Inmate convicted of strangling girl, putting body in barrel escapes

LITTLE ROCK—A man serving a 60-year prison term for strangling a teenager and stuffing her body into a barrel later found buried on his brother’s property escaped from an Arkansas prison Monday by walking away from a work crew.

Lloyd Jones, 40, of Lavaca, admitted killing 16-year-old Angela Allen in 2012. He told investigators that after picking up the girl for a rendezvous near the Arkansas River, he became angry when learning her true age. He said he struck her so hard in the chest that she fell into the water.

Allen’s cellphone records included a number for Jones, who registered as a sex offender after a 2001 rape conviction. A week after the girl disappeared, deputies found her body in a blue plastic barrel on Jones’ brother’s property. Dental records confirmed her identity, and an autopsy determined she had been strangled.

Solomon Graves, a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Correction, said guards at the East Arkansas Unit at Brickeys noticed Jones was missing from a work crew sometime around noon Monday.

The 24-year-old Brickeys unit is a maximum-security prison, but some inmate work programs include the use of prisoners in agriculture fields outside the prison walls. Graves said he did not know the nature of the work Jones was assigned to perform, nor its location.

Jones was sentenced to 60 years for Allen’s death, plus 20 years on two child pornography charges and 10 years for one child pornography charge and abuse of a corpse.

Jones said he had met the girl online. Investigators said one of Jones’ girlfriends said that the night Allen disappeared, Jones had returned home muddy.

Prosecutors said authorities made a recording of Jones’ father visiting him in jail before the girl’s body was found. They said that while they were talking, Jones asked, “Did they find her” and said “I panicked—I did it.”