Episode 1: Gone in the Night

This podcast discusses issues such as drug use, self-harm, sexual abuse, violence, and assault. Listener discretion is advised. Particle Entertainment First, let me say that I'm not mad at nobody. This is not why I'm sharing my story. I'm sharing my story because this is my life. This is my story. This is what I made it out of. It's the truth. It happened. I have been ridiculed. That's what's wrong with the world these days because of the fact people get stuff done to them. And then they get ridiculed about it. Why? Why? It has been a long road and God brought me out of this. And I know He's with me. I know He has a plan. And that is the only reason I'm sharing my story is because I'm hoping to help somebody along the way. To not give up no matter what. Particle Entertainment Natalie Jones was 27 years old when she died. Not long after she recorded those words. A free spirit, Natalie was kind, loving, and always smiling. Or so it seemed. But behind that smile lived pain hidden from much of the world around her. No one knew the secrets Natalie kept. That her life was a turbulent one filled with years of trauma. And abuse. She kept a facade that would eventually crumble away. She made it her mission to help others by sharing those painful experiences publicly. But in a tragic twist of fate, Natalie Jones wouldn't live long enough to tell her whole story. A story that some believe may have played a role in her untimely death. Through journal entries, social media, video and audio recordings, You'll hear Natalie in her own words. She will recount allegations of abuse, grooming, and rape. As we peer through a deeply candid and heartbreaking lens into her own personal struggles. To answer the question, Was Natalie's death a tragic and unfortunate accident or was it something much darker? Was Natalie killed in the process of publicly sharing the darkest chapters of her life and naming names? That's what I aim to find out. Everyone has a backstory. And everyone has secrets. These are Natalie's secrets. And this is her story. The one she never had the chance to finish telling. Now, I'll attempt to pick up where she left off. And find out what really is the truth about Natalie. - Monday, July 6th, nearly 30 hours since Natalie last communicated anyone, Elaine went to the Heard County Sheriff's Office. It was Monday morning. I was down there at seven o'clock in the morning, filing a missing report. Heard County Investigator Dan Boswell is the officer who took the initial report and would take the lead on Natalie's case. You know, when you get a missing person report, you're trying to gather as much information as you can about the person, the friends, the family, what's going on in their life at the time. And of course, Elaine and Tabitha, Natalie's sister, they provided information that we would start looking at to try and determine where she might be. And of course, you know, in the very beginning, you're looking at this from an aspect, why is this person missing? You know, what's going on in their life that you're looking at this from an aspect, why is this person missing? During an investigation, you got to be careful what information you release because if there is somebody that's possibly possibly you may look at, you don't want to release that information. And that's standard in any investigation, right? The one thing I would have done differently is, I mean, while we did get out on the news to try and put out there that she's missing and a description of Carr and her and as much of that information as we could, I think what I would do differently now is I would get ahead of the social media flurry of information that came in that was so inaccurate and misleading and put it out to the public, first off, that we are, that we're working the case, right? And just keep them updated as much as we can on that information. Then Elaine and other members of Natalie's family started receiving odd and increasingly disturbing messages, like the one that Natalie's sister, Jessica Bishop, received. I just got a text message from some number that I don't know that says that they have Natalie and she's sick and that there's a ransom of $7,000. Coupled with silence from investigators, rumors spread throughout the community like wildfire. The theories were just all over the place during those days, you know. Law enforcement approached her to be a witness and they put her in protective custody. They put her. They threw a wood chipper at this landscaping company and then they poured acid on what was left to dissolve it. Natalie was in the back of a truck, in a cooler. She was frozen. Natalie was in a witness protection program, was being held in a cabin that she was being sex trafficked. There were unconfirmed sightings of Natalie or her car. Several attempts at identification were made. There was extortion, one from as far away as California. Even some who said Natalie was murdered and they knew what happened to her, but provided no real evidence. That she was tied up, you know, and being mistreated. I even received a phone call saying that they come up with $5,000, you know, and I could get my baby back. And I said, okay, I said, let me speak to her, you know, let me hear her voice. Let, just let her say something, you know. And I mean, I done made arrangements. I was fixing to put the towel up for my vehicle that I done just got, you know, I mean, I was fixing to come up with that money. If he would have showed me a picture or let me hear her voice. And then he went all the way down to $100, talking about he wanted to get his baby, a baby doll, for Christmas. Much of what circulated online was dismissed as baseless gossip and rumor. By August, police had utilized every available. available tool to track Natalie's movements. But progress was agonizingly slow. They scanned footage from traffic cameras and analyzed cell phone data from the morning of July 4th, hoping for even the faintest trace of Natalie. Investigators checked