On November 19, 1997, the body of 24-year-old Shameika Carter, a female, was found discarded on a pile of garbage in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her life had been taken by a man who had killed before and would be linked to another murder more than a decade later. The discovery of Shameika’s body was part of a series of violent crimes against women that had cast a shadow of fear over the city.
The investigation into Shameika's death quickly led police to George Lamar Jones, a 52-year-old man
also known on the streets as "Mule." Jones had a history of violence, including a prior conviction for manslaughter in his home state of Mississippi in 1972, for which he had served five years in prison. After moving to Milwaukee, he developed a drug addiction and accumulated numerous convictions for various offenses. He was arrested for Shameika's murder on November 24, 1997, just five days after her body was found.
During police interrogations, Jones's story evolved. Initially, he denied any involvement in Shameika’s death. Then, he claimed he had a blackout and woke up to find her dead beside him, after which he hid her body. Ultimately, Jones confessed to strangling Shameika. He told investigators he had met her at a drug dealer's house and they had gone back to his residence. He claimed that after they used drugs together, she mocked him, which caused him to "snap" and attack her.
At the time of his arrest, Milwaukee was grappling with a number of unsolved homicides of women, and police suspected a serial killer might be at work. A task force was convened, and Jones was investigated for potential links to other cases. While he was a suspect in several other strangulations, DNA evidence at the time only definitively linked him to Shameika's murder. He was charged with first-degree intentional homicide for her death.
In July 1998, George Lamar Jones pleaded no-contest to the murder charge. His defense had considered an insanity plea, citing his lifelong epilepsy, an argument that had previously been used to reduce a murder charge to manslaughter in Mississippi. However, this was contested by prosecutors, and Jones ultimately chose to plead, stating he did not believe he would make it through a trial. He was convicted of first-degree intentional homicide and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Years later, in 2010, a cold case review connected Jones to another murder through DNA evidence. He confessed to the September 1993 killing of Mary Lee Harris, admitting he had choked her to death after an argument while they were smoking crack cocaine. He pleaded guilty to first-degree reckless homicide in that case and received an additional 30-year sentence.
George Lamar Jones, a serial killer responsible for the deaths of at least three people, died of natural causes in the Dodge Correctional Institution in Waupun, Wisconsin, on April 30, 2012. He was 67 years old. While the legal chapter of Shameika Carter's case is closed, the full story of her life remains largely untold, a poignant reminder of the human cost of such senseless violence.
