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A CHARMING KILLER: THAT'S WHAT POLICE CALL A SUSPECT IN A 4-STATE CRIME SPREE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ^ | 19 March 2005 | Doug Nurse

Posted on 03/20/2005 6:57:42 PM PST by MeneMeneTekelUpharsin

He is a charmer. Bright, articulate and handsome. But authorities say he's also a deadly predator with a penchant for slender brunettes. His girlfriend, Vicki Freeman, 45, says police have falsely tagged Jeremy Bryan Jones a serial killer and that authorities are piling on, trying to clear their books of unsolved murders "for brownie points." "He's a wonderful man," she said. "He's caring, considerate, loving. He's gentle." She recalls the first time she saw him, almost two years ago at Gipson's Restaurant and Lounge in Douglasville. She said she noticed his good looks as soon as she and her friend walked in.

After they sat down, he approached their table and told them they were beautiful and that he was just going to admire them from afar. But in a few minutes he came back. Freeman said she didn't remember the conversation. "I was just lost in him," she said. Police say Jones' smooth talk often hides the evil within. Jones, 31, sits in an Alabama jail cell without bond, charged with three brutal killings, including that of a Douglas County teenager who was stabbed and had a broken neck, another woman who was stabbed, and a third who was shot to death. Forsyth County officials are focusing on Jones in the disappearance of hairdresser Patrice Endres, 38, last April.

Authorities from Oklahoma, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia and California are questioning Jones in up to 20 unsolved murder cases going back to 1999. Even the relationship with his new love has a dark side. Freeman reportedly told authorities Jones was physically abusive but that they always made up. In a newspaper interview, she denied he ever struck her. "What happened between us is our business," she said. Jones only admits to lying to Freeman about using a false name. "Every night I made love to her, I knew that I needed to tell her, because she was falling in love with this guy John," Jones said tearfully in a published interview. Freeman forgives him for lying, saying she "fell in love with the man, not the name."

Police are certain, however, that her affections are misplaced. "He could be a low-rent Ted Bundy," said John Furman, assistant district attorney in Mobile, referring to the serial killer executed in Florida in 1989. "Otherwise reasonably smart women somehow find him interesting. He doesn't look like a monster. Obviously, Vicki Freeman is playing with fire."

Jones blames meth

Jones grew up in middle-class circumstances in Miami, Okla., where his stepfather was a builder and his mother a housewife. Jones was a senior at Quapaw High School when he dropped out in 1991. Jones told the Daily Oklahoman, based in Oklahoma City, that a decade-long problem with methamphetamine derailed his life. "I was messed up with dope," he said. "People thought I was going to grow up to be president." Unlike many people tagged as serial killers, Jones is suspected of homicides that aren't gratification killings, Furman said. One case of four deaths in Oklahoma may have been a revenge killing for an unpaid debt, said Ottawa County Assistant District Attorney Ben Loring. "He hated people who owed him money," Loring said.

By the time he was 23, he was showing a violent streak. In 1996 he was charged with raping two girlfriends. Those charges were reduced when the victims said they were afraid to testify, Loring said. Jones received a suspended sentence and five years on probation. On Dec. 30, 1999, Danny and Kathy Freeman of Welch, Okla., were shot to death, possibly to settle a drug debt, Loring said. The killer set fire to their mobile home. That same night, their 16-year-old daughter, Ashley Freeman, and her friend Lauria Bible, 16, disappeared. Bible was spending the night at the Freemans' to celebrate her birthday. Jones has not been charged in the Oklahoma slayings. He told authorities he discarded the girls' bodies in a Kansas mine shaft, but he has told the media he didn't do it. The bodies have yet to be recovered.