her bank activity, finding no transactions or cash withdrawals since July 2nd. Helicopters combed the area in aerial searches, and officers followed up on every lead or possible sighting. Yet every effort seemed to lead to another dead end. As the week stretched on, the hope surrounding the search began to slip away. Elaine Gordon found herself consumed with questions. Was her daughter still out there? Would she ever see Natalie again? And looming over everyone involved in the case was an unanswered question. Where could Natalie Jones be? It just, it's so perplexing to think about how does someone fall off the face of the earth? Over the summer of 2020, as the world grappled with COVID, the search for Natalie Jones intensified. Investigators, now working with assistants from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, uncovered a series of puzzling clues. They learned from her family that Natalie had applied for a passport and planned a trip to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, allegedly with a scheduled flight on July 8th. So they wondered, could she have changed her flight and left early to get away? She'd applied for her passport weeks earlier, but it wasn't issued until July 15th, a week after she disappeared. A GBI inquiry confirmed that Natalie had not left the country, at least not legally. Following multiple leads, authorities searched properties across the county, responding to reports that Natalie had been tied up in a remote cabin, drugged, or even killed. Each location turned up empty. No sign of Natalie, her car, or evidence that she'd been there. That's when all sorts of things started just coming out about that she was being sex trafficked in Whitesburg. We went there, and we went to all these houses, and nothing was going on at these houses. We spoke to people. There was supposedly some cabin in Whitesburg where they were going to, and this information was just coming in. From various individuals in that circle that people who knew Natalie or Elaine at the time. We got the drug task force involved. We got the GBI involved. We went door to door and knocked on all these doors. All these people asking questions of just neighbors and everything came up with zero. So we were just, we were inundated with a whole bunch of leads that ultimately led to nowhere. On August 8th, the GBI inquiry confirmed that Natalie had been tied up in a remote cabin, drugged, or even killed. That's when all sorts of things started coming out about her. On August 11th, Natalie's sister, Tabitha, was interviewed by investigators. She revealed shocking details. Just days before Natalie's disappearance, her recent ex-boyfriend, Jonathan, had shown up at Tabitha's house unannounced while Natalie was visiting. Jennifer elaborates further. What we had initially heard is that Jonathan came to Tabitha's house, and Natalie was there, and they were hanging out on the front porch. He came over within one to three days before she. Before she vanished, and just pulled up, like, knowing that she was there. He allegedly was making statements about, like, wanting to get back together with her. It was just this kind of macho, possessive, we're going to be together. And Natalie had made a statement somewhere along the lines of, you're not going to get away with everything that you're getting away with. Like, you're going down for this. Jonathan had been out on bond since April of 2017. He had been out on bond since April of 2020, stemming from charges for trafficking meth, and had to wear a court-ordered ankle monitor. Shortly after Natalie went missing, he was arrested again, this time for influencing a witness, breaking his bond terms, and was sent back to jail. Then, in late September, investigators heard the most disparaging news to date. A cellmate of Jonathan's came forward to police with a startling claim. There was an inmate that came forward who was incarcerated with Jonathan. In August, in late August of 2020, that gave testimony that Jonathan had told him that he, being Jonathan, and Natalie were together in Alabama. And there were two other guys present. One of them wanted to have sex with Natalie and asked Jonathan for permission to have sex with her. He agreed to it. And there was, you know, some choking involved, which led to. Natalie's demise, and then she was chopped up. According to the GBI file, the inmate then told police that Jonathan said after Natalie was dead and her body dismembered, they disposed of the remains in a salt mine somewhere in Alabama. But even his cellmate was initially skeptical of Jonathan's story. Why would he confess this to someone he'd only just met? Still, the confession was taken seriously because. What if? You can't always discount them because you just never know, you know. Addicts speak truth. People in jail cells will speak truth. You can't, you know, discredit them. By early October of 2020, Natalie's case had been shared around the globe and had created a buzz on social media. It eventually attracted the attention of Adventures with Purpose, a crowdfunded team of volunteer divers who traversed the country looking for missing persons in lakes and rivers. They arrived in Heard County, Georgia, around October 4th, after hearing of Natalie's case from subscribers on their YouTube page. Adventures with Purpose showed up largely unannounced and began searching bodies of water in the area, as that was another theory of the locals, that Natalie's car somehow ended up in a lake or pond in Georgia. But just as Adventures with Purpose got to work on October 6th, news broke that no one saw coming. While Samuel Ginn and his partners with Adventures with Purpose were searching various ponds in the area for Natalie, they got word that her pink car had been found. Breaking news in the search for a missing Georgia mother, Natalie Jones. Tonight, a somber confirmation from the GBI. Investigators confirmed that her car has been located, and sadly, the body of a young woman was found inside. The GBI tells