LITTLE ROCK — In the days before 16-yearold Angela Allen disappeared and her body was found buried on a hillside near Lavaca, accused killer Lloyd Collins Jones, on two separate occasions, took other women he met online to the same deserted spot, according to investigators’ reports.
The women, from Van Buren and Cave Springs, gave similar accounts in individual interviews in February with the Sebastian County sheriff’s office, records show.
They recalled how Jones told wild stories about witches, secret government experiments he’d heard about, and a half-man, half-alligator.
They said the 36-year-old ranch hand asked if they had told anyone earlier that they were going to meet him.
And both women said they were afraid.
A convicted rapist who was paroled from prison in 2008, Jones is accused of befriending Allen online, taking her to family-owned property in Lavaca on Feb. 10 and strangling her. The body of the Butterfield Junior High School student was found buried in a blue plastic barrel Feb. 17 about 21 miles east of Fort Smith.
Jones is charged with first degree murder in the death, and bail was set at $1 million. He has pleaded innocent.
A trial is set for July 16, although Jones’ attorney has asked for a 60-day postponement. Both sides also are discussing a possible plea agreement.
The statements by the two women who said they met Jones shortly before Allen’s death are among more than 150 pages of public records about the case at the Sebastian County prosecuting attorney’s office.
The documents reveal details about the death of Allen, who is described by family and friends as a bubbly, trusting ninth-grader. The records also outline three additional criminal charges against Jones in her death - two counts of possession of material depicting sexually explicit conduct involving a child and one count of abuse of a corpse.
The first-degree murder charge in connection with Allen’s death carries a maxi-mum penalty of life in prison. The other charges, filed May 17, carry a combined penalty of 11-40 years.
Prosecuting Attorney Daniel Shue declined to talk about the women’s statements or other aspects of the case.
“I am not permitted to comment,” Shue said. “This is a pending case.”
Deputy Public Defender Rita Watkins, who is representing Jones, said she could not answer questions for the same reasons.
Watkins did say that she and Jones were aware of the women’s statements. “I have to ... decide with my client what our best course of action is, as far as whether this case goes to trial,” she said.
‘JUST IN CASE’
A 34-year-old Van Buren woman called the Sebastian County sheriff’s office shortly after Jones was arrested and his photograph was flashed on area TV programs and websites, according to a deputy’s notes.
She and the other woman who spoke with the sheriff’s office, a 41-year-old from Cave Springs, declined to answer most questions from an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporter about what happened in their meetings with the man they later identified to law enforcement officers as Lloyd Jones of Lavaca.
They said they went to law enforcement officers anonymously and believed that their names would be kept confidential. Sebastian County sheriff’s officials also would not discuss their interviews, saying the two women asked for anonymity, though their names and statements became public records.
The first woman spoke to sheriff’s deputies on Feb. 18, according to notes from the interview.
She described meeting Jones online and talking with him several times by phone. She said she received a text from him in early February asking to get together in person.
The deputy’s notes list that date as Feb. 2. But the woman told the Democrat-Gazette that the meeting actually occurred on Feb. 3 - six days before Angela Allen first met Jones in person, and seven days before the teenager disappeared.
The text from Jones asked the woman to go with him to “check out the ‘witch’s graves,’” according to Maj. Kevin Nickson’s notes from the interview.
The woman said she agreed to drive to Barling, which is between Fort Smith and Lavaca, for a date with Jones that evening. They met between 7:40 p.m. and 8 p.m., she said. She remembered the time because she e-mailed his photograph to two women she knew. She sent this cautionary message with his photo: “Just in case.”
Jones was driving a small white truck, she told deputies. She followed him in her vehicle east to Lavaca.
At one point, she said, she had to speed up to stay close to Jones’ truck and was stopped by a Lavaca police officer. She said she told the officer what had happened and pointed out Jones’ truck, which had stopped ahead. She got a warning and continued on.
She parked in an empty lot and rode with Jones to a dirt road and a low-water bridge, she told deputies. There, he “began to talk weird,” according to the interview.
She said Jones referred to the area as the “witch’s graves.” Then, she said, Jones told her, “If I were you, I would have sent my picture out.”
The woman said she told Jones that she did send his picture out to friends, Nickson’s notes said.
After about an hour, she said, they left that area and made several turns before arriving at another dirt road on an incline. When they drove in and stopped, it was dark and muddy. She could see two small outbuildings. The two got out of the truck and stood nearby.
Investigators’ reports and arrest records show that Jones lived with his parents, Loyal and Sharon Jones, in a house on 1.46 acres at 103 N. Arkansas 96 east of Lavaca. His girlfriend and ex-girlfriend lived in the house, as well.
Lloyd Jones’ brother, Loyal Scott Jones, owns 9.3 acres on a hill nearby. The only structures on that property were a well house and an outbuilding or shed, police reports say.
As the minutes passed that night, the woman said, she thought she heard voices. Lloyd Jones got a flashlight and a small knife and searched the area, according to investigators’ notes. He found nothing.
“Jones [asked] her what she would do if he attacked her. She stated that she told him that she would fight him,” the interview notes say. The woman “advised that she got scared and [ended] the date.”
Two days after her interview with deputies, on Feb. 20, the woman led officers to the property where she said Jones took her.
It was the same place where investigators dug up the barrel containing Allen’s body.
SECOND MEETING
Sebastian County Sheriff Bill Hollenbeck interviewed the Cave Springs woman Feb. 22. His notes show that she contacted his office in connection with the investigation of Lloyd Jones.
The woman said she got to know Jones on a website, according to the sheriff’s notes. She said in a brief interview with the Democrat-Gazette that he offered to show her some historical buildings in the area.
The woman “remembered that [Jones] wanted to know if she had told anyone that she was [going] to meet him.” The sheriff’s notes don’t contain her answer, but the woman said in the interview that she told others she planned to meet Jones and told him that before their face-to-face visit.
The woman declined to answer further questions.
According to the sheriff’s notes, she agreed to drive to Lavaca. She met Jones at a church parking lot about 6 p.m. on a Wednesday. The date she gave was Feb. 8, two days before Allen disappeared from her grandmother’s apartment.
The woman said Jones “drove directly” to the rural property on Arkansas 96. It was where Allen was later “discovered buried next to the well house,” Hollenbeck wrote.
The Cave Springs woman told officers that Jones tried to get her into the shed “to show her some [tile] that he laid.” But she “did not [want] to get out of his truck and started to become alarmed after [Jones] started to talk about strange things.”
According to the notes, Jones talked about “Area 51,” a secret U.S. military base in Nevada that is the frequent subject of UFO tales. He also told of “top-secret” government experiments that had allegedly “taken place at Fort Chaffee” outside Fort Smith, according to the sheriff ’s notes. One, Jones told her, involved a “half-[alligator], half-man escaped from Fort Chaffee.”
Jones went on to say that he had “a very high IQ and used to work for the military.” He also talked about a woman who was trying to poison him and about serial killers, Hollenbeck’s notes say.
The woman was starting to “fear for her safety and she told [Jones] that she needed to use the restroom and to please take her back to the store. At first [Jones] refused, but she was [insistent] and he eventually did take her back,” according to Hollenbeck’s notes.
When she exited the store, the woman said, Jones was waiting for her, according to the sheriff’s notes. She walked to her car and “was able to get her door open, acting as if she was not afraid.”
“Once she entered the car, she advised she had a firearm under her seat,” the sheriff’s notes said. That’s when the woman said she “could finally tell [Jones] to get away from her.”
Arkansas, Pages 7 on 06/04/2012