The Small Town Murder Express episode details a harrowing 1995 murder in Bald Knob, Arkansas, where 17-year-old Darla Phillips was driving her 11-year-old sister Lacey to her mother Mary’s office. After the mother and daughter fail to return, police discover Mary strangled with a coffee machine cord and Lacey tied to a chair, severely beaten. A detailed crime scene reveals signs of premeditation: wire, a BB gun, and a specific tattoo described by Lacey. The suspect, Jack Harrell Jr., is identified through the description and the victim’s account. He confesses to the crimes, including rape and robbery, and claims his motive is revenge for police inaction in a prior case involving his wife’s rape. His defense cites severe childhood trauma, hallucinations, and bipolar disorder, while prosecutors argue for premeditation and cruelty. The case proceeds to a death sentence, but Jack’s history is further exposed when DNA links him to the 1991 murder of Lori Barrett in Florida, a case previously linked to a convicted serial rapist, Ronald Stewart. A 2005 investigation confirms Jack’s guilt in both murders, leading to a second charge in Florida with a plea deal. The case remains controversial due to Jack’s mental health and the lack of clear evidence of premeditation in the initial crime. Despite appeals and clemency efforts, he is sentenced to death. The episode underscores the intersection of trauma, mental illness, and justice, questioning whether the death penalty fits for a man with a history of abuse and psychological instability. It also highlights systemic issues, such as flawed jury forms and the failure to address mental health in capital cases, while showing how a single act of violence can ripple through decades of justice.
hello everybody and welcome back to small town murder express yay and choo-choo yay indeed jimmy
yay indeed my name is james petra gallo i'm here with my co-host i'm jimmy westman thank you folks
so much for joining us today on another crazy small town murder express edition all aboard the
murder train oh yeah pulling away from the station let's get it on we have a crazy really crazy
episode seems like a random thing turns out it's way bigger than that and twisted and it's creepy
so we'll get into that and more before we do though head over to shut up and give me murder.com
get your tickets for live shows especially well there's only two left to get here only two and
if you're listening to this when it first comes out they're this week that's right november 13th
in uh terrytown i think that might be about sold out though it's been they've had a couple like you
know scattered tickets sparse i don't know so check that out but the next night in boston
actually holy shit medford right outside boston at the chevalier real nice theater real cool place
to go and uh check that out there so that's saturday november 14th shut up and give me murder.com
tickets for 2027 uh live shows we're gonna they're happening soon we're gonna announce all the cities
very soon and then the tickets will go on sale in december perfect for holiday gifting so there you
go get those uh also get yourself patreon sure it keeps coming patreon.com slash crime in sports
which is the name of our other show that you should check out by the way um there anybody there
five dollars a month or above you get everything we put out everything as soon as you subscribe
you're gonna get almost 400 bonus episodes you've never heard before to binge on like that
then new ones every other week one crime in sports one small town murder and you get
all of it so this week for crime and sports we're gonna do a little history of the harlem globe
trotters great for kids like us like 80s kids they were a big deal and then they were an even
bigger deal before that lots of people played for them you never thought of they were on a million
tv shows it's a very interesting story then for small town murder speaking of interesting stories
uh we did that episode before on the based on the book called blitzed which was right all the nazis
on drugs and all the shit they did yeah well this is the next step of that from the same author
talking a book uh all about how the nazis ended up kind of folding in not folding into but their
knowledge helped the entire hippie movement based on lsd and all this shit's a real weird trust me
it's going to be really interesting stuff there so i'll fold it into that down in uh argentina grew
their hair down in argentina yeah and then we're gonna do a little history of the harlem globe
and really started they got hacky sacks down there they're like this isn't bad for hacky sack is good
so patreon.com slash crime in sports is where you get all of that and more in addition to all of that
you get everything we put out ad free ad free murder your stupid opinions crime and sports all
ad free and you get a shout out at the end of the regular show too or jimmy will mispronounce your
name so don't you worry about that that said i think it's time everybody what do you say
all right sit back we gotta clear the lungs here i think it's time to let's go arms to the sky and
let's all shout shut up and give me murder let's do this everybody okay let's go on a trip shall we
we are going to arkansas this week fucking damn exactly own arkansas shit yeah it's a very desirable
location everybody
it's known for its vacation spots you know in this country people go to like disney world they go to
