True Crime Campfire - Scorned: The Murder of Jack Jones

Episode Date: February 10, 2023

There’s a famous, if frequently misquoted, line from the 17th century play, The Mourning Bride: “Heaven has no rage, like love to hatred turned—Nor hell a fury, like a woman scorned.” It’s famous because people recognize the truth in it, that betrayal in love can create in a person an obsessive rage that can lead to some very dark places. It’s a tale as old as crime. A murder plot forged out of fury and hurt, and a whole series of bizarre events leading up to it. Sources:http://www.floridacapitalcases.state.fl.us/Documents/Case_updates/Htm/066600.html https://supremecourt.flcourts.gov/content/download/339899/file/08-1813_response.pdf https://caselaw.findlaw.com/fl-supreme-court/1496855.html https://www.discoveryplus.com/video/blood-relatives/4-women-and-a-funeralA&E's "American Justice," Season 13, Episode 28, “The Wrath of Mrs. Jones”Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. There's a famous, if frequently misquoted line from the 17th century play The Morning Bride. Heaven has no rage like love to hatred. turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned. It's famous because people recognize the truth in it, that betrayal and love can create in a person an obsessive rage that can lead to some very dark places.

It's a story as old as crime. This is Scorned, the murder of Jack Jones. So, campers, for this one, we're in Lake Asbury, Florida, a small lakeside community about 30 miles south of Jacksonville. On November 7, 1995, just after 8.30 in the evening, a Clay County 911 dispatcher took a frantic call. I need a rescue. My husband, he's bleeding, he's passed out. He may be dead. The caller was Linda Jones, and the guy she was screaming about was her husband, Jen. Jack. Sounding panicky, Linda said that three men had rushed into their house, beaten them both, and robbed them. She couldn't provide much in the way of a description. All three of the men had

worn ski masks and dressed all in black. They'd bound both Linda and Jack with duct tape before beating Jack with a club. Linda said she was still bound with tape and couldn't get it off and she was covered in blood. Officers were there within minutes and in the den they found Jack Jones, lying on his back with both his hands and feet tightly duct taped. It only took a few moments to determine that Jack was dead. By a series of major blows to the head, it looked like. There was blood all over the place. So what in the hell happened here?

I mean, it's everybody's worst nightmare, strange, violent people suddenly bursting into your house and inflicting horrible damage on the people you love for no apparent reason. Who were these people and why had they chosen the Jones' house? To figure that out, of course, we have to look at Linda. and Jack and unravel all the threads that brought them to this awful moment in their lives. Linda was born Linda Taylor in 1947, part of a big close-knit Florida family. Every holiday, somebody's backyard would be overrun by 50 or 60 relatives for a barbecue or a fish fry, which pretty much sounds like a circle of hell to me.

That's just too many relatives, you know. My brain would start leaking out of my ears by the 15th or 16th time I had to explain why my hubs and I don't have any kids and cats are enough for us, thanks. But it was great for Linda. She was a people person. Smart, blonde, popular at school. By 1964, she was a junior in high school and starting to get interested in boys. One day she was walking to PE class with her bestie and they passed by the new guy, Jack Jones, lanky kid with a big kind of mischievous smile on a spot on the football team. The kind of smile that makes a couple high school girls stop dead in their tracks to watch it walk by.

Just like a scene in Greece or something. That's the man I'm going to marry, Linda told her bestie, which is pretty standard sappy teenage girl talk. I mean, I said the same thing about Jordan Knight from the new kids on the block when I was 14, which is hilarious because by the next year, I was saying it about Eddie Vedder. Yeah, mine was Orlando Bloom, then Craig Owens, then Michael B. Jordan. Like, I think being infatuated is like teen girl rule number one. Exactly.

High schools are wild ride. But sometimes dreams do come true. And sure enough, before long, Jack, the high school football player and Linda the cheerleader, were dating. And they kept right on that all-American route getting married when they were both just 19. Now, if you have much wedding guest experience, you've probably been to at least one where you're sitting there kind of smiling and nodding and thinking, ah, give it a year. And you've probably also been to a few where everybody thinks that the bride and groom just fit together like pork and bean. or probably something a little less disgusting than that,

but they're going to be together for the long haul. And that was what people thought about Jack and Linda, that these were two crazy kids who were definitely going to make it. They got a house just a block away from where Linda grew up and both started working, Jack putting his big smile and easy-going vibe to good use at a car dealership, and Linda getting a job at an accounting firm. Two daughters eventually came along, first Shane and then Jill,

but while it looked like an enviable, even idyllic marriage, from the outside, there were definitely some cracks in the foundation. In the early years of their marriage, both Jack and Linda had been caught with their pants down, figuratively. Maybe even literally, we don't know the exact details, but they each had an affair and got caught. They decided to stay together and try to work things out. Some people do recover from infidelity, and it really looked like that was going to be the case for Jack and Linda. By 1984, with the girls getting older and both of them doing pretty well financially, they decided they needed a bigger place.

