Jurors sentence father to death

Man murdered his five children, dumped bodies

COLUMBIA, S.C. — A South Carolina father was sentenced to death Thursday for killing his five children with his own hands. After they were dead, he drove around with their bodies for nine days before dumping them in garbage bags on the side of an Alabama dirt road.

Timothy Jones Jr. showed no emotion as the jury delivered the verdict after less than two hours of deliberation. The jurors could have sentenced him to life without parole.

The same Lexington County jury convicted Jones of five counts of murder last week in the deaths of his children, ages 1 to 8, in their Lexington home in August 2014.

Prosecutors pushed for a death sentence. Solicitor Rick Hubbard said in his closing argument Thursday that if any jurors had doubts whether Jones deserved the death penalty, all they had to do is consider the five garbage bags where he dumped their bodies in rural Alabama.

But a lawyer for Jones told jurors they alone could show mercy — if not for a father who killed five children with his own hands, then for a family that has seen so much death and still wants to love Jones, even through prison bars.

Jones’ father hung his head in his hands as the verdict was read, and other family members appeared to cry.

Jones is just the second person to be sent to South Carolina’s death row in five years. The state has not executed anyone since 2011 and lacks the drugs to carry out lethal injection.

Hubbard began his closing argument by asking if the jurors had ever heard of a crime more horrendous than what they had listened to over four weeks of testimony .

Jones, 37, has been selfish all his life, trying to break up his father’s second marriage because he wasn’t getting enough attention and controlling his wife’s every decision, Hubbard said.

When his wife left him, Hubbard said, Jones couldn’t stand that his control was over. With custody of his children, the computer engineer with an $80,000-a-year job mistreated any of them who showed any intention of wanting to be with their mother instead of him, Hubbard said.

Jones first killed 6-year-old son Nahtahn in a “white hot rage” after the boy confessed on the phone to his mother — but not to his father — to breaking an electrical outlet, Hubbard said.

Over the next several hours, Jones went and got cigarettes, taking his oldest daughter so she wouldn’t call for help, and leaving the three other children with their brother’s body.

Then he made a decision, just like the one the jury was called upon to make, the prosecutor said.

“He sentenced his kids to death,” Hubbard said.