vegas a lot and then obviously arkansas those are the three big ones there uh this is bald knob
arkansas i swear to god bald knob i mean you can't come on man oh bald knob um it's in northeastern
arkansas ish kind of central over there a little more toward the northeast it's about an hour to
little rock about an hour 40 to memphis if you want to go the other direction there all right about
two hours and 45 minutes to kibler arkansas which was our last arkansas episode episode 711 the black
hole murders which of course like all arkansas murders are real creepy and dirty and nasty so
this is in white county um area code 501 population here not a lot 2564 small town wow it's a little
small town median household income here forty one thousand twenty three dollars way below the
national average way way below median home cost though this is you know from like the 70s
one hundred eleven thousand four hundred dollars is the cost so not bad no money but that's all
right you don't need a lot of money apparently nothing costs anything no at least the house is
the motto here is where the ozarks meet the delta and that's both of those sound terrifying
that's what they're touting that as like yeah i want to go the ozarks or the delta we this is
where they meet yeah this is uh all constant deliverance music they have speakers that just
where the mountain where the mountain trash meets the river track yeah
meets the swamp trash this is where it's where all this intersects um a little bit of history here
uh the completion of the railroad
through here triggered the economic development as it usually does otherwise it's just a bunch of
people sitting there with their thumbs up their asses because there's no no way to get goods
anywhere um it was sparsely settled before the civil war uh it was initially named shady grove
which sounds like a retirement home um which uh is interesting it was after a church there
then a guy named benjamin franklin brown who was one of bald knob's founding fathers posted a sign
next to the railroad track
in 1873 saying this is bald knob god damn it i shaved it boom i shaved it myself all waxed up
all right um it was named for a ridge of layered rock that served as a landmark that they called
bald knob yeah there we go um there's a mountain that looks like a dick apparently it's a big dick
mountain but like a hairless dick mountain very nicely there's no trees no very nicely shorn
very nice so i've been
already they had salt for a long time they were digging out of here and then strawberries became
their big deal and for a while right known as the strawberry capital of the world in this area which
i love strawberries that's good all right couple reviews of this town here is five stars i have
resided in bald knob for the last 20 years it's really overall a great hometown how about it's
friendly and affordable i call bald knob arkansas my home
with no embarrassment i don't care what anyone thinks uh the school system is great really yeah
yeah i think arkansas is like 47th in education so they're in the lower 40s law enforcement is
helpful and clean and no dirty cops in this town they keep their nails manicured nicely
the town showers for these guys yeah the town is ran with professionalism okay all right um here's
three stars i grew up in bald knob lived here till i was 23 which in bald knobs considered an old man
that's uh growing up i didn't have any negative feelings about our small town i was a happy kid
and then and then after getting married and living for 13 years in a town 20 miles away
which by the way isn't that far no to these people that sounds like we're going far and wide that is
nothing it's nowhere it's not even to little rock not even no little rock that's that's crazy in
little rock you kidding me um so for 20 miles away then coming back to bald knob i realize that it is
lacking of in a very in very few noticeable ways the town is very small we live in a rural area but
there are many empty buildings and vacant lots that could be used to move our town forward
oh but people have to want to be in progress they want to have to want they have to want to
be there that was the problem yeah a place a place for youth to spend time out of trouble
more restaurants to choose from and we desperately and then all caps desperately need a grocery store
yeah you don't have a they help for food how do you such how do you not have one of those
how do you how do you not how do you not have it desperately need a grocery store
what do you yeah man that's
yeah i don't understand i i drove to vegas and wiki up literally doesn't have a grocery store
there's houses all over the place out there not a grocery store where the fuck do you get
groceries have you ever been to a grocery store in those small towns up there they're like a
corrugated steel trailer really it's the weirdest fucking thing in those small towns general store
yeah the yeah the one grocery store we went to i can't remember what town it was in but it was like
this is a grocery store and there was people with a cart like buying meat from it and i was like wow
no no brave um either way you go you either got to go to wickenburg or kingman that's so far so far
well this guy says the one store we have has no local competition so the prices are are outrageous
on top of already raised costs we love our town and we'll stay despite the things i feel that
it's lacking but i hope to see four
Forward progress, not that we're stuck stale.
