An 18-year-old girl told her older boyfriend that if he didn’t kill his mother she would, claiming that his mother was interfering in their relationship.
Kaitlyn Coones attacked Nicole Jones, 53 with a rock and then strangled her to death, before disposing of her body with the help of her boyfriend.
The pair then fled to Mexico before being apprehended by authorities.
Coones, who had a troubled childhood, had a history or running away from children’s homes.
The authorities were concerned that she may have been kidnapped when she went missing from a children’s home in Canton, Ohio in April 2020.
Her boyfriend was 33-year-old Jonathon Jones, who had been ordered to stay away from her by the courts but nevertheless secretly met with Coomes in a local restaurant at night.
Jones drove them to his mum’s home in Sylvania Township, a suburb of Toledo.
But his mother did not approve of their relationship, so Coones avoided her by crawling into the house through a window and hid in his bedroom.
Jones had been convicted for charges relating to his relationship with the teenager a month earlier, which started when she was just 15.
He pleaded guilty to child endangerment and pandering obscene material after having sex with Coones and taking pictures of her when she was underage.
Jones was told to wear a GPS tracking device before his upcoming sentencing andwas banned from seeing Coones after defying the court order.
When the children’s home reported Coones missing, the authorities were concerned.
A member of staff at the children’s home received a message, allegedly from Coones. It said that she had ‘killed two people’ and was on the run. It also claimed one of the victims was Jones’ mother.
When the police arrived at Nicole’s home she was missing and there was no sign of Coones or Jones. However there were signs that someone had tried to clean up blood on the floor of the kitchen and under the fridge.
A manhunt was launched on 6th May. With Jones’ recent convictions, the investigators determined that Coones had most likely been kidnapped, perhaps after Jones had killed his mother.
Investigators thought it was likely that Coones had been kidnapped, and the pair were last seen in Nicole’s car, in Arizona, heading towards the Mexican border.
As Jones was still wearing his GPS device, the police were able to track him as the pair headed to Mexico and missed his scheduled court appearance.
But they were eventually tracked down on May 8 in Chihuahua, Mexico, with Nicole’s ID and credit cards in their possession.
After being apprehended, it soon became clear that Coones hadn’t been kidnapped. In fact, she confessed that it was her idea to murder Nicole all along.
Coones said Nicole had been ‘interfering’ in her relationship with Jones and she wanted to get rid of Nicole. She then told officers that on April 19, she gave her older boyfriend an ultimatum- Either he killed his mum, or she would do it herself.
The 18-year-old threatened to end their relationship if he didn’t do what she asked. When the time was up and Jones hadn’t killed his mother as she has asked, Coones gave him an extra hour to finish the job.
When he still hadn’t killed Nicole, Coones stayed true to her word and did the deed herself.
Coones told the police that she had gone outside to find a large rock and hit Nicole over the head while she was bending over near the fridge, and strangled her to death while she was on the floor.
Jones was allegedly in the living room at the time of the attack and helped to dispose of the body, and was caught on CCTV buying bin bags and tarpaulin from a nearby shop.
They wrapped Nicole’s body in the tarp and put her in the trunk of her own car while attempting to clean up the crime scene.
The couple then drove to an apartment complex and threw her body into a dumpster, where police believe her remains were picked up by a rubbish truck and taken to landfill. Jones’ GPS tracker confirmed the chain of events.
Coones told the police she thought the killing would ‘bring them closer together as a couple’. Both were charged with murder, and it was decided that Coones should be tried as an adult.
Nicole’s heartbroken family desperately wanted to find her body so they could have a proper burial, but they have been unable to, and Nicole’s body has never been found.
Lawyers for Coones insisted she was the ‘victim’ who had been under the control of Jones. They said she couldn’t have physically killed Nicole on her own and there was no evidence that she had sent the message to the staff member at the home.
Back in custody, Jones was sentenced to 54 months in prison in connection with the earlier charges relating to Coones. Then he and Coones made a plea deal.
Prosecutors dropped multiple additional charges against the pair as they pleaded no contest to charges of aggravated murder and abuse of a corpse in June this year.
The judge heard of Coones’ difficult time in foster care homes and that Jones had been diagnosed with PTSD after serving in Afghanistan . However, he said that none of this was an excuse for what they did.
Coones, now 18, and Jones, 34, were both sentenced to life in prison with the chance of parole after 25 years.
Nicole’s grieving brother, Robert Jones said: ‘There are no words that can describe the depth of our grief, the extent of our pain, or the magnitude of our loss,” he said. ‘Her murder has shattered our world leaving a void that can never be filled.’
After the sentencing, a civil lawsuit for wrongful death was filed by Nicole’s family against Coones and Jones for damages.
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