A GIRL’S final heart-rending words to her father – before he allegedly strangled her – were “Daddy, I love you”.
Timothy Jones, 37, faces the death penalty for allegedly murdering his five young children, aged from one to eight, days after a trip to Disney World.
The computer software engineer’s lawyers don’t dispute that he killed Abigail, Gabriel, Nahtahn, Elias and Merah five years ago.
But they are trying to have him found not guilty by reason of insanity.
He is accused of beating one of the kids and strangling the other four to death before wrapping their bodies in plastic bags and driving them around for a week.
Prosecutors said he killed six year-old Nahtahn in a rage after finding the boy, fascinated by electricity, had broken an outlet in their mobile home near Lexington, Alabama, in August 2014.
The murder was allegedly witnessed by his son’s eight-year-old sister, Mera, who was the next to die.
The Herald Sun reports that, on day seven of his trial, Lexington County Courthouse heard that moments before Jones allegedly put his hands around her neck, she told him: “Daddy, I love you.”
Jones then strangled seven-year-old Elias with his hands, followed by Gabriel, two, and one-year-old baby Abigail with a belt, choking them, prosecutors said.
After killing the children, authorities alleged that Jones wrapped their bodies in plastic and put them in his SUV.
He then drove aimlessly around the Southeast US for nearly nine days before dumping their bodies on a hilltop in Camden, Alabama.
Jones was arrested at a Smith County, Mississippi, traffic checkpoint, where an officer testified he recognised a strong odour coming from the car he recognised as “the smell of death.”
Photos from inside the car show a large bleach stain on the carpet as well as reddish stains and a blue bucket containing rubbish bags.
Prosecutors called the pathologist who did autopsies on the children to the stand on Monday, but refused to show pictures of the bodies.
Defence attorneys wanted them shown because it might aid in Jones’ insanity defence to show how badly decomposed the bodies were in the back of the SUV, but Circuit Judge Eugene Griffith refused.
Last week, prosecutors played Jones’ confession to police.
In it, he said he was angry at Nahtahn for breaking an electrical outlet and forced him to exercise for hours since he would not admit what he did and feared the six-year-old was plotting to kill him.
Jones said he found his son dead several hours later, although the pathologist testified it appeared the boy was killed by some kind of violence she could not pinpoint.
Jones, a fundamentalist Christian, has admitted to the murders of all five children, but has pleaded not guilty by way of insanity, blaming “undiagnosed schizophrenia”.
He had been awarded sole custody of the children in 2013, after a two-year investigation by Child Protection Services, and a legal battle with his former wife, Amber Kyzer.
He said “the voices started kicking in,” after finding Nahtahn had died, “saying ‘you better do something, you are (expletive), Tim.”
Jones wrote a disturbing checklist, saying “melt bodies” and “saw bones to dust”, the trial was told.
Lexington County police digital forensics expert Michael Phipps said in court that an examination of Jones’s mobile phone showed he had received scores of messages while on the run in 2014.
His ex-wife, relatives, babysitters and his kids’ teachers had all begged him to get in touch.
The expert said that Jones had also made numerous internet searches, seeking information on premeditation and intent to cover up.
He also searched for rubbish dumps and firms that sold synthetic marijuana.
Jones looked for a trailer for A Beautiful Mind, starring Russell Crowe as John Nash, focusing on the Nobel Memorial prizewinner’s struggle with schizophrenia, the court was told.
During her tearful testimony on Monday, a prosecutor asked Amber Kyzer to read a letter she wrote to their oldest child, about the divorce and the pain of suddenly being in a broken home.
She penned: “You kids are my world and Mommy and Daddy were really blessed to have you”.
Kyzer then buried her head in her hands on the witness stand and broke into heaving sobs.
She cried, “Oh god. Oh god. My babies. My babies,” as the judge rushed to get the jury out of the courtroom.
Kyzer testified she fell in love with Jones because he was smart, accomplished and appeared to have his life together.
But, she said after they married, he became rigid in his religion and demanding on her.
After they divorced, Kyzer allowed her husband custody of the children because he had a job that paid £63,000 ($80,000) as a computer engineer, and a car.
Jones’s lawyers said in their opening statement that his mother has been in a mental institution for 20 years and he had undiagnosed schizophrenia.
His thin grasp on reality was broken by his ex-wife’s infidelity, the difficulty of raising five young children on his own and a feeling he was failing to live up to his religious beliefs, they added.
The trial continues.
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