Okay, great.
See, that's the great education out there.
Yeah, I assume that living in a small town like that, you have to truck everything in like Hawaii, so there's probably a surcharge on things, right?
I would think so, yeah.
Anytime you're in the middle of nowhere, someone had to get that out there.
Like an island tax, yeah.
Yeah, it's anything.
It's deadwood, you know what I mean?
We took the risk of taking the goods here.
You're going to pay me for this shit.
Yeah, things to do here, the Bald Knob Home Fest.
Oh.
Oh, yeah.
We got the National Anthem with a bunch of people.
Audra Moore is singing the National Anthem.
We have, what else are they going to do?
Line up a dog show, a strawberry eating contest.
Those are those I'm into.
Imagine eating 100 strawberries.
You're going to shit your brains out later.
I'm going to try.
A burnout contest.
Fuck yes.
Now, is that burnouts in your car, or just to see who's the most burnt out?
Hey, man, what's going on?
They're like, what's your sister's name?
He's like, oh, fuck.
He's the top burnout in the town, maybe.
I'm not sure.
The long-haired guy from Days and Tears wins every game.
Then we have, of course, live bands, obviously.
Oh, we need it.
After the burnout contest, we're going to need some live music.
Starting off with Peyton Ellis, and Peyton is spelled the, I've never seen Peyton spelled like this,
P-A-E-T-Y-N.
That ain't it.
That's not how you spell Peyton.
After Peyton will be the Bloodhound Band.
Not the Bloodhound Gang.
No, the Bloodhound Band.
They will not touch you.
They're just five dogs.
There'll be no sex.
Nope, they just go, they do that hound thing over and over.
Chris Baker Band, the Memphis Yahoos, that's just five guys from Memphis, all with yahoo.com,
email addresses.
They're just a little older.
Dressed like Yahoo Sirius.
90 proof.
Okay.
And then headliner is Jeff Bates.
None of them ring a bell.
Jeff Bates, don't you?
Now there's also, and I won't go into the details, I just wanted to give the title here.
They just had this Halloween, we missed it, Nobtoberfest.
Nobtober!
Nobtober.
I was like, that's the great thing.
Nobtoberfest.
The greatest fucking thing ever.
They missed with Cocktober.
What happened?
Yeah, it's Nobtoberfest.
So that said, let's talk about some murder.
Wow, this is crazy.
All right, June 6th, 1995, let's start out with, okay?
We have Darla Phillips.
She's 17 years old.
Yeah.
And she is driving her 11-year-old sister to her mother's office in the mid-afternoon.
How old is Darla?
Darla's 17.
Okay, all right.
So her mother asked her, can you please drive your little sister over?
Because the little sister has a dentist appointment later that afternoon.
Oh, poor thing.
Yeah, now she's got to spend like two hours in her mother's office, which is not fun for an 11-year-old.
Yeah, she'll get tortured.
Especially pre-internet, just to sit there.
And then she has to go to the dentist afterwards.
So it's a bad day for Lacey, big time here.
And then they're supposed to be home about 15 miles away in Bradford by evening.
That's how this goes, okay?
Okay.
Now.
She's dropping young Lacey off to her mom, who is Mary Elizabeth Phillips.
Right.
Mary's 34 years old.
And so, I mean, had a kid early at 17.
Sure enough.
Her husband is James Phillips.
They've been married.
They're high school sweethearts that I assume he knocked her up in high school and they got married is how.
Probably, yeah.
That's what it sounds like.
I'm not sure, but at 17, it doesn't seem like you graduated already probably.
Odds are against it.
Especially in Arkansas.
So, I mean, in rural Arkansas in the '80s when this, you know, would have happened or 1978 or some shit.
