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Police officers from Bald Knob, Arkansas received a phone call just after midnight on Wednesday, June 7, 1995. James Phillips explained that he was extremely concerned since he’d been unable to reach his wife, 34-year-old Mary Phillips, who was with their 11-year-old daughter, Lacey. He’d been trying to get a hold of his wife since 3 pm on Tuesday with no success. Meanwhile, his older teenage son & daughter were at home & had been expecting their mom & sister back earlier that evening, but they hadn’t arrived as expected.
James was out of town, 500 miles (800 km) away on a business trip & had received a phone call from his son who let him know that his mom & Lacey still weren’t back. James instructed him to see if her car had possibly broken down close to home, but when there was still no sign of the women, James contacted local police to step in.
According to James, his wife worked at Automated Tax & Accounting Service in Bald Knob. Earlier that Tuesday, June 6, 17-year-old Darla Phillips dropped her 11-year-old sister Lacey off at the office where their mom worked as a bookkeeper. From there, Mary was planning to leave to take Lacey to her 3 pm dentist appointment that day. Meanwhile, Darla headed back home & she & her 15-year-old brother, Jessie, expected their mom & sister to be back at their Bradford home sometime between 4:30-5 pm. The Phillips family of five had moved to the area about five years earlier in 1990 from Hope, Arkansas. Mary was known to be a loving mom & wife who loved gardening & the outdoors.
After receiving James’ phone call, a responding officer arrived at the county tax office & noted a lone pickup truck parked at the side of the building. When he ran the license plate, he confirmed that the car was registered to Mary Phillips.
The officer gained entry through the unlocked front door & almost immediately came across an absolutely gruesome sight. He found a woman lying motionless on the floor with her arms bound behind her back. As he knelt down to check for a pulse, he was unable to find one. He noted an electrical cord wrapped around the woman’s neck & saw that she was nude from the waist down.
As the officer further made his way into the building, he found a child who he assumed to be Lacey, tied to a metal chair inside the bathroom. The young girl’s face, hair & legs were covered with dried blood & her once white gym shoes were stained a deep shade of crimson. The officer immediately called for backup, alerting to the fact that this was a double homicide.
As the lead investigator arrived, he began taking photos of the crime scene, photographing the woman, who he assumed was Mary Phillips, bound on the floor. When he finished, he moved toward the bathroom to photograph his second, younger victim & began snapping photos of Lacey. The officer got the fright of his life when suddenly, the young girl’s head snapped up & she looked him directly in the eyes. He was shocked to realize that the young girl had survived her absolutely brutal attack.
The officer immediately yelled out to his fellow officer, alerting him to the fact that they needed paramedics immediately, as he screamed, This one’s alive! As he waited for the medical team to arrive, the officer stayed by Lacey’s side, hoping to offer the injured & traumatized girl at least a shred of comfort. Lacey seemed calm as she asked the officer if she could be untied & the officer assured her that she was now safe & help was on the way.
As they waited, Lacey continued to ask about her mom’s wellbeing & told the officer that she wanted to be with her mom. The officer decided that it would be best that the little girl not yet be told that her mother hadn’t survived the attack. Lacey was transferred to a nearby children’s hospital where she spent the next few days in the ICU.
When investigators spoke with the 11-year-old girl, they learned that she had been locked in the bathroom over a period of twelve hours. They were enamored with how calm, poised & well spoken Lacey was, especially after suffering through such immense trauma.
Investigators learned that after Mary had taken Lacey to her 3 pm dentist appointment that Tuesday, Mary decided to swing back into work so she could finish up some paperwork before heading home for the day. While Lacey & Mary were alone in the office, a man with black hair came inside. He had a distinctive tear-drop tattoo on his face & tattoos up & down his arms.
Investigators came to find that it was the second time this man had come into Mary’s office that day. The first time he was there, he asked to borrow some books & on his second visit, he complained that he’d been given the wrong book. As he stood in front of Mary & Lacey, they were horrified when he told them that he was sorry, but he was going to have to rob them.
As the man held a gun, he ordered Mary to lay on the floor on her stomach & instructed Lacey to lay down on top of her mom. As the women trembled in fear, the man took cash from the register & led them into a break room. The man then moved Lacey into the bathroom where responding officers found her twelve hours later. The man tied the young girl to the chair & left her inside the closed bathroom.
When he came back into the bathroom, Lacey sobbed, begging him not to hurt her mom. He replied, I’m not going to hurt you as he proceeded to strangle Lacey until she was unconscious & then struck her in the head with the barrel of what was later discovered to be a BB gun. As the man pummelled the young girl with the gun, he caused severe lacerations & skull fractures.
When Lacey regained consciousness, she was shocked at the amount of blood that poured from her head & spilled to the floor around her feet. Sickened by the sight & having suffered a tremendous head injury, Lacey began to vomit. Her world turned dark & the next thing she recalled was waking to see the police officer taking her photo.
