Jones gets day he’s long wanted

Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, March 29, 2005

It was a day Jerry Bartlett Jones had dreamed about for years.

A jury heard testimony about the bad acts and abusive character of the young man Jones says was likely the one who stabbed his wife, Lee Jones, 41, to death in December 1988.

Witness after witness took the stand to talk about the man, who was 15 at the time and a neighborhood friend of one of Jones’ daughters.

Little or none of the testimony was heard by two previous juries, which both convicted Jones, now 58, of first-degree murder.

Appellate courts both times sent the case back to Snohomish County Superior Court for more evidence about the teenager, giving Jones a third trial. Jones is acting as his own attorney this time around.

Some of the testimony came from men who were friends of the boy in 1988. Some of it came from women who testified that he had physically and emotionally abused them.

It was the kind of testimony Jones had sought to cast the teen in a bad light as the possible intruder who entered the Jones home on Dec. 3, 1988, and attacked Lee Jones as she was preparing to take a bath.

None of the testimony connected the man with the homicide itself, but was intended to attack his character and give the jury reason to doubt that Jones was the killer.

The man whose character was assailed testified earlier in the trial and denied being in the Jones house the night of the killing.

One witness on Tuesday, a woman who dated or lived with the man for four years, said he was “funny and charming and very persistent” when she met him outside a Seattle club 10 years after Lee Jones was killed.

Soon afterward, the physical and emotional abuse started, said the witness, Vondra Champoux. “I was walking on eggshells, and I didn’t know it,” she told the jury. He “was abusive in many ways.”

Significantly, she said he would sometimes make sounds like a tiger growling.

Besides Jerry Jones, the only other person in the Mill Creek-area home at the time of Lee Jones’ death was the couple’s son, Thomas Jones, who was 4 at the time. Thomas Jones earlier described seeing a shadowy figure in his bedroom doorway and hearing growling like a lion or tiger.

Champoux detailed numerous assaults, including one in which the man broke a beer bottle over her head while she was dancing.

He also once pointed out a newspaper article that talked about an unidentified teenager whom Jones had accused of being the killer. The man told her the article referred to him. However, he denied having killed Lee Jones.

Those who knew the man as a teenager described him as a smart aleck, “quick to pop off at the mouth,” witness Johnny Dodson testified. At least in 1988, the teenager wasn’t known for being physically abusive, Dodson said.

“He never kept his mouth shut, and that was his biggest problem,” Dodson said.

Jones is expected to take the witness stand today. Public defender Susan Gaer, who has been Jones’ standby attorney, is expected to question him.

The case could go to the jury on Thursday.