A man accused of killing his five children was an ex-convict whose homes were visited by social workers a dozen times in the past three years.
The children seemed happy and well-adjusted despite occasional spankings, and the family took a summer trip to Disney World and the beach, according to documents released by the US Department of Social Services on Thursday.
Authorities never found anything serious enough to take the children away, but the documents portray Timothy Ray Jones Jr as a single father and computer engineer struggling to raise his children.
Jones killed his five children at home “by violent means” about a week before his ex-wife reported them missing, acting Lexington County Sheriff Lewis McCarty said in news release issued late on Thursday.
Lexington County Coroner Earl Wells conducted autopsies and ruled each of the deaths a homicide.
The cause of the children’s deaths is still being investigated, Wells said in a statement.
Jones, 32, was scheduled to make his first court appearance in Lexington at 10am yesterday, the same day a memorial service was to be held for his children in Mississippi, where other relatives live.
A social worker last visited Jones two weeks before the children’s disappearance.
“Dad appears to be overwhelmed as he is unable to maintain the home, but the children appear to be clean, groomed and appropriately dressed,” wrote the case worker, whose name was blacked out on an Aug. 13 report.
On Aug. 28, Jones picked up his children, ages eight, seven, six, two and one, from school and day care.
McCarty said the three boys and two girls were likely killed soon after that.
“Arrest warrants allege that Jones willfully and maliciously killed his five children by violent means at his Lexington home,” then loaded their bodies in trash bags into his Cadillac Escalade, McCarty said.
Jones drove around the southeast for days with the decomposing bodies.
Authorities said they still do not know his motive, how the children were killed or why they were buried there.
In South Carolina, social workers in Jones’ hometown of Lexington released their entire 50-page file on Jones. Names of everyone except the father were redacted.
In October 2011, Jones confronted a case worker who demanded that he clean up the clothes and blankets scattered on the floor, boxes of food on top of the counter with tools scattered around them where the children could be hurt and an open air vent, where a child could step and break a leg. The argument got so heated that the case worker called deputies, and Jones calmed down when they arrived.
Three days later, the case worker returned and wrote: “Observed the home to be VERY VERY VERY CLEAN.”
Case workers made follow-up visits over the next several months as Jones’ marriage fell apart amid allegations his wife cheated on him with a neighbor.
Jones’ wife talked about being lonely and what a mistake the couple thought they made moving from Mississippi, where Jones’ family lived. They moved after he got a degree at Mississippi State University and was hired for a US$71,000-a-year job as a computer engineer at Intel.
More than a decade earlier, when Jones was 19, he was arrested for cocaine possession and a crime spree in the suburbs of Chicago, where he grew up. He was convicted of car theft, burglary and passing forged checks on his father’s account, ranging from US$4 to US$62.
For the crime spree, he received concurrent six-year terms, and had a year tacked on for the drug possession.
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