After the man strangled & beat Lacey, he went back to Mary & wrapped a cord from a nearby Mr. Coffee pot around her neck & bound her arms behind her back with a wire. Bruising found to Mary’s upper extremities proved that she’d given her all to fight her attacker. Her autopsy proved that she died from blunt-force head injuries & strangulation. Rectal swabs proved that she had been sodomized before she was brutally murdered.
Lacey recounted the horrific events of that evening with astounding clarity after she’d memorized every detail of the man’s appearance. She told officer’s his eye color, his hair color, his approximate height, weight & age that later proved to be very accurate. As officers sat with Lacey as she spoke of their attacker, mentioning the teardrop facial tattoo, they immediately thought of a man who fit the description, 31-year-old Jack Harold Jones.
With this information, Arkansas State Police Investigator, Jerry Brogdon went to Jack Jones’ home & informed the man that he would need to accompany him to the White County Sheriff’s Office. After his Miranda rights were read, Jones quickly confessed that he was responsible for the attacks. He explained that he’d done what he’d done because he wanted to seek revenge against the police.
Jones elaborated that he’d gone on a murderous rampage in retaliation for their inaction in arresting his wife’s alleged rapist. However, he failed to mention that it was his wife who refused to press charges against her assailant.
According to Jones, when he’d been in the office earlier that Tuesday, Mary Phillips caught his attention & he was struck by her beauty. He decided to come back later that day, this time armed with a BB gun that resembled a real pistol, latex gloves & a spool of wire. As he entered the office for the second time that day & realized that Mary was not alone as he’d expected, he decided to go forward with his plan regardless of the presence of the innocent woman’s 11-year-old daughter. He was not about to abandon his dark & disgusting plan & maintained the idea that the beautiful brunette would have to die & her daughter would just have to be collateral damage.
Hours after Mary & Lacey were found, Jack Jones was arrested & charged with the rape & murder of Mary Phillips as well as the attempted murder of Lacey Phillips.
Despite Jack Jones’ quick confession, as the trial date loomed in April 1996, Jones pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. He claimed that he self-medicated his bipolar disorder with methamphetamines. The jury rejected this & found him guilty on all charges. Jack Jones was sentenced to death by lethal injection. Additionally, he received a sentence of life in prison for rape plus thirty years & a $15,000 fine for the attempted murder of Lacey.
Before his execution in 2017, Jack Jones sent his sister a letter sometime in 2006 or 2007 that instructed her not to open the letter until one year after his execution in 2018. When she opened the letter as instructed, she read a confession from her brother. Jack Jones wrote that he had raped & murdered another young woman during the early 1980s when he had only been a teenager. He wrote that he’d come across his victim while he was biking along the beach in Hollywood, Florida.
20-year-old Regina Harrison left her parent’s house on May 2, 1983 & as she walked out the door, she told them she was going on an evening bike ride. Sadly, she never returned & her body was found the following day in a nearby park after she had been raped & strangled to death. Regina was described by her family as a really sweet kid who was kind, deeply religious & would have likely gone on to work in a career that helped others.
A witness came forward & told detectives that when she was out biking on a popular path that runs along Hollywood Beach, she noticed a skinny, long-haired man riding a black bike. She had also seen Regina at the beach.
When the witness was shown a lineup of potential suspects, she chose Ronald Stewart who. Investigators spoke with an acquaintance of Stewart, who indicated that the man had confessed to killing Regina Harrison in a park.
In January 1985, Ronald Stewart pleaded no contest to the second-degree murder of Regina Harrison after he was threatened with the death penalty & was sentenced to serve 50 years in prison. Stewart died of cancer in 2008. For nearly forty years no one ever doubted that he was responsible for Regina’s death & he had never denied it.
Stewart’s counsel had pointed out that the evidence was lacking as fingerprints found at the crime scene did not match Stewart, but because the man had been previously convicted of a series of rapes, he feared he would be sentenced to death if he chose not to plead no content. During his 50-year sentence for Regina’s murder he was serving concurrent 50-year sentences for three other rapes at the time of his death. Stewart was posthumously exonerated for the rape & murder of Regina Harrison.
After reading Jones’ confession letter in 2018 after his execution, his sister went on to contact authorities regarding its contents that read, So you let [Harrison’s family] know that I am deeply sorry, that I couldn’t rest easy until they knew the truth. Let them know that in the end I became a better person & I did the best I could to be as much as I could for others out of respect for the ones I’ve harmed.
In February 2019, DNA testing within the Broward County Sheriff’s Department lab proved Jack Jones’ confession to be true. With this, he was responsible for murdering Regina Harrison in 1983 & Mary Phillips twelve years later in 1995.
