thing for clearing up a lot of their unsolved cases.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  So I kind of understand why he did what he did. There was no downside. He was getting something out of doing it. But for a lot of these other people who do it, I don't get it because what are they getting out of it other than maybe what you just talked about? A sense of power or they want people to think they committed way more murders than they did. I, I just, I still don't understand it.

• 39:11Speaker 02

  It's one thing if they're in prison for life and they're not going anywhere and they're bored and they do it to mess with police, there's, it's not going to affect them. They're not going anywhere, as you said, but this is somebody that they're, he's still free and, you know, has a chance to try and defend himself. And here he's tying himself to more potential crimes.

• 39:34Speaker 01

  Later that year at 5:30 a.m. on December 30th, 1999, authorities responded to a 911 call about a mobile home fire in Welch, Oklahoma. Inside the home, Kathy Freeman was dead. She had been shot before the fire started. Her husband Danny Freeman and their 16-year-old daughter Ashley were missing. Ashley's friend Laura Bible, who had spent the night, was also missing. Investigators initially assumed that Danny had killed Kathy, set the home on fire and fled with both of the missing girls. That is, until his remains were also found badly burnt.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  He too had been shot before the fire started. Another more thorough search of the home turned up no sign of Ashley or Laura. They're still missing to this day. Jones claimed that he had killed the Freeman, drove Ashley and Laura across state lines to Kansas, where he sexually assaulted one of them before he shot and killed them. He told investigators that he had dumped both bodies down abandoned mine shafts in Kansas. All over a drug den. The Freeman and Bible families disagreed on the truthfulness of Jones' confession. Some of them thought he was telling the truth about his involvement,

• 41:02Speaker 01

  but doing so for selfish reasons and withholding the names of accomplices. Other family members thought he was making everything up. And Jones is not the only convicted killer. To have confessed to the murder of the Freeman family, Tommy Lynn Sells, a convicted serial killer, also once claimed to have been responsible. In the end, neither of them were determined to have any involvement. Warren Phil Welch, David Pennington and Ronnie Busek were named as the real perpetrators. Busek, the only suspect still living, was convicted. Witnesses claimed to have seen multiple Polaroid photos of Ashley and Laura

• 41:48Speaker 01

  held captive after their abduction. And this was a big case. The Freeman family murders, the disappearance of Ashley and Laura. But you have two really bad guys. Cause we've talked about how bad Jeremy Bryan Jones was. Tommy Lynn Sells is one of the worst serial killers that I've ever covered, Morf. Now, he's not the most prolific, but some of the things he did are unspeakable. He was one of the worst human beings to ever walk this planet.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  I think for investigators in, in the Freeman Bible murders, you know, it may have been easy to pin it on one of these two guys that was confessing. But I think they wanted the truth and they kept the investigation going and didn't just, you know, take what these guys had to say for granted. And luckily that was the case because they found the real perpetrators.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm with you. I mean, I think it's, it's a good thing that that's the way it happened because, you know, let's face it, it would be easy to pin some of these crimes on these convicted killers who we know are more than capable of it. Now, again, why they're choosing to confess to these types of crimes? I don't really know, but it would be pretty easy for investigators to just kind of wrap everything up, right? And say, okay, this is who did it. But luckily they didn't do that in this case. And they ultimately determined who the real perpetrators were.

• 43:32Speaker 02

  This is where things come full circle. Because we started out this episode talking about the murder of Jennifer Judd in Kansas, and how her husband suspected Jeremy Bryan Jones early on. Jones admitted to police that he had indeed murdered Jennifer. One neighbor living in the mobile home park in Douglasville recalls a scary situation with Jones. He once knocked on the door of Brian and Andrea Christensen. Andrea answered and Jones asked to use the phone. Suddenly he said something lewd and grabbed her by the throat and shoved her up against the wall. To some people, this seems to be how the murder of Jennifer Judd may have played out. Jones could have waited until Justin was at work. They were friends and he had lived with him once. So surely he knew his work schedule, at least somewhat.

• 44:16Speaker 02

  And we know he would wait until Brittany Godfrey's mother went to work to start getting inside the apartment. So knowing Justin was at work and Jennifer was likely to be alone, he could have knocked and claimed he needed to make a call. Maybe she told him to make it quick. Maybe she felt like saying no to Justin's friend would be rude. We don't know. But it would explain how someone like Jones could get inside when she was alone without leaving any sign of forced entry.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  But Jones wasn't done yet. More confessions came. He also confessed to the October 2002 murder of 38-year-old Tina Maybear in Douglasville. He was very detailed, telling police, she whipped my ass, which lines up with the information investigators gathered from the scene. Tina did fight hard for her life. Jones also confessed to abducting and killing beauty salon owner Patrice Enders, who we discussed earlier. He claimed that he accidentally stumbled upon her salon one day when he was lost. He asked her for directions, which he truly needed.