Yeah.
So, they used to live in Hope, Arkansas, and then they came to White County, this county here, around 1990.
Hope is in the southwest corner of the state.
So, they have three kids.
They have Darla, 17.
They have Jesse, a young Jesse James, by the way.
Jesse James Phillips.
He's 15 and then they have Lacey who's 11 years old and, you know, finishing out the fifth grade, almost done with the fifth grade.
Mary's super into gardening.
She likes the outdoors, that sort of thing here.
Very nice lady.
Everybody describes her as, here's one lady described her, quote, "She's a wonderful lady, Christian and all-around great person."
Okay.
So, there you go.
Nice lady.
And Darla thought the same thing.
She said, "Her mom is such a perfect, great person," is the way Darla described her.
Now, Mary, where Lacey is being dropped off, is the automated tax and accounting service.
Dang.
Because that's where every 11-year-old wants to spend their afternoon, at the automated tax and accounting service.
Taxes and then the dentist.
And then the dentist.
Yay.
She's having a very grown-up day.
Yeah.
Hey, this is actually a good lesson.
You can turn to Lacey and go, "This is what it's like to be grown up."
Enjoy the fifth grade.
Yeah.
All you're missing is a cigarette and coffee habit.
That's it.
That's all you're missing.
And waking up in the middle of the night, terrified about your bills.
You haven't done that yet, probably have you?
So, Mary's a bookkeeper at this automated tax and accounting service here.
So, that morning, apparently, as we go back, June 6th, 1995, that morning, I believe after Lacey was dropped off, she said, "I don't know what to do with you."
She said, "I don't know what to do with you.
I don't know what to do with you.
I don't know what to do with you."
She said, "I don't know what to do with you."
She said, "I don't know what to do with you.
I don't know what to do with you."
She said, "I don't know what to do with you."
She said, "I don't know what to do with you."
She said, "I don't know what to do with you."
So we know she's there before that a good amount before that.
So that evening, everyone is James, the husband.
He's expecting his wife and daughter to be home.
And this is pre-cell phone.
So there's no keep in touch with people all day long.
Someone says, I'm going to finish work and then take the kid to the dentist and I'll be home.
And you go, I'll expect to see you around six then, I guess.
See you then.
That's it.
There's no like, well, text me and let me know if none of that shit exists.
So the evening comes and they don't come home.
Just James and Jesse and Darla.
They're sitting there, but we have no Mary and no Lacey.
They never came home.
And James Phillips is 500 miles away on a business trip.
So he can't reach them either.
And there's no, he has no way.
I mean, from 500 miles away, all he has is a 17 year old calling him going, mom never came home.
So now he's.
Trying to figure out what the hell happened here, which is a nightmare, obviously.
The family called the police department to say.
My mother and daughter.
We're missing a couple of people.
They're not here.
And they, and apparently they didn't show up for the dentist appointment either.
They found out.
Oh, they didn't get that either.
So they're just completely in the wind at this point.
So that's not great.
So the white County sheriff's department sends three officers over to the old accounting tax office there.
And one officer goes.
In the building first.
Okay.
He goes in and finds Mary Phillips on the floor.
Oh, okay.
She's still at work.
Well, she's definitely there.
Uh, she's at work.
Um, you know, on the floor could mean a lot of things.
She could have a heart attack or something, but this is definitely not that, uh, she's very dead.
Number one.
And, um, again, that could be people drop dead.
They have aneurysms, but when they do, they don't bind their hands behind their back with wire.
That's the difference.
That's how you know.
Someone else was involved here.
Now, either someone came in and did something or Lacey has a real dark side that no one could have fucking imagined.
Not happy.
Um, this tax.
Yeah.
I am not going to the dentist.
This is crazy.
So the electrical cord from a Mr.
Coffee coffee maker is wrapped around her neck still.
No.
So she's behind her back and then has a cord wrapped around her neck with the fucking, with the Mr.
Coffee attached to it too.
It's still connected to the coffee pot?
To the coffee pot.
Yeah.
It didn't get ripped out.