They settled on an acre of land on the shore of Lake Asbury, and Jack, with the help of friends and local contractors, built their house himself. And things in this new idyllic Waterfront Jones house were trending pretty sweet. With Jack promoted to manager at his Buick dealership, Linda made an associate at the accounting firm, both of them pulling in good money, the girls growing up happy and loved, and by their own description, spoiled rotten. And by Linda's account, this is how he's. things continued, right up to 1995. But others weren't so sure. Their old friend Janice Cole

says that in the early 90s, she started to suspect that Jack might not be happy with the way things were going. He got quieter and less social, while Linda, always a social butterfly, kept flitting around with friends and neighbors. Nothing earth-shattering, but Janice could sense that something was off. Around the mid-90s, Linda was in a funk of her own. Not about Jack, about her daughters. They'd both grown up and moved out by then, and Linda was feeling that empty nest syndrome hard. It was just so quiet around the house now, and she hated quiet. Linda was above all a people person. She missed having a teenage girl around the house. Oh, boy. You know, I feel like I just heard a rumble of thunder in the distance. Y'all,

did you hear that? Just something kind of ominous about that last sentence. Yeah. At the end of 1994, Linda's accounting firm took on a 17,000. year old high school girl as a secretarial intern. This was Carrie Davis, a pretty athletic girl with dark eyes and dark hair and one of those megawatt smiles that seemed to take up half her face, you know, in a good way, not like the Joker or anything. Right. She had a little bit of an Alanis Morissette thing going on, and you cannot get more 90s than that. She totally looks like Alanis Morissette. Yeah. That's a good call. Carrie and Linda, both friendly and bubbly and social, hit it off right away. Linda liked the girl, and she felt sorry for her too, once they knew

each other well enough to share some personal stuff. Carrie told Linda that her father had a history of mental illness and her mother was an alcoholic. Her family life was a dramatic nightmare, a world away from the Norman Rockwell-type life the Joneses had built on the shores of Lake Asbury. Now, we don't know what precipitated this, given her home situation, it could have been any of a dozen things, but at the end of January, Carrie had to move out of her parents' house. and she had no place to go. So Linda invited her to come stay with her and Jack until things got straightened out. It would help carry out, and Linda would enjoy having a girl around the place again.

Oh, boy. There goes a thunder again. Yeah, yeah. Look, a couple things here. One, don't invite people you've known for maybe two and a half months to come live with you. I'm sorry, but no. And if they're in kind of a troubled situation, then double no. For one thing, it's not easy to get somebody out of your house once you invited them in.

in people can just decide they're not leaving and you'd be surprised how often the law is on their side oh absolutely right i mean there's other ways you know you can help and when you're dealing with a teenager for god's sakes you could go out for groceries one day come home and find your place infested with like believers or juggaloes or god knows what and yes katy i know we're down with the clown okay but i don't want to hurt them in my house and i'm not making that up by the way there's literally another case where this happened like somebody invited a guy to live with them. Next thing she knew, juggalo investation. It can happen, just like with bedbugs. And like, you mentioned the one case, but like there's several instances of this happening.

And I know this from just being like a weirdo on the internet. Like juggalo's do like multiply. That's what I'm saying, bedbugs. Yeah. Respectfully, teenagers or meth or juggalo's, not even once. And not only that, but look, people are absolutely responsible for their own. actions, and this is in no way intended to excuse anything, but if your husband has a history of infidelity and has recently started to seem unhappy in the marriage, maybe inviting in a 17-year-old girl whose biography might as well just read in desperate need of father figure, maybe that's not the smartest thing you've ever done. I'm just saying, okay, I don't like it, but it's true. So anyway, Carrie and Jack hit it off right away, boy, and Linda dove right into treating her like a surrogate

daughter, buying her clothes and jewelry, and I guess feeling like a mom again for the first time since Shane and Jill moved out. But the Jones's actual real-life daughters were dubious about Carrie Davis right from the start, and it's not hard to see why. I mean, seriously, Mom, we're out of the house two minutes and you replace us with a stranger? And you treat her just like you treated us? I mean, that'd probably raise my hackles, too. Uh, for sure. It's also, like, very self-serving, like, wrapped up in generosity. Because, like, Just because you don't have an identity outside of motherhood doesn't mean you can go all Carol Brady all over someone.