In 2000 he was accused of raping an ex-girlfriend. He fled and was charged with jumping bail. He went to Mobile for about a year, working as a carpenter under the name John Paul Chapman. He then settled in Douglas County. Jones and Freeman met May 1, 2003, and soon began living together in a mobile home where they paid $125 a month. On Feb. 14, 2004, Katherine Collins, 45, was found stabbed to death in New Orleans. Jones is charged with capital murder in that case, but authorities have declined to divulge why they believe he was involved. They also suspect him in two other New Orleans murders. Last March, 16-year-old Amanda Greenwell, who lived in the same Douglas County trailer park as Jones, disappeared. Her remains were found a month later. She had been stabbed and her neck broken. In December he was charged in her death.

On Oct. 31, 2002, Tina Mayberry, 38, went to Gipson's for a costume party and was fatally stabbed in the parking lot. She staggered back into the nightclub and died after being rushed to a hospital. Then last week, Forsyth County Sheriff Ted Paxton said Jones was suspected in the April 15 disappearance of Patrice Endres, 38, from her remote beauty salon north of Cumming. Paxton declined to say why Jones is a suspect. Freeman said Jones was with her in Douglas County the night Collins was found and was working near Douglasville the day Endres disappeared. Jones returned to Alabama just before Hurricane Ivan hit Sept. 16, hoping for work as a carpenter. On Sept. 18, Lisa Nichols, 45, a neighbor of his employer's, was found slain in her burning mobile home. She had been raped and shot in the head. Jones was arrested Sept. 21 and charged with capital murder in her death.

'He's eager to talk'

Since Jones' arrest in September on the murder charge, investigators from Oklahoma, Georgia, Louisiana and California have traveled to Mobile, hoping to talk to him. And he happily accommodates them. "He's eager to talk," Furman said. Furman speculated that Jones may be making false claims about other homicides to discredit any incriminating statements he made about the Mobile murder case.

Jones' attorney, Habib Yazdi, dismisses anything his client says to authorities. "He will talk to anyone and confess to anything if they'll let him talk to his mother and his girlfriend for hours," Yazdi said. "He's getting fancy lunches with crab claws, and dinners and drinks. Then he'll come back later and say it's all [false]. It doesn't matter." Furman said Jones appeared to enjoy the nationwide media attention, including segments on the "Today" show, CNN and Fox News. Fox's "Current Affair" will dedicate an hourlong show to his case on an upcoming Saturday. Yazdi, appointed by the court to represent Jones, said his client is intelligent and could have been successful at just about anything. "He is a super-smart man," Yazdi said, "If he was trying to be good, he could be a lawyer, or a doctor, or a businessman."


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: charming; killer
What's wrong with this picture?

First, grew up with his "stepfather" .... what happened with his parents' original marriage and why?

Dropped out of school.

Living with girlfriend (not married) and she is 45 while he is 31.

Attorney Habib Yazdi.

Man, is this country coming apart at the seams.

I have taught and am still teaching scores of young men with potential outcomes just like this guy, and no one seems to care. It is a moral problem, plain and simple. However, the PC MSM cannot seem to come to grips with that at all.

1 posted on 03/20/2005 6:57:45 PM PST by MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
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To: MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
?...What's wrong with this picture?

Answer:....this guy is NOT already executed!

/Social Workers?

2 posted on 03/20/2005 7:52:31 PM PST by maestro
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To: MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
However, the PC MSM cannot seem to come to grips with that at all.

They seem to be promulgating it. Could they be part of the leftist agenda to destroy our society? Nah. No way.

3 posted on 03/20/2005 8:49:21 PM PST by Mind-numbed Robot (Not all things that need to be done need to be done by the government.)
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To: MeneMeneTekelUpharsin

Sounds like classic Ann Rule book protagonist. Hope he doesn't get out and kill more. Sheesh!


4 posted on 03/20/2005 9:03:19 PM PST by jwalburg (Those buried included children still clutching toys)
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To: maestro
Answer:....this guy is NOT already executed!

You win the $64,000 prize!

5 posted on 03/21/2005 10:49:00 AM PST by MeneMeneTekelUpharsin (Freedom is the freedom to discipline yourself so others don't have to do it for you.)
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