us the car belongs to Natalie Jones, but the GBI has not confirmed if the body of a young woman was found. inside is hers. The car was located near the intersection of Roosterville Road and Welcome Road in Roopville, Georgia. That's when a nephew of the landowner was hired to bush hog the property and stumbled upon it. Parked along the tree line of the property and partially covered with overgrown weeds, the car's bright pink color was unmistakable, a stark contrast to the shades of green and brown surrounding it. There was no question. The unthinkable had happened. This was the car they'd been searching for over the past 93 days. In the driver's seat were the remains of a woman, and although forensic testing needed to confirm the identity of the deceased, to most, it was obvious. The remains were those of 27-year-old Natalie Jones. The search was over. Elaine tells me what she remembers of hearing this soul-crushing news. At this time, I had done put my mattress on the living room floor, sleeping in the living room, you know, by the door. I just didn't want to go in my room. I was so tired. I was just, I couldn't hold it in. I just couldn't hold my eyes open. You know, I was just so worn out, mentally, physically, the whole nine yards. And all the horrible thoughts was in my head about my baby. Somebody got her, somebody holding her, somebody mean to her. My sister, she seen her county come down to my house, and she said, oh Lord. So she jumped up, and she ran down there, and she told him, she said, stop. Let me go in here and be with her. I know what y'all here for. They came in, and this woman, she squatted down, and she said, um, Miss Gordon, we found Natalie's car, and she's deceased. Whoa. I jumped up, and I started screaming at them, talking about y'all a bunch of failures. Y'all didn't do nothing. I told them to get out of my house. I told them to get the F out of my house right now. I probably seen a devil in my eye. I went in there, and I punched my kitchen wall. I just, I went berserk. And so nobody take me down there at the scene. Elaine's worst fear had seemingly just become a reality. She did eventually collect herself enough to go to where Natalie's car was found. The police stopped by to see if she heard the news yet, and gave her a ride. By the time she arrived, people had already begun congregating down the road from Natalie's car, because the hosts of Adventures with Purpose were already live streaming on YouTube. Investigators pushed everyone back and cordoned off the area, treating it as a potential crime scene. Not even Elaine was allowed to see Natalie's body. When I got down there, I, like, started, like, wanting to go up to the thing and, you know, they told me to stop. You can't go past this thing. One of the deputies had his foot popped up on the front of a car, you know, and there was a bunch of police cars up there. Elaine sat bewildered in the passenger seat of Tabitha's car, her shoulders sagging from the weight of learning of her daughter's death. Unable to fully process what was happening, all she could do was cry between long periods of expressionless stares. All anyone else could do was try to console her. After giving statements to local news, there was nothing left for her to do but go home, grieve, and wait for answers. I was in shock. You know, I was in, like, I was, like, in total shock. I couldn't believe it. I mean, it was like, how could somebody do this to her? I just screamed. I screamed so long, so many times. I couldn't believe my baby wasn't coming home. She was my world. She was my rock. She kept me in line, you know what I'm saying? Where I was just a big screw-up. Now it was time for police to pick up the pieces and figure out what happened. How did Natalie end up dead in her car? Why was she parked in this overgrown field, in a rural part of the county? Why had she sent a text message saying she'd made it home when, clearly, she never did? And the biggest question of all, was Natalie's death the result of some tragic accident, or was it murder? For answers, investigators needed to comb through the evidence. And what was found did anything but provide a clear picture of how Natalie Jones' life ended, and instead only sparked more fear, doubt, and speculation. She was slumped down in the seat. She was barefoot. She's missing her belt that she was wearing that day. There were strands of hair in the door jamb. She was missing teeth, multiple teeth. They're not in the car. They're not in her clothes. They're not on the ground when you open the door. They didn't fall out. You know, where are those teeth? Is that the way you want to find somebody? That's not. I can still see it in my mind right now. The thing of nightmares that I will never be able to shake ever again. Like, it changed me. There's some things that just don't add up. It doesn't look like a natural cause of death. I totally believe she was murdered. Episode 2 is in your feed, but you can listen to the entire series, all six episodes, right now, ad-free, in the Crime Junkie fan club. Use code TRUTH for 50% off your first month at the link in the show notes. The Truth About Natalie is an AudioChuck original produced by Particle Entertainment. I wrote and produced the series. Executive producer is Ashley Flowers. Additional research provided by community advocates for Natalie Jones. Original music written and performed by Jackson Epley. And a special thanks to Elaine Gordon and her family. If you or someone you know is in need of help, please contact us at the address on the screen of this video. If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, help is available at the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-7233. You can find me on social media at SeanKypeOfficial or at SeanKype.com. And you can email me any information about this case to info at SeanKype.com. Don't forget to rate and review the show wherever you listen to podcasts. And as always, thanks for listening. I'm Sean Kype. I'll see you next time.