Like, most empty nesters go and, I don't know, take pickleball lessons or learn how to knit instead of like creepily trying to bride of Frankenstein your daughters through your intern. What is pickleball? Okay, we'll talk about that later. We'll put a pin in that. But also, the Jones girls just didn't really like Carrie. You know how when you're talking to somebody and you just kind of get the feeling that there's like something kind of calculating and secret going on behind their eyes.

That's kind of how Shane and Jill felt about Carrie. I think it was probably redirected anxiety about what they could sense going on in their dad's head more than it was about Carrie herself. But that's just my opinion. That's how it manifested in them anyway. So anyway, as the year moved on, Jack and Carrie's interactions started to feel less father and daughter and more flirty. And in July, not long after Carrie's 18th birthday, the flirting progressed to where we were all really hoping it wouldn't, sex between this teenage girl and a man 30 years older than she was, a married man, with daughters only a couple years older than Carrie was.

Ooh boy, what a mess. Nothing classy going on here, fam. And apparently neither Carrie nor Jack was capable of any discretion, because just one short week after the initial, ugly bumping incident, Linda knew something was up. She confronted Jack and he came clean right away. He and Carrie were having an affair. Now, of course, Linda was devastated and furious. I mean, the scale of the betrayal here is something else, like both from her husband and from the girl that she took in and treated like one of her own. What do you do with that? I can't even imagine. Carrie had to get the hell out, Linda demanded. Obviously. In fact,

showing a modicum of common sense, she'd already split. And then things got even worse for Linda. Jack told her he was in love with Carrie. He was choosing her. They were going to get married. So we've got a 48-year-old man and an 18-year-old girl, and one week after they hook up for the first time, they decide they're in love and going to get married. Yes, can work out great. Jack, my dude, what the hell, man. Whitney, why do you hate love so much? I mean, come on. They had so much in common, like their address. Oh, my God. For now, though, Jack set Carrie up in an apartment close to his job in Jacksonville and went to see her every day while still living at home with Linda.

He would get to Carrie's apartment at 5.30 a.m. every morning, stay with her until he went to work. Then he'd have lunch with Carrie And then after work He'd go to her apartment again Until seven or so Then go home and spend the night In Lake Asbury with Linda I'd just digest that for a second

The amount of tension That must have just hung in the air You know Like smoke every night when he got home It just sounds It sounds absolutely torturous For everybody involved I assume that the reason

That he didn't just move in with Carrie right away was that that could legally be construed as him, like, abandoning the marital home, which would be hugely to Linda's advantage in any future divorce proceedings. We've talked about that stupid shit before on the show, how, like, when you're getting ready to divorce, you have to, like, stay, you know, in the house. But can you imagine living like that, like, for months and months? I would literally rather live out that, like, stress nightmare you have, where you have to go on stage and sing a song you've never heard before naked. Like, I would rather have that. It definitely made things harder for Linda, who's totally justified anger and bitterness ratcheted up over the next few months.

One of her day planner entries read, quote, he left me alone, had lunch with whore. Oof. Oof. Hey, you know what? If we're throwing the W word around Linda, let's throw it at your boy Jack first, okay? Right. And of course, this is a Sla protection zone, as usual. I'm not saying Carrie made good choices here, but she,

was a kid for god's sake and a kid in the middle of some high level family dysfunction like your man Linda is the one slinging dick around like he's a hot dog vendor to people who are not you gross it's the shoe fits if the hot dog bun fits okay Linda still held out hope that Jack would come to his senses eventually choose his family over his teenage mistress and come back home for good which, who cares if he does? Why does he get to pick what happens? Fuck him and his creepy old horse he wrote in on.

Yeah, I mean, I guess it's just delusional. I mean, I guess it's understandable that she wasn't thinking too clearly at this point, but this marriage was over. Like, it should be over at this point. It's not like he just had an ordinary affair. This was a teenage girl, for God's sakes. Now, please understand, Jack absolutely did not deserve what happened to him in this case. Of course he didn't.

But this is some creep-o shit. Like, if my husband did that, we would be capital D done forever. Yep. But Linda couldn't seem to wrap her head around the idea of starting her life over again. The day before Jack was murdered, she was talking to her friend Janice on the phone. Janice had been through a divorce herself, and she was like, look, girl, it's not easy, but you'll get through it. Life can still be good after divorce. But Linda was not having it.

I don't want to be fat 40 and alone, she said. And it might not have been all about Jack. She might not have wanted him back so much as she wanted to win. She didn't want Carrie to have the satisfaction of stealing her man. Mm-hmm. And of course. Of course, there was money involved. And she didn't want Carrie to see a dime of it.