It's coffee pot dangling there and she is nude from the waist down, which again, bad sign.
Terrible.
So this cop sees this and goes, whoop, turns back around and cause now it's a crime scene.
It's not, don't touch anything.
Don't touch anything.
So he tells the other two officers, this is a, this is a homicide scene.
We got to get detectives in here, obviously.
Um, then the three of them go back in because they say you got to clear the fucking building.
You don't know if there's cause you don't know.
You can't say, I can't send a crime scene.
Yeah.
There's a team in there with, there could be a murderer in there still.
Right.
So their job is they have to go through and figure out what's going on.
So the three of these cops have to go back in and work the rest of the building and clear it essentially.
So they walk in.
Mary's obviously there in the office.
Then they go to check the bathroom to clear the bathroom because that's a good place for people to hide.
And then the bathroom, they find Lacey.
Oh no.
Lacey is tied to a chair.
Yeah.
She's obviously been beaten.
Beaten severely about the head and she's covered in blood and not moving.
She's a baby who ties an 11 year old to a chair and beats them to death.
what the fuck?
So they figure they have two dead bodies here and a mother and a daughter.
And this is horrifying with Lacey.
She has scalp wounds that are open.
Oh my God.
Her skull is fractured in several places and she's bleeding all over the place.
This is horrific,
obviously.
So they get crime scene people in and start taking pictures.
Essentially they take pictures everywhere.
They take,
you know,
all the pictures of Mary,
all the pictures of all the evidence that they have,
everything like that.
They move to Lacey and essentially they start taking pictures and of her,
of the scene of everything around her.
And then she opens her eyes and looks at the camera.
No!
She's alive.
Oh my God.
They've been running this crime scene for an hour.
Like she's dead in there.
Just working around her.
She wakes up.
Nobody checked her pulse or anything.
Imagine the shit you'd take.
If you were a crime,
scene photographer and you're taking pictures of a dead little girl,
which is creepiest.
And then she opens her eyes.
Your brain would explode.
That's Hey,
everyone running Halloween haunted houses out there.
That's the display to have crime scene and then have the girl open her eyes.
That'll freak the fuck out.
So obviously they're,
I mean,
I'm glad she's alive,
but that would be a horrible day.
Absolutely.
So she woke up,
saw the blood,
and then started vomiting,
which she also has severe head wounds,
which also I'm sure doesn't help either.
Um,
which is crazy.
So they,
now it goes from a crime scene.
Just check everything out to get this fucking kid to a hospital.
Holy shit.
She's alive.
So they rush her.
Yeah.
They rush her to the hospital.
She went right into intensive care.
A neurosurgeon operated on her,
said that bone fragments from her skull had been driven into her brain.
Oh God.
But she survived.
She survives.
Wow.
She survives.
And she's like,
okay.
So she recovers.
Yeah.
Miraculous.
She can,
she can walk and talk and she's going to grow up.
She's going to,
yeah,
it's crazy.
Like she is going to be okay.
You'd think that at least she would be,
you know,
messed up,
but she's really not.
Apparently she's the luckiest,
the luckiest kid in the world,
obviously here.
And toughest.
She was left for dead.
The fucking toughest.
11 year old.
Ever.
Ever.
The police left her for dead for Christ's sake.
Everybody just left her for dead.
And she said,
not quite motherfucker.
She undertaker them and just like,
I will not.
Yeah.
She,
Michael Myers,
these people,
and just like she was there.
Now she's gone.
Now,
Mary though,
did not.
It's nothing lucky there.
Mary is definitely dead.
She died of strangulation and blunt force head injuries,
which is obviously horrific here.
Um,
rectal swabs.
Oh no.
Showed that she had been anally raped before she died as well.
And she had bruises consistent with a struggle as one would have.
Um,
I will say at least whoever did this didn't rape the child.
That's nothing.
Okay.
Yeah,
that's good.
I mean,
you know,
obviously we're,
we're,
you're really looking for a compliment when you're like,
well,
at least she didn't rape the kid.
You tried to kill.
That's something.
Yeah.
So at least she didn't have to go through that too.