• 45:24Speaker 01

  But when he realized he had an opportunity to harm Patrice with no one around, he took it. He threatened her with a knife and stole all the money in the cash register before forcing her into his car. Jones claimed to have left Patrice's body in a creek. Investigators scoured the area he directed them to in the woods, 65 miles from the salon, but they found nothing. Mobile County Sergeant Mitch McCray thinks that Jones was lying about being lost the day Patrice disappeared. Many now believe that he was lying about being involved in her murder at all.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Because her body was found after he confessed and the location didn't line up with any of his details. On December 6th, 2005, her body was found in Dawson County.

• 46:20Speaker 02

  So it seems Jones's claim that he killed salon owner Patrice Enders and disposed of her body doesn't seem to line up with the facts since her body was found elsewhere. He also confessed to killing Lisa Nichols, who we mentioned was found burning or trailer. Though he told multiple stories, including one version where they did drugs together and that killed her, but he was so scared by it all that he shot her already dead body and set her on fire. Jones also told detectives he killed five sex workers from Atlanta, one from New Orleans and three from Mobile. He didn't remember their names or any other details and said he left their bodies in a swamp. It seemed as if Jones was a full-fledged serial killer.

• 47:01Speaker 02

  The only problem is he eventually recanted his confessions and claimed he was innocent. He told the Atlanta Constitution, one day I'll be a free man. I'll write me a book and laugh my ass off. He said that the interest in him got him better treatment. So he continued to play along, saying, when you take everything a man wants, I'll do everything possible to get what I want, explaining why he would falsely confess to crimes he wasn't responsible for. Vicki Freeman told investigators that Jones was with her when Catherine Collins and Patrice Enders were killed.

• 47:33Speaker 01

  Mobile's Assistant District Attorney, John Furman, thinks that Jones was trying to get out of trouble in the murder of Lisa Nichols by giving all of these false confessions. So that anything he may have said that pointed to him as the murderer looked like it was yet another lucky guess. He may have been worried because he confessed to Lisa's murder in a phone call to a friend. Since he was in jail at the time, the call was recorded and could be used as evidence, even if he didn't speak to investigators. This could be why he chose to confess to two crimes where a trailer was broken into and the bodies were set on fire.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  Describing multiple similar crimes makes it seem like it's his MO. But if he can prove he didn't really commit just one, there would be doubt for all of them. His defense attorney Habib Yazdi didn't buy any of the confessions and told the Atlanta Constitution, he'll talk to anyone and confess to anything if they'll let him talk to his mother and his girlfriend for hours. He's getting fancy lunches with crab claws and dinners and drinks. And Morf, we spend some time talking about, okay, why would somebody confess? Again, there is the element of, okay, well, they're getting something for it.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  In this case, okay, maybe he's getting extra perks, right? He's getting to talk to his mother, his girlfriend for longer periods of time than he would have normally. He's also getting fancy food, food he wouldn't get if he wasn't making these confessions. But to me, the most interesting piece of it is to confess to crimes that maybe you didn't do to muddy the waters in crimes that you did commit. And that's kind of a fascinating angle in this whole thing.

• 49:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's one of the things in this case that really jumps out to me is why someone would go through these lengths to attach himself to cases. Now, if you take him at face value and he was doing it to get himself better treatment or benefits him in some way, then yeah, that, that could explain it. Sort of like the Henry Lee Lucas situation. But the problem for me is I don't really believe this guy at all. I think he be, could be mixing in some facts with some fiction. And, you know, in the end, I don't know what cases he's actually connected to and which ones he isn't.

• 50:23Speaker 01

  Right, but that might be the whole goal. You know, if you confess to a couple of crimes that it can be proven you didn't do. Well, then does it cast doubt on other crimes where you don't have the same alibi? But it's the same MO, you know, it's similar situation. Does it cast doubt on those as well? And again, like I said earlier, it might be a brilliant move. And whether you consider some of these people intelligent or not, you'd have to say that that's, it's pretty cunning. If that's what his thinking was.

• 51:06Speaker 02

  Jones went on trial in 2005 for the murder of Lisa Nichols. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. The jury recommended it and Judge Charles Graddick agreed it was the right decision. Jones had hoped to receive life in prison because he didn't believe he would have very long to live. He had been diagnosed with hepatitis C, but claimed he never received any treatment for it. Due to the conviction in Lisa's case, the murder charges for killing Amanda Ann Greenwell and Catherine Collins were dropped. Evidence was not as solid in either case, and he was already on death row. Trying him in these cases would only be costly, give him more attention and better conditions than he would be in if they just left him alone.

