Overview
On February 17, 1984, eleven-year old Tumekica Jackson was living with her mother and her grandparents in the Scotlandville section of Baton Rouge. At 4:00 a.m., the grandmother discovered that Tumekica was missing from her bedroom. The police discovered that someone had broken the screen of the rear den window and had opened the back door. In the muddy ground near the house, police obtained a cast of an imprint made by the left shoe from a pair of size 8⅓ tennis shoes. There were no signs of a struggle inside the house.
The investigation immediately focused on Jones because his stormy romantic relationship of several years with Tumekica's mother had been broken off by her the week before. Tumekica knew Jones well, and he had been in the home many times. On the evening of Tumekica's disappearance, Jones had called the mother's home three times and had told the grandmother that he would not be responsible for his actions if the mother continued to refuse to see him.
About 6:30 a.m., the police went to the apartment where Jones lived with his sister, Terry Jones, and his half-brother, Abraham Mingo. Jones told the police he had been home all night, and both his sister and half-brother confirmed his story.
A few hours later, Terry Jones called the police and said she may have been "mistaken" about Jones being home all night. After questioning her further, the police obtained a written consent to search the apartment about 10:00 a.m. When no one answered the officer's knock, Terry Jones used her key to open the door. Officers found Jones in the bathroom washing a pair of size 8⅓ tennis shoes. The bath tub was full of dirt and leaves. The officers seized the tennis shoes and a pair of green gloves, and they requested that Jones give them a statement at the station. After signing a waiver, Jones gave the police a tape-recorded statement in which he denied any knowledge of the offense. He was then allowed to leave with his sister.
At approximately 6:00 p.m., the victim’s partially nude body was found in a drainage canal. An autopsy established that the child had been beaten, raped, and manually strangled. The police again questioned Mingo. Although he initially told conflicting stories, he eventually gave a detailed account of his activities with Andrew Jones on Friday night and Saturday morning. According to Mingo, the three of them were together on Friday evening, but they had dropped Jones off in Scotlandville. About 12:30 a.m. on Saturday morning, Jones returned to the apartment. Donald Nixon was with Jones, but he stayed only a short time. Around 1:00 a.m., Mingo and Jones went to the Snowflake Lounge, but Jones left alone about 30 minutes later, and Mingo returned to the apartment. At some point between 4:30 and 5:00 a.m., Mingo was awakened by Jones’s knock on the door, let Jones in, and went back to bed. When Mingo and Jones were alone in the apartment later that morning, Jones told him that "he shoulda stayed home", that "he did something he didn't want to do", and that he "done fucked up". Jones gave Mingo a TG&Y bag and asked him to throw it away, which he did without looking inside.
At Mingo's direction, police recovered a TG&Y bag from a dumpster near a grocery store. The bag contained socks, a pair of blue jeans, and a pink sweatshirt, which were wet, muddy, and stained. Later analysis identified the stains as a mixture of blood and seminal fluid. Mingo also told the police about a pair of boxer shorts that he had found in the bathroom of the apartment. The shorts belonged to Mingo, but Jones had worn them on Friday night. With Mingo's written consent, the police recovered a pair of stained brown and white boxer shorts from the trunk of Mingo's car. Analysis confirmed the presence of blood and seminal fluid on the boxer shorts.
On the basis of this information, police obtained a warrant and arrested Jones on Sunday. After advise and waiver of his rights, Jones gave a video-taped statement in which he asserted that he and Rudolph Springer had gone to the victim's house early Saturday morning to commit a burglary. Fearful of being recognized, Jones remained in the car while Springer entered the house. When Springer returned carrying Tumekica, Jones got in the back seat and pulled his cap over his face. After a few minutes, Springer drove Jones to his apartment at his request. That was the last time that Jones saw the victim.
Read more about this topic: Andrew Lee Jones