You know what I mean?
So the scene tells the cops a lot.
First of all,
this isn't,
uh,
like this isn't spontaneous because Mary's tie hands are tied with wire and there's really no wire in an accounting office.
They don't really wire a lot of things up.
So someone brought wire with them,
which says that they were planning something and that the attacker has obviously separated the victims as well.
Yeah.
So they're trying to get the baby out of the car.
means this is the way they want to control the situation so they have time to take with each
person and uh the money is gone as well from this robbery too so there's robbery also but you don't
need to rape and strangle the the employees to get the money and you know almost kill a fifth
grader here um he was she was by the way beaten at least eight times in the head with a gun with
a gun butt it's a gun butt yeah it turns out we'll find out it's a bb gun but still sturdy really
yeah so once lacy is stable enough to talk she can give she has a description of the attacker
This is not somebody that whoever did this wanted to leave behind to tell the tale, and they did.
And that's why she was so viciously beaten.
Absolutely.
And so she gives a description.
It's a man, obviously.
He has black hair, tattoo on his arm, which in 1995 actually meant something.
Now they'd be like, great.
And he had a very specific tattoo, a teardrop under his left eye.
Oh.
So that's a very specific tattoo in rural Arkansas that not a ton of people have.
Prison man, yeah.
She also said he'd been there earlier in the day to borrow books.
So she had seen her twice.
She had seen him twice, which is interesting.
So he had come in once before, shown himself to them in broad daylight, and then came back.
So when the officers hear the description, they know exactly who it is.
They already got him.
They fucking know.
He has a teardrop tattoo.
They've run into him before.
Most people with a teardrop tattoo are probably known to the local police.
Let's put it that way.
They're familiar to a cop or two.
They've been around in the back of a police car.
They know you can't roll the window down on your own.
They get it.
So they said teardrop under his left eye in this county in 1995.
Only one guy that is.
We'll go talk to that guy.
We're going to go have a chit chat with that guy.
So we'll get to him in a second, though, because Lacey keeps talking about what happened.
That same man came back, had a teardrop tattoo on his face.
Like we said, he said he'd been given the wrong books.
That's what he said.
That's that was his ruse of getting in.
Then he apologized.
And announced the real reason, which is I'm here to rob you.
OK, according to what Lacey said, he said, we're going to rob you.
That's how it goes.
He was holding what looked like a pistol, but it's a BB gun.
and they make very realistic oh man the ones i have are exactly i mean they're they look they're
the actions the same every detail about it's the same it just shoots bbs instead even my even my
lever action daisy looks real they look yeah they look great but i mean these they make exact replica
guns that are bb guns you know what i mean i have a bunch that are like holy shit that's pretty damn
good they don't make them put orange tips on them no no they're metal they're you know they're real
they're real uh in his pockets he uh he had he pulls out latex gloves and a spool of wire
yeah he ordered mary to lay down lie down on the floor face down and he ordered lacy to lie down on
top of mary mom yeah and then he took the cash from the register okay then he moved them both
toward the break room he then took lacy into the bathroom and tied her to a chair and left her
there and went back to mary so get the kid out of the way when he returned to the bathroom lacy was
crying and she said please don't hurt my mother and he said to her quote i'm not i'm going to hurt
you so why would he say that this motherfucker it's not enough he could have at least said i'm
not gonna hurt you and then attacked her he could have tried to at least but he's such an evil fuck
that he wants an 11 year old to be terrified before he fucking tries to kill her golly that
is pure evil pure evil terrible thing terrible person fucking then he he choked her until she
lost consciousness uh-huh and then he struck her in the head at least eight times with the barrel
of the bb gun breaking her skull um she had severe lacerations multiple fractures like we said bone
fragments pushed into her brain left her tied to the chair in the bathroom assuming she was dead
okay back to mary binds her hands behind her back with the wire wire anally raped her beat her
strangled her with the electrical cord
from the office coffee machine
you know the Mr. Coffee
left it around her neck
left her nude
from the waist down and
you know she fought apparently
from her. Because they're babies there
that's what you do as a parent. Yeah you're trying to survive
and at this point it doesn't seem like
you're going to survive you know so you're
going to fight. Then he took the money and he
left. That's what happened. So
it is invaluable to have
an eyewitness to this obviously sure is who the they wouldn't have any idea otherwise so
the police know their suspect right away and they go to his house and they knock on his door
and he answers the no they don't send like a you know a big team out with trucks and a bag
just send two cops to the door knock on the door and go talk to you for a minute and he said sure
he's familiar with the cops will probably come out right yeah and he does they he go he they said
"Will you come with us to the sheriff's department?"