If Jack married Carrie, then she'd take Linda's place as the beneficiary of a half-million-dollar life insurance policy. This is creepy enough by itself. she wanted to keep Jack just so she'd get money when he died. But it's even creepier when you find out that Jack's insurance policy only paid half a million dollars if, and only if, the double indemnity clause was activated, meaning Jack would have to die in an accident or be killed. Huh. Interesting. No? Mm-hmm.

Money was very much on Linda's mind. Jack was spending way too much, especially on Kemp. Carrie just a couple of weeks ago, Linda had found out he'd bought Carrie a diamond engagement ring. After everything he's put me through, I could get a gun and kill him and get away with it. Linda told Janice. Janice just shook her head. Come on, Linda. Don't talk like that. This affair was clearly breaking Linda's brain. And I mean, it would break most of us, for a while at least. In any kind of traumatic crisis, it can be hard to see a way through. But there was another road that Linda could have taken. here. You know, take Jack for everything he's got, which was a hell of a lot, then sit back and

watch nature take his course for him and Carrie. By which I mean, wait for her to meet some cute boy her own age who still has abs and knows what Pearl Jam is and leave Jack's sad ass on the curb, having made the biggest mistake of his life by letting his small head do the thinking. Yep. But sadly, that was not the choice Linda made. And now here was Jack. bound and beaten, dead in a pool of his own blood. A man who, bad behavior aside, meant the world to his two daughters and would now never be around for them again. On the night of the murder, apparently overcome with grief and slightly, very slightly, injured herself,

Linda was taken by ambulance to the hospital, where she told police what had happened in more detail. She and Jack had heard a noise at the front door, and a moment later, three maddened, masked men rushed in and started beating Jack with a baseball bat. They put duct tape across Linda's mouth and bound her hands together, then dragged her by her hair into another room. There, Linda said she couldn't see or hear what was going on with Jack. Just before the invaders left, they dragged Linda back beside Jack and threw her onto his body. One of them pointed a gun at her and said, I ought to shoot you. But for some reason, he didn't, and all three of them left.

after a couple of minutes Linda said she managed to squirm out of the duct tape and call 911 and we're going to hit pause here because we can now take a look at what happened in the Jones house that night from three different sides what Linda told the 911 dispatcher what she later told police when she was in the hospital and what officers saw for themselves when they first showed up okay so on the 911 call Linda said they beat us and that she had blood all over her and couldn't get the duct tape off When the first officer arrived at the scene, Linda met him at the front door, hands free, apparently uninjured, and most definitely not covered in blood. And in the hospital, she told police she'd gotten out of the duct tape before calling 911.

So pretty major inconsistencies there already. And there were a couple of other weird things in Linda's hospital bed story to police. Like, they dragged her to another room, and that meant she couldn't hear the violent beating going on just a few yards away? What are the walls of your house made of reinforced soundproof concrete or something? And the ending, where the burglar throws her onto Jack's body and says, I ought to shoot you. I mean, did that strike anybody listening

is a reasonable and believable course of events? Like, either the guy would just shoot her, or the robbers would just leave her in the other room while they split. It's not a movie. People are not adding in extra scenes just to cram in a little pithy line of dialogue. Unless you're a podcaster,

but then you're just a douchebag and everyone hates you. And we probably don't have to tell you by now that violent burglaries are really, really rare. The goal in a robbery is to steal stuff from your house while you're not there. Any kind of confrontation usually means the robbers fucked up. And the idea that robbers would commit a violent crime and risk the kind of heat that comes with that for the meager little scraps they took from the Jones's house is just beyond belief. Like these guys took a few dollars and a handful of Linda's jewelry. That's it. Literally just like a handful, like they grabbed some out of her jewelry box and just decided to leave the rest just sitting there on top of the dresser. And they even left Jack's wallet, which was sitting on the floor right next to him with a giant wad of cash still in it.

Y'all can't grab a wallet? Come on. So pretty much right away, investigators were skeptical of the story they were being fed, our old reliable friend, a robbery gone wrong TM. and Linda's ever-shifting story and the fact that she was Jack's recently scorned wife put her right in the crosshairs from the start. The local police were actually familiar with Linda already. In the weeks leading up to Jack's death, she'd called them a few times, twice about break-ins at the house, and wants to report that she'd been assaulted coming home from a bar one night. Linda had told police she suspected that Carrie Davis had been behind both of these crimes. Because I guess at high school, Carrie was taking advanced placement classes in underworld kingpinning and had sent the goon squad out to mess with Linda, which is really pretty ambitious for a teenage girl, right?

