Aphrodite Jones - Career and Education

Career and Education

After graduating at the top of her class from UCLA in 1979, Jones completed a three-year stint as a columnist for United Media, where she chronicled the evolution of cable television in her national column, "Cable View". During that time, Jones interviewed the executives and TV personalities helping to launch and sustain such channels as MTV, VH1, HBO, Cinemax, CNN, TBS, Showtime, DISNEY, and the Playboy Channel. Jones describes that time as "the biggest party on Earth, because each cable channel was trying to outdo each other by pandering to journalists."

Jones eventually grew tired of what she called "the TV party life", and decided to leave United Media to complete a Master of Arts Degree at Long Island University in 1987, and then went on to pursue a Ph.D. from New York University. During her years at NYU, Jones completed her Ph.D. coursework, as well as the written and oral exams, but was unable to satisfy her dissertation director(s) and thus gave up. For her work in the Ph.D. program, Jones was awarded a Master of Philosophy Degree from NYU in 1991. While writing her dissertation, Jones took a job as an Assistant Professor in the English Department at what was then known as Pikeville College (now the University of Pikeville) in Pikeville, Kentucky. It was the spring of 1989 when Jones landed herself a second job as a radio news director at a local radio station, and soon afterward she found herself reporting about an FBI agent who had killed his informant. She knew Pikeville was "near the end of nowhere" but could not fathom that national news organizations would fail to report on "the first FBI agent in history to go to prison for killing someone."

Jones soon wrote her first book, The FBI Killer, which was quickly turned into an ABC Movie-of-the-week, Betrayed by Love, starring Patricia Arquette and Steven Webber. Not long afterward, Jones landed the exclusive rights to a teen crime drama she chronicled in her book Cruel Sacrifice, which hit the New York Times list at #4 and stayed there for over three months. Overnight, Jones was considered a "veteran" crime writer, and her third book, All She Wanted, was optioned as a major motion picture by Diane Keaton, with Drew Barrymore attached. The original film was never made, but Jones’ book was later transformed into the Oscar-winning film Boys Don't Cry.

Jones spent time talk show circuit appearing on The Today Show, Montel Williams, Maury Povich, Sally Jesse Raphael, Geraldo, and Leeza. She also went on to write five more best-selling books, among them, A Perfect Husband, which was made in to the Lifetime movie The Staircase Murders, starring Treat Williams.

In the summer of 2008, Jones was given her big break at the Discovery Network in Silver Spring, Maryland, when then head of ID, Clark Bunting, bought a 13-episode series starring Jones, to be delivered in 2009. The series aired in 2010, under the title True Crime, and was greeted to critical and public acclaim. Among her achievements during that series taping: an exclusive interview with OJ Simpson’s manager, a face-to-face meeting with OJ Simpson outside the Las Vegas courtroom where he was last tried, and an exclusive interview with Phil Spector’s longtime assistant and exclusive footage of Mr. Spector "ranting like a lunatic" in his Alhambra castle.

Over the years, Jones has been quoted in publications including The New York Times, the NY Post, the NY Daily News, the Miami Herald, and USA Today.