He says, "Sure, no problem."
Gets in there, read his Miranda rights,
signs a waiver, says he's willing to talk.
- Oh. - Everything.
- Who is this asshole?
All right.
- Who are you?
- This is Jack Harrell.
jones jr so jack jones jr uh he's born august 10th in 1964 he's 30 years old yeah he's from
toledo ohio um we'll talk about a little about a bit about his background um when he was born
his mother had already had three children from three different relationships yeah in the mid
60s which didn't go over well in the midwest he's from toledo originally um then he had another one
a little sister in 1966 and they were the they shared to the parents actually this is the only
only siblings that shared parents and uh so uh you know we'll talk about a little bit more about that
but his father beat him severely um sure he was sexually molested by god damn several different
people um none of which his parents all all basically strangers basically strangers actually
which means that he
almost emitted a homing beacon of i'm damaged and i am a victim that victim is coming off of him
and unsupervised and i'm an unsupervised i mean i am all the things that i'm an unaccompanied minor
that is very vulnerable that's horrifying and these fucking predators can smell that shit
they can smell that on kids it's disgusting um so he his sister later said that that led him into
alcohol and drug dependency
and then here we are basically um he had hallucinations as a child oh vivid ones
apparently of insects attacking him ants and spiders crawling on him this is no drugs we're
talking about a child here um sometimes basically they were so intense they'd find him frozen in
place like the kid from the shining just like overwhelmed um he was also on a bunch of ritalin
and they tried to later on they'll try to make some connections between ritalin and hallucinations
but that didn't go very far um families a disaster alcoholism gambling abuse it's a disaster he just
grew up in a complete fucking disaster they said he got darker as he got older um that's kind of
the way it is um he was diagnosed as a teenager with antisocial personality disorder and bipolar
disorder oh yeah um he was recommended that he get some treatment and instead he said i got this i'll
self-medicate i'll just drink and do meth that'll do it that'll make you feel better yeah sprinkle
that on top of problems on your booze too yeah put some meth in that booze you'll feel better
wow i can see i understand the alcohol uh numbing yeah as long as you don't go too hard you know
what i mean like there are people that yeah certainly numb themselves without having a
dependency talk about a fine line to walk yeah i mean that's that most people don't stay on that
fucking balance beam very well for very long usually they fall off of that shit
yeah you just abuse it super heavily until until you figure out why yeah you go oh until you fuck
yourself up bad enough yeah you go holy shit i need to need a change here yeah he would later
attempt suicide twice once in 1989 and once in 1991
um at some point he fathers a daughter who was placed for adoption oh and we'll get to her later
as well um in the early 1990s is when he ended up in arkansas but we'll talk about how he got there
because it wasn't right from ohio to arkansas there was a big florida sojourn there so he had
a wife in white county at one point he had a son named chris um who was around in 1995 as well in
this area um he's very well known to police he has a prior conviction for a violent felony in
arkansas here um he does odd jobs around town as a matter of fact the day that this all happened
he was painting a sign near the accounting office that's how he noticed these people
that's what happened here um so he comes in and sits down with these people now we'll talk about
how this affects what he what's going on but he claims that his wife was raped at one point
okay jack's wife was raped jack's wife was raped and the cops did nothing about it
and he was angry at them for that okay now one of the things he leaves out though is that his
his wife declined to press charges and didn't want any part of it
but he blames the cops when the police didn't go along with the with the deal because it's
really hard without the victim
to get a conviction pre-easily yeah pre-easily established dna it's difficult you need somebody
to testify so that's part of it um in early 1995 and this all happened in june 1995 his mental
health was really going down the toilet and spiraling here so he's admitted to the psychiatric
hospital he's there for six days um he's diagnosed with bipolar disorder and they prescribe him
his way all right so there's that here you go take a high streamlined mental health facility