Like, for God's sake, Linda, she's your husband's midlife crisis. She's not John Flippin' Gotti. Calm down. Nobody's going to buy this. Now, the police got a solid lead right off the bat when they were canvassing the Jones' neighbors on the night of the murder. One guy said he'd seen a maroon Nissan minivan peel away from outside the house just before, 830. He didn't get a license number, but he thought it was a new model, either 1994 or 95. This neighbor had happened to be shopping for a van himself recently, which was how he recognized

the making year. And of course, the investigators needed to talk to the third corner of this skeevy little love triangle and brought Carrie Davison for an interview on the same night as Jack was killed, poor kid. Distraught and scared, Carrie told them Jack had been with her at her Jacksonville apartment earlier in the evening. But he had to leave because Linda had called him at work earlier that day and said, that if he wasn't home by 7 p.m., she'd kill herself. This is always a gross and manipulative card to play, but it doesn't seem to be one that Linda had used before.

For some reason, she was bringing out the big guns. Clearly, it was very important for her that Jack be home that night. Wonder why? Hmm. Carrie also reported a disturbing incident from October 31st, a week before Jack's death. Jack left her apartment at 8.30 p.m., And soon after that, Linda called to yell at her.

That wasn't unusual. Linda was always calling to yell at her. But right after that phone call, several men had shown up and started hammering on her door. Freaked out and scared, Carrie didn't answer. She just called 911. When the police got there, the dudes had already left, but Carrie's car windows were smashed and her brake lines cut. Oh, creepy. Jack's autopsy showed that he'd been beaten around the body and arms with a cylindrical object, a baseball bat or something similar.

but that the lethal injuries to his head had come from something different, maybe the butt of a gun. Linda had told police the robbers had taken Jack's gun. Maybe they'd killed him with it, too. Crime scene technicians also managed to pull some valuable evidence from the inside of the duct tape used to bind Linda's wrist. A fingerprint. Just one, but pretty clear. Now, 1995 was a few years before the FBI's Electronic National Database of fingerprints was up and running, so they couldn't just scan the print in and see that they got a match. They'd have to do things the old-fashioned way, manually comparing the print to those of any persons of interest in the case.

Of course, they needed to find some persons of interests first. To chase down the vehicle seen speeding away on the night of the murder, investigators got records of all 94 and 95 Nissan minivans registered in Clay and Duval counties, covering Jacksonville in the surrounding area. That's a lot of people, but the specifics of the make year and body style were enough to narrow things down so they could look at each owner's name and see if anything jumped out at them. By now, police had a long list of people associated with the Jones family and Carrie Davis, and investigators got to work comparing the names on one list to the names on another. A lot of police work is boring shit like this. Boring, but important.

Because before long, they got a hit. Donald Bradley was the owner of a burgundy-colored 1995 Nissan minivan, and Donald Bradley was also a client of the accounting firm where Linda worked. Given how obscure the vehicle in question was, this was a heck of a coincidence. I mean, it's not like somebody spotted a black Camry or something. Maroon slash burgundy Nissan minivans don't grow on trees. Donald Bradley was someone police needed to take a close look at, and that started with getting a hold of his cell phone record.

records. These showed that on November 7th, the night Jack Jones was murdered, Donald Bradley called Linda Jones three times, and the last time was at 817, just 14 minutes before Linda called 911. Luckily for the investigators and evidence of what a scusbag Donald Bradley was, they already had his prints on file from a domestic battery charge. There were three intruders in the Jones home, so if Bradley was one of them, they had a one and three chance of matching him with the print retreat from the duct tape. But, alas, no match. Now, this didn't let Donald Bradley off the hook, of course, but it was going to take a little longer to crack this case open. Detectives started the long process of interviewing anyone

associated with Linda and Jack Jones, and in early December, they spoke to Linda's buddy Janice Cole. Now, Janice, you'll remember, was the one who had heard Linda say the day before the murder that she was so pissed at Jack she could shoot him and get away with it, and that she didn't want Carrie to get Jack's half-million-dollar life insurance money. Two really strong motives for murder in one conversation. This was obviously something the police needed to hear, but Janice was seriously conflicted about spilling the tea on her oldest friend. She and Linda had been besties since they were like seven years old.

But Jack was her friend too, and at the end of the day, she realized she had to do what she could to help solve the murder. If Linda was guilty, then she'd brought this on herself. And on her daughters, who loved both their parents and were grievous. hard. Let us know, campers, by the way. Would you spill the beans on your best bud in this situation? I'm curious. Uh, yeah, definitely. Otherwise, two irreverent and charming and beautiful podcasters would roast me 30 years from now, and I'd probably deserve it. Man, harsh. Harsh. Harsh.

