Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 29, 1994 TAG: 9401290216
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DENYSE TANNENBAUM THE POTOMAC NEWS
DATELINE: WOODBRIDGE (AP) LENGTH: Medium
Shawn Jefferson Jones could not master it. A year after he used a hammer to crush a man's skull in a Woodbridge apartment, Jones, tormented by guilt, called Prince William County police and confessed.
Talking at the Prince William-Manassas Regional Jail recently, Jones said he does not question his decision to surrender.
"I turned myself in because it's not right for anybody to take anybody else's life," Jones said. "I could have gotten away with it, but I wasn't getting away with it. And I had to live with it. I still do."
He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Prince William Circuit Court last week and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
This is Jones' account of the events leading up to the murder and the year he lived with the terrible knowledge that threatened to destroy him:
On the Fourth of July weekend in 1992, Jones, in a cocaine- and alcohol-fed rage, grabbed a hammer from his girlfriend and struck Byron Jacobs twice on the head.
Jacobs, a convicted drug dealer, had made sexual comments to Jones about his 8-year-old daughter that night and had propositioned his girlfriend, Jones said.
Earlier in the day, Jones' daughter told him she had been attacked by a 14-year-old boy. She had been assaulted before, and the courts had dealt leniently with the offenders, Jones said. As a father, Jones burned with anger at the boy for hurting his daughter and at himself for failing to protect her.
That evening Jacobs took the distraught father bowling and bought beer and Southern Comfort. But as the night wore on, Jacobs told Jones he shouldn't have reported his daughter's abuse to police; that kids will be kids; that he did the same thing to a girl when he was a teen-ager; and that Jones' daughter looked "ripe" to him.
By the time Jacobs made advances on his girlfriend later that night, Jones, 31, was at the boiling point. He pounced on Jacobs. They fought fist to fist, until, as Jones tells it, his girlfriend, Shawnta Moore, 25, hit Jacobs from behind with a hammer.
Then, "I hit him twice with the hammer, and he went down," Jones said.
They left the apartment and checked into a motel.
Jones returned to the apartment, put Jacobs in a trash can and carried him to his car. He drove to a remote spot near the Lorton Correctional Complex and dumped the corpse in a reed-filled ditch.
Moore, who was also charged with murder and is scheduled to stand trial Feb. 7, returned to the apartment to clean up and collect their clothes.
They decided to return to Pennsylvania, where they lived before coming to Woodbridge in 1990. But first Jones returned to the apartment complex to find his daughter.
He met police officers there. His daughter's baby sitter had called them when he failed to pick up the child.
Police said Jones neglected his daughter, and social services took her into custody. She was put in the custody of her grandmother and uncle.
He told police he and his girlfriend spent the night at a hotel. Although detectives suspected he knew more about Jacobs' fate, they had no body, so they let Jones go.
He and Moore drove to Pennsylvania, where they lived until Jones called police on the anniversary of the killing and confessed.
"During that whole time, nothing was going right," he said. "Nothing I tried to do."
He was using drugs heavily and his relationship with Moore disintegrated. He could hardly work. He thought about suicide.
"My heart was hardening," he said. "I was giving up. I just didn't care."
Finally he decided to face his mistake and, as he puts it, place his life in God's hands.
"What I did, there was no comfort in getting away with."
He agonized about what an admission of guilt would do to his family, to Moore and to his life.
"I grieved for Jacobs' family, and I grieved for mine," he said.
About 3:30 a.m. July 4, he called Leo McDonnell, one of two investigators who looked into Jacobs' disappearance.
Jones told officers where to find Jacobs' body, and a team of police found the skeletal remains.
"Most of my relief comes from putting my belief in the Lord's hands," he said. "The killing had to stop somewhere."
by CNB