that's in the 80s we cut all of the mental health shit and it's if you go wow there's a lot of crazy
people walking around you can blame the fucking 1980s for that because those people would not be
walking around if people didn't say but but it's expensive yeah it is expensive to not have
a fucking streets full of lunatics yeah it's expensive sorry so slew of crazies
yeah so he's back out doing odd jobs and that's what how he ended up painting a sign
near the accounting office in baldnod now back to the interrogation basically they sit him down
and they go this is what we found we have an 11 year old girl who gives a guy a description of a
guy who sounds a lot like you yeah um where are you what up with that and he says i did it
yep that was me oh and they're like they didn't even have to put pressure on him we're gonna do
he just said no yeah i did that yeah that was what i killed them both yeah killed the girl
killed her mom dead fuck them but they just said a little girl told us well that's he thought he
killed the little girl he was like yeah oh i didn't kill her shit that was just kind of was
like well um he admitted to committing the crimes but his motive is wild his motive is
to get revenge on the police for not prosecuting his wife's rapist that'll teach him
now they know better now you got a rapist to prosecute now let's see if you do prosecute me
um yeah he said he made both victims lie on the floor he admitted to tying their hands with wire
locking lacy in the bathroom raping beating he admitted to everything i mean most of the time
they'll leave out anal rape a lot of times because it's out he's like i don't know put it right in
there fucking killed her choked her to death wrapped a cord around her neck went in there
beat lacy with the bb gun told her i was gonna hurt her i mean he just laid it all out
hurt his story and lacy's story match up perfectly it's he's real mad this jack he's a bad fucking
guy um so he's arraigned and during the arraignment he asked the judge to kill him now
please can you just kill me now please yeah i love when people do that and they're like please
and it's like we it's not really i can't just come down and off you so yeah they streamline this trial
real quick because this is a death penalty case usually these take a while for sure yeah to get
to trial because there's a lot of stuff that needs to be gathered you have to do huge mitigation
investigations and all this to make it legal they have him in less than a year it's like nine months
he's on trial death penalty real streamlined um which is quickly real quick um now during the
trial okay he enters a plea of not guilty by reason of incest
insanity that's his okay that's what his lawyer said to do he can't be he can't plead not guilty
because he admitted it and the girl you know he's they got him dead to rights on everything
and you can't plead guilty because then you're just gonna yeah because there's no plea deal
offered so they'll go guilty and then it just goes to sentencing and now we have the death
penalty on the table so you have to at least try to build some form of uh hey yeah there's a reason
why he did this so it's because even a public defender if you say just kill me
now isn't gonna go well then i guess we're gonna plead guilty and let the judge see if the death
penalty is what you need your honor he wants to die and uh i don't see any reason to i mean they
do anything about it lawyers lawyers have wins and losses is that a win if you plead guilty and
that you want the well i serve my client that's all i know can we throw a dub in both both sides
right shit so they build it around the bipolar disorder and the claim that he'd been self
methamphetamine obviously so they're like he's a methed out bipolar person so that's the reason he
did this and this is i think really they're going for mitigation because they're no one's gonna say
not guilty he's insane because he's just a little bipolar isn't i don't know where i am and what i'm
doing you know what i mean so there's probably somebody on the jury that's married to somebody
or has somebody in their family that's bipolar very common uh very common affliction here so
the prosecution's theory is premeditation he came at first to look around bro why
wire brought wire saw that there was a woman and her daughter there all by themselves and said
perfect he came back later with latex gloves with wire with a bb gun that looked like a real pistol
All that he did shows that, you know.
He wanted this.
He wanted this.
They play the confession for the jury who says he did it to get back at the police.
It's crazy.
And also this theory supports the monetary gain aggravator as well, the robbery.
And the robbery, right.
So there's that