Interviewing Linda's associates also led investigators to Greg Green, client of Linda's accounting firm, and a guy with kind of a train wreck of a personal life, including including an ongoing substance abuse issue and some other stuff. Remember those two break-ins and the alleged assault Linda had suffered shortly before Jack's death? Well, Greg Green told police that Linda had paid him to stage every one of them, including the fake assault, which just, Jesus Jones lady. Wow. She's like, hey, can you like rough me up a little, you know, just to add some verisimilitude to my story? And he did it.

It's crazy. She'd also offered him 15 grand. to kill Jack. The money, she said, would come from Jack's life insurance policy after he was dead. As someone else Linda knew through her accounting firm was a good old boy type named Dwatt Danahoo. Duat told investigators that Linda had tried to hire him for three separate crimes. First to kill Carrie Davis, then to beat up Jack, and finally to kill Jack. Dwight said, hell no, to each of these proposals and finally told her, quote, you're messed up. Yeah. Would have been good to fill the police in on that at the time, too, bro, or at least Warren Jack, but, oh no.

See, on this day, like 30 years ago, a chill ran down Dwight Danahoo's spine because he pre-cogged that Whitney and I were going to call him a coward and a dork-ass loser. That's right. But Dwight, who gives an interview in the episode of American Justice about this case, just doesn't strike me as the kind of dude who's real comfortable around comp, so I guess he just didn't occur to him. So detectives were convinced they were on the right trail with Linda. They were hearing a lot of the same stuff from a lot of different people. Apparently, there was like one or two guys in the entire town that she didn't try to hire to kill her husband. Like, she was just cast in a wide net. But nevertheless, they were still a long way from having enough hard evidence to charge her. So they went back to talk to Donald Bradley and take a look at the Nissan minivan.

The minivan turned out to be a total bust as far as evidence went. It was the cleanest vehicle any of the investigators had ever seen in their lives because as they would find out later, Donny Boy had gotten it detailed five times since the murderer, like in a span of like a couple of months. Nothing suspicious about that, right? He likes a nice, clean car. I mean, you know, don't we all? Don't we all get our upholstery shampooed, you know, once a week? As for Donald Bradley himself, he initially said he couldn't remember where he'd been on the night of November 7th. when investigators asked him why he'd called Linda three times that night, he suddenly remembered, oh yeah, he'd gone to pick up some tax papers from Linda's office that night. She promised to leave him under the doormat for him, but then they weren't there, so he'd just call her to clear things up. Sure, Jan. The investigators felt sure Bradley was lying, but they were still short on evidence.

It would take until July 1996, eight months after Jack Jones was murdered, for the case to finally break open. Donald Bradley, that prince among men, was arrested for punch in some dude over a fender bender. And the police report mentioned that sitting in Bradley's vehicle at the time had been one of his foreman, 21-year-old guy named Brian McWhite. So Tom Waugh, the lead detective on the Jack Jones murder, followed a hunch and had the crime lab compare Brian McWhite's prince to the one found on the duct tape from the Jones house. And boom, it was a match. And Brian McWhite was arrested for the murder of Jack Jones. At first, Brian denied everything.

Wasn't there, don't know nothing, didn't know what the hell you're talking about. But that didn't last long. See, Brian had a 17-year-old brother, Patrick. And Patrick, bless him, had a little shred of a conscience. And after his older bro got arrested, Patrick showed up at the police station and started talking. He'd been there on the night of the murder, too. Once Brian got wind that his little brother was flap in his mouth, he realized the walls were closing in. He decided to come clean, too.

His boss, Donald Bradley, had approached him on November 7th, he said, asked if he and a buddy would like to make a couple hundred dollars. Donald had a friend whose husband was cheating on her, and they were going to go beat the hell out of him to teach him a lesson. Always up for making some extra cash, Brian was like, sure. And when his younger brother, Patrick got home from school that day, Brian asked him if he wanted to make some money by jumping some guy. Patrick said, sure, why not? Yeah, I mean, you know, God forbid you look like some kind of pussy in front of your big brother. Great life choices being made here.

This is the case where 17-year-olds act like 17-year-olds and none of the adults in their lives act like adults. That is exactly what it's happening here. Just guys being dudes, you know? So that night, Donald Bradley picked the brothers up in his minivan. On the way out the door, they grabbed some gloves and a souvenir Zulu War Club, which, wow, that's the first time we've seen that as a murder weapon. I know, it's so random. What?

Where did they get a Zulu War Club? That's what it said. It is. It's wild. Then they all stopped at Walmart so Donald could buy them some ski masks. As they drove, the McWhite boys heard Donald make several calls to a woman. the last one just as they pulled into the driveway of the Jones house. Donald told them the front door would be open, so they should go in that way.

