Defending Your Life

In Third Trial For Wife's Murder, Man Acts As Own Lawyer

(CBS) 
The Murder

On the night of December 3, 1988, Jerry and Lee were at home with four-year-old Thomas. According to Jerry, Lee had put their son to sleep, then went to the hallway bathroom to take a bath. Jazz music was playing from a radio in Jerry’s study, across the hall in the master bedroom. His shower was running in the adjoining bathroom.

"I heard this horrible scream. One loud, piercing scream. I’d never heard anything like that before in my entire life," remembers Jerry.

He says he raced toward the bathroom door and recalls that, as he moved closer, he saw a knife coming out of the doorway.

He says he recollects colliding with an intruder and reaching for the knife. "And in the process, I suffered some cuts. I’m knocked back. I hit my head against the wall. Boom. Fall to the floor. And I’m seeing these black and white flashing lights."

When he got up, he says, there was nobody in the hallway. "I immediately went into the bathroom. And I encountered the most horrible situation I’ve ever seen in my life."

Jerry says he found his wife in the tub, struggling and trying to speak. "I can recall this chattering sound of her teeth."

He called 911 (audio), telling the operator his wife had been stabbed multiple times.

"Her eyes were wide open. And she was looking right at me, and I realized that she was losing her life," Jerry recalls, crying.

Amid the blood and chaos, Thomas woke up. "I went upstairs and I found my mother," he says. "She was in the bathtub, and it was bloody."

Det. Ward was the lead investigator and says it was one of the most violent murders he had ever seen: "All I could see was that I had a wet and bloody man with a hand wrapped in a towel, and a dead wife in the bathroom."

"We don't have any witnesses that saw anybody run from the house. We don't have any DNA. There's really an absence of any evidence of an intruder murdering Lee Jones and then fleeing," Ward adds.

Jerry says he thinks police had already made up their mind: "Lee is dead. Jerry’s at home. Case is closed."

And he insists he didn’t murder his wife. "They didn’t do an investigation that night. And within two hours, I found myself under arrest for something I didn’t do."

[LisaK13]

Sad story. It seems like the husband did kill the wife. Stabbed 63 times. There would have been more screaming. Was there signs of forced entry into the home? He should just have let her get a divorce. Now he's free already. And poor Thomas who it sounds like witnessed his mother bloody and stabbed to death. I never understand these stories.