• 51:47Speaker 02

  There was also a chance that any not guilty verdict could be used to strengthen an appeal regarding his conviction for Lisa's murder. Mobile's Assistant District Attorney John Furman told the Atlanta Constitution that Jones could be a low rent Ted Bundy. Just like Ted Bundy, Jones looks very different in many of the photos of him. That seems to be a pretty common trait of serial killers with a lot of confirmed victims. They're almost chameleon like, just blending right in. And just like Bundy, he was somehow able to charm multiple women into letting their guard down around him. John Furman went on to say, otherwise reasonably smart women somehow find him interesting. He doesn't look like a monster.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  And that's a big advantage, right? With some of these serial killers, you know, not everybody looks like Henry Lee Lucas or Otis Tool, or, you know, name some of these serial killers who you would just look at and turn around and walk the other way because they're kind of scary looking. Ted Bundy wasn't scary looking. Jeremy Bryan Jones isn't really scary looking. And to me, those are the scariest people, right? They look relatively normal. They could be like any other neighbor you've ever had.

• 53:10Speaker 02

  And I think that's how come some of these people rack up so many victims because they do get people to let their guard down. They do blend in, they don't look like monsters sometimes. That, you know, the creepy person that you try to avoid, they, they look like someone maybe you can trust. And in some cases, they have an established connection with, you know, some of these women's husbands, that kind of thing. So they know them in some instances. So sometimes maybe, you know, in the case of this guy Jones, maybe he could use that to his advantage to get them to just let their guard down for that, that split second.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  The murders of Amanda Ann Greenwell, Catherine Collins, Jennifer Judd, Patrice Endress, Daniel Oakley and Doris Harris are still technically unsolved. Ashley Freeman and Laura Bible are still missing. Eventually, Justin Judd remarried and had children. He never forgot about his first wife, Jennifer. In fact, becoming a father gave him a different perspective on Jennifer's murder. He told the Atlanta Constitution, I have a whole new sense of what her father went through. Adding, I can't imagine what it was like for him. Sadly, no one was ever charged in Jennifer's murder.

• 54:30Speaker 01

  Jeremy Bryan Jones, now 53 years old, is still behind bars at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama. We know that he's a violent man and is responsible for a lot of terrible and violent crimes. Unfortunately, we don't really know just how many. And the sad part is we may never know. You know, Morph, as we wrap this one up, no doubt, Jones was a, a bad guy. I think he preyed on women. I think he was very opportunistic. But as is the case with, you know, quite a few serial killers.

• 55:13Speaker 01

  Do investigators ever really know the full extent of their crimes? And my thought is very often they don't. You know, with this Jones guy, there's a lot of people here whose murders he could be responsible for, but we don't know. I think they could have taken him to trial for a couple of them, but they explained it, right? He was already on death row and taking him to trial and, and maybe getting a not guilty verdict could have worked against him. I understand that.

• 55:53Speaker 01

  There are often times when prosecutors, they have to make a calculated decision. It may not be great for the family, but ultimately it might be the correct call to not mess up what they already have against the guy. And what more can you get than having a guy on death row?

• 56:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I understand not wanting to take the chance that somehow he slips out of prison and winds up out on the streets, you know, he gets an appeal somehow. But I think also if you're any of the family members of the people we've talked about in this episode, the, all the various victims that may be tied to this guy, there's got to be a part of them that wants to know, hey, was Jeremy Bryan Jones responsible for my loved one's death? And, you know, I wonder if that is something they, they often think about.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guarantee it is. And it probably doesn't set well, right? With some of them that he wasn't tried and I would completely understand that. But I just think with a guy like Jeremy Bryan Jones, you know, you're looking at a real predator. It almost seems like these guys, you know, they're constantly looking for opportunities to do these really bad things. And I go back to, you know, what we talked about earlier, which was crimes against women and how, in my opinion, he really wasn't held accountable for those crimes.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  And how much of that kind of emboldened him to just keep upping the ante? And I would argue that probably quite a bit. But that's it for our episode on Jeremy Bryan Jones. As always, if you love the show, but you haven't done so yet, take a minute, leave us a review, a rating. Also, keep telling your friends. Word of mouth about the podcast really goes a long way.

• 58:07Speaker 02

  If you want to find us on social media, we're on every major platform. Just search for Criminology Podcast on your favorite. For news about the show, old episodes and more, head over to our website, criminologypodcast.com. And if you want to join a discussion group about the show and the cases we discuss, head over to Facebook and search for Criminology Podcast Discussion and Fan.

• 58:29Speaker 01

  So that's it for another episode of Criminology. But Morph and I will be back with all of you next Saturday night with a brand new episode. So until then, for Mike.

• 58:39Speaker 02

  And Morph.

• 58:40Speaker 01

  We'll talk to you next week.

• 58:41Speaker 02

  Take care, everyone.