He would go in the kitchen through the garage. Jack Jones was into guns, and he had one with him whenever he left the house. But as soon as he got home, he put it on the kitchen island. Donald said he'd grab the gun on his way in to make sure Jack couldn't use it on them. It doesn't seem to have occurred to the McWhite Boys, but it seems to me that Donald's plan here was, okay, okay, okay, you schmucks go in first, and if I don't hear the sound of Jack blowing your heads off, then I'll sneak on into the kitchen. That's exactly what it was, and I'm pretty sure most of us would have figured that out in about

two seconds, but it's the advantage of using a couple of dumber and duck shit kids as your hitman, I guess. As Brian and Patrick snuck in the front door, Jack saw the reflection in a hallway mirror. Who the hell are you? he yelled, and charged it. Brian. And as he and Brian started throwing punches at each other, younger brother Patrick stood frozen to the spot, holding the club. I mean, the kid was 17. I guess it's one thing to tell your cool older brother that you're okay with beating a guy up and a whole other ballgame when it's happening right in front of you. Then Donald Bradley came up behind Jack. He had Jack's gun in his

hand and hit him in the head with the butt. Jack went down hard and Donald kept hitting him with the gun and kicking him. At this point, Patrick noticed a woman, Linda, of course, standing on the stairs. She was just watching, not saying a word. There was no duct tape on her, and she didn't seem scared. With Jack bleeding heavily on the floor, Donald Bradley told Patrick to hand him the club. Need you to tape Linda's mouth and hands, all right, then go find something to take. Linda held out her wrists for the duct tape, and then the two brothers rooted around, half in a panic, to find something to steal. Patrick got $13 and some jewelry from the master bedroom. When he got back, Donald Bradley was still beating on Jack, blood-flying everywhere. He was going to kill the guy.

This ain't what they signed up for. Both Brian and Patrick begged him to stop, but Donald just kept on going. It was brutal. Finally, he stopped the beating long enough to make Patrick bind Jack's wrists and ankles with the duct tape. And then he held the gun to Jack's head and pulled the trigger. It clicked, but it didn't go off. Jack kept a gun with him all day, but he didn't keep it loaded. Undeterred, Donald hit Jack with the gun some more. And then, the three of them left, with Jack lying bloodied and unmoving on the floor of the family room. Right before they left, Donald went over and cut the duct tape holding Linda's hands.

At some point during all this, Brian McWhite had taken off one glove because he'd hurt his arm and was so freaked out that he wasn't thinking clearly, which of course they found later on. Donald drove them back to his garage where they cleaned up and burned their clothes in the club. Donald said he'd get rid of the gun in some mud, and that was that, Brian told the detectives. Jack Jones was dead. With first-degree murder charges and the death penalty staring them in the face, the McQuite brothers agreed to testify against Donald Bradley and Linda Jones, both of whom were still claiming complete innocence in Jack's murder. But it was nevertheless time for some dual habeas gravis, and in September 1996, both

Both of them were arrested and charged with first-degree murder. This included a short, old-fashioned perp walk from the jail to the steps of the courthouse, something Linda is clearly outraged about to this day. Yeah, Linda, your husband was beaten to death while you watch, but the big issue here is the news media getting shots of you with your wrists and angles cuffed. How dare? It's so funny the things they get mad about. You know, it reminds me of what's her name from a couple episodes ago who killed Linnell Barsock.

Like, she was mad. Not that she was being accused of murder, but that they had portrayed her. as a mooch in the media. How dare you? How dare you show me with my hands in handcuffs, you know? The trials of Linda Jones and Donald Bradley were definitely high-stakes affairs.

Prosecutors announced that they'd be seeking the death penalty in both cases. And for Linda, the prosecution had a much more convincing story to tell than the defense. I mean, your husband leaves you for a teenage girl and you stand to make half a million dollars if he's killed? Those are two crystal-clear motives right there.

The defense's theory, on the other hand, was that Donald Bradley, of his own accord, and without Linda's knowledge, decided to beat Jack up for cheating on her, then lost control and killed him. Huh? What is he? Some kind of morally outraged superhero? Is he Prude Man? No. It makes no sense. It makes no sense at all.

And Prude Man's outrage was not limited to Jack. It turned out that it was Donald and the McWhite Boys who'd been hammering on Carrie Davis's door a week before the murder. and then trashed her car and cut her brake lines. The McWhites said Donald Bradley had told them there was jewelry to steal in the apartment, and this was right after Linda had found out about Jack buying Carrie a diamond engagement ring. You really don't have to be Hercule Poirot

to put this puzzle together. Linda had sent her buddy Donald to rip the ring off of Carrie's finger and at the very least scare the ever-loven shit out of her. I wonder if she actually would have been killed that night if they'd actually gotten in and she hadn't called the cops. The diamond ring, of course, would be payment enough for services rendered.