However, while Jones was on death row in 2003, he was forensically tied to the May 1991 murder of 32-year-old Lorraine “Lori” Ann Barrett. Lori, who worked as a sales service rep for the Bell Telephone Company, was on a five day vacation in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida from western Pennsylvania, Florida. Lori planned to meet up with a couple of girlfriends & had actually planned to stay with her friend at her dad’s house, but because she got in late, she didn’t want to impose. She ended up checking into the Days Inn Lauderdale Surf Motel at 9:30 pm & after she was settled, she headed to the Elbo Room bar a block from her motel. She was seen at the bar having drinks with a heavily tattooed man.
Lori left the bar with the man & they headed back to her hotel & had drinks at the patio bar until about 2 am where they were last seen getting on the elevator at the hotel. The next day, June 1, Lori didn’t arrive to a planned 11 am barbeque at a friend’s house & at 11:30 am, when the hotel cleaning woman entered her room, she found her body. She had been raped & strangled to death.
In 2005, Jack Jones pleaded guilty to Lori Barrett’s murder & was sentenced to life in prison without parole where he was returned to Arkansas to await execution. Jones indicated that when he met Lori at the bar, they hit it off & she invited him back to her hotel room. The details of what happened after they entered her room together are unknown.
Security footage from the hotel depicted Lori & the man getting on the elevator together which led to the release of a composite sketch. After the sketch appeared on the front page of Florida newspapers, Jack Jones’ sister immediately recognized his face. When she showed the image to her father, he demanded that she put it away & never speak of it again. With this, their father placed Jack on a bus headed for Arkansas, thus, relocating the known problem.
Jones’ family eventually justified their actions, arguing that they believed that yes, he’d spent time with the victim in the hours before her death, but they did not believe that he was responsible for Lori’s death.
Jones was described as a very moody child who only grew darker with age. As a teen, members of his family walked on eggshells, fearing they would somehow set him off. He took his anger & aggression out on not only his siblings, but also his parents. Loved ones struggled to hold him accountable for his actions as they said he could also be sweet & gentle.
On April 24, 2017, 52-year-old Jack Jones was executed for the murder of Mary Phillips, a devoted mother of three & wife of her high school sweetheart. A now adult, Lacey Phillips Seal, was present at the execution where Jones was given the opportunity to speak. He apologized for his actions & bizarrely called Lacey out by name & said that he’d always thought of her as a daughter, something that both angered & disgusted her. The only moments she had ever spent with the man outside the courtroom was in absolute terror & pain as he attacked her & her mother.
Before his execution, Jones had lost a leg to diabetes & said that he was ready to die. It’s unclear why he confessed to two murders, but not the murder of Regina Harrison until after his own death. We now know the man is responsible for the rapes & murders of three women, 20-year-old Regina Harrison in 1983, 32-year-old Lori Barrett in 1991 & 34-year-old Mary Phillips in 1995, but it’s a distinct possibility that he left other victims in his wake.
James Phillips recalls the moment he received the phone call telling him to return home after his wife & daughter had gone missing. As he packed his bags at the hotel, called his supervisor & prepared to make the 500 mile drive back home, he’d only been told something just happened.
After Jones’ execution, James said he had no issues with the man’s death as he didn’t care if he suffered because my wife suffered big time. Jones was given a combination of lethal drugs at the Cummins Unit in the Arkansas Department of Corrections death chamber. When discussing the fact that some voiced sympathy for Jones & wanted his punishment to be lessened, James said, Did they marry their high school sweetheart? What would they do, how would they feel if it happened to their family? Would they still be defending someone like this? I don’t think they would.
In the aftermath of Mary’s brutal murder & Lacey’s vicious attack, family & friends sheltered the three Phillips children from the media attention, but today, they struggle to protect their own children from the details of Jones’ crimes because of phones & internet technology. Darla Phillips went on to say, This has dragged on so long, it’s affecting another generation. We were babies then. Now we have babies. We don’t want our babies to hear any of this.
After his death, Lacey voiced relief that she can finally move forward in her life despite the fact that she’ll never be free from the mental, emotional & physical scars from the attack. Despite the brutality & trauma she survived, Lacey refuses to allow it to define her as a person. Lacey is now a mother herself & strong supporter of victim’s rights.
References:
- FindLaw: Jones v State
- Arkansas Democrat Gazette: Jack Jones ready for his execution; now he pays, says daughter of victim, survivor of attack
- THV 11: Jack Jones left a letter behind before he was executed. Now we know he’s a serial killer
- News Channel 3: Prosecutors: Executed Arkansas inmate claims 1983 Florida murder after death
- Medium: Against all odds: How an eleven-year-old’s incredible will to live helped catch a serial killer
- Find a Grave: Lorraine Ann “Lori” Barrett
- Death Penalty Information Center: Florida man who took plea to avoid death penalty posthumously exonerated of 1983 rape-murder
- CBS News: Serial rapist cleared of 1983 South Florida murder
- News.com.au: Husband of Mary Phillips, who was killed by executed Arkansas inmate Jack Jones, says he has no qualms about his death
