For more than a week, no one knew what had happened to Shirley Marie Jones. The 36-year-old female was last seen on February 28, 1990, in Richmond, Virginia. Her disappearance was a silent mystery until a neighbor in her apartment building reported a suspicious odor. On March 10, police officers responded to the call and made a grim discovery. Inside a trunk, they found the body of Shirley Jones.
An autopsy would later confirm she had been strangled to death.
The initial investigation into Shirley's death was fraught with uncertainty. Without a clear cause of death at first, investigators considered theories ranging from a possible overdose to suicide. The placement of her body, hidden away inside a trunk, suggested a more sinister explanation, but with few leads, the case seemed destined to go cold. The public record holds few details about Shirley's life—who she was, her passions, or the family and friends who mourned her. Her story was tragically eclipsed by the darkness that ended it.
Months passed with no arrests and no answers for the community. The silence was finally broken in a bizarre and unexpected way on November 4, 1990. A man named Willie Ben Jones, a Richmond native with a history of alcohol-fueled violence, attempted to confess to multiple murders. He went to at least three different police stations, but his claims were dismissed. Undeterred, he traveled to the FBI offices in Washington, D.C., where he again confessed, this time to an agent who listened.
Jones confessed to killing four people, providing details that only the killer would know. Detectives were dispatched to verify his claims, starting with the murder of Shirley Jones. They were able to corroborate the information he provided, officially connecting him to her death. His confession unraveled a decade-long reign of terror, revealing him as a serial killer who had preyed on vulnerable individuals in Richmond.
Investigators confirmed Jones was responsible for two other homicides. His first known victim was 31-year-old Ronald A. Jones, stabbed to death on October 6, 1980, and left behind an apartment building. Just over a year later, on November 19, 1981, he strangled 24-year-old Marinda Zimmerman during an argument and left her body in an alley. Jones, who was not related to either of his victims named Jones, also confessed to a fourth murder, that of 33-year-old Priscilla Louise Leeper in 1988, though he was never prosecuted for it.
During his trial, Richmond Detective Steve A. Dalton testified to Jones's chilling motive. Jones claimed he killed his victims because he believed they were sex workers who "had to be punished." On March 27, 1991, Willie Ben Jones pleaded guilty to three counts of second-degree murder for the deaths of Shirley Marie Jones, Ronald A. Jones, and Marinda Zimmerman.
On May 14, 1991, a judge sentenced Jones to the maximum penalty: 60 years in prison, consisting of three consecutive 20-year sentences. Due to Virginia's "three-time-loser" law, he was not eligible for parole. The conviction brought a close to a series of brutal crimes that had spanned a decade, finally bringing a measure of justice for the three lives he had so violently taken.