One of the prosecution's strongest witnesses was Janice Cole. Most everyone else directly involved was a ne'er-do-well to one degree or another, but that wasn't true of Janice, and she wasn't getting anything at all out of testifying except heartache. Linda's defense claimed Janice was just trying to play up to the prosecution, which is the kind of nonsensical horseshit attorneys only come out with when they know they've got a losing hand. What? Why? What? That's just words. Those are just words that they were like,

that makes it. The only reason, the only reason she's, she's on the stand is because the prosecution asked her nicely. It's like, what are you talking about? Gravy. That is so bizarre. Like, their rebuttal against Dwight Danahue, who Linda had tried to hire to kill both Carrie and Jack, was that he was an alcoholic. Look, I'm sorry, but the people you try to hire for double murders for a few thousand bucks are probably not going to be on the short list for Times Person of the year. It doesn't mean they're lying about what a psycho you are. The version of events told by the McWhite brothers fit the evidence and combined with the testimony of the other people Linda had tried to hire to kill Jack, along with the phone records of the night of the murder, the prosecution's

theory was the one that made the most sense. Linda Jones had hired Donald Bradley to kill her husband. And after 15 hours of deliberation, the jury agreed, finding Linda Jones guilty of the first-degree murder of her husband, Jack. Her sentencing hearing was later the same day, and the prosecution was still seeking the death penalty. But Linda had better luck here. The jury decided on life without parole instead. She continues to protest her innocence, but despite numerous appeals, she still sit in prison. Donald Bradley was also convicted of first-degree murder, and unlike Linda, he was sentenced to death. He's still on death row today. As for Brian and Patrick McWhite, they both pled guilty to third-degree felony murder and were sentenced to 10 years in prison

each. There's not much to find on Carrie Davis following Jack's murder, and I can understand her wanting to keep a low profile and put all this behind her. I mean, obviously, she made a questionable life choice getting involved with a married man, but the girl was 17, 18 years old the time, dealing with major family troubles and probably in desperate need of love and attention. And even when you're not in that situation, being a dumbass about relationships when you're 17 and 18 years old is not only understandable, it's practically obligatory. Okay, amen to that. God knows I did some seriously ill-advised shit at that age. And, you know, contrary, like, you know, if you've ever watched a show like killer couples or just like a lot of

the more like sensationalistic true crime shows like there's one that covered this case called blood relatives and I love the campy shows don't get me wrong because you know they're they're always kind of fun but they have this tendency to present the the girls in cases like this as like femme fatals and all like calculating and like she was seducing jack or whatever which are you kidding me a 17 year old girl is not this calculating femme fatale that is not not how that works flip the script on that okay it's it's it's the other way around if anything that they're being groomed they're being manipulated i mean here we had a girl who's who had to move out of her parents house after a ton of dysfunctional drama and everything so she couldn't have been that

couldn't have been further from the truth that she was some kind of vixen and you know that she was trying to break this family up right and i just hate that that they portrayed her like that I hope she's doing well today. I really do. I have no ill will against Carrie whatsoever. Right. Yeah. I completely agree. Those shows are just so, they're so schlocky. They're like, they provide good information sometimes, but sometimes they're like, the 17 year old was like seduced. Yeah, it's always, like always blames it on the girl. It's, it's wild. It's really gross. She's not Carmen San Diego. Chill out. She's a, she's a 17 year old kid who's traumatized and who an adult man paid attention to her and that's what happened. And that being said, like, I don't think we can overstate enough that Jack did not deserve to be killed for having an affair.

Of course not. That's ridiculous. No. He did not deserve to be killed. But there's a way to respond to that. It's it ain't murder. Yeah, exactly. It's watch it fail because it's gunna.

She's 18. He's 38. That's just, it doesn't work. He was 48. 48. It's much worse than that. 48. 48.

48. I don't know why I said 38. Oh, well. You were probably just wishful thinking. A little tiny bit less horrible, you know. Terrifyingly, like, it's... It would still be horrible, but like, yeah. Man was almost 50.

As for Linda's daughter, Shane and Jill, they've never believed their mother killed Jack, and they've stood by their mom all the way, which is pretty typical for the children of killers, and it never stops being heartbreaking. It's a reminder of how far these ripples go in a case like this. These girls not only lost their dad, who they adored, but they lost their mom, too.

Their mom, who's continually chosen to lie to them about what she did rather than wave-o-up and admit that she made a mistake. Instead of being an adult and owning up and trying to help her kids heal, she continues to let them think she's been wrongfully imprisoned, which must be a horrible burden for them. So that was a wild one, right, campers? You know we'll have another one for you next week, but for now, lock your doors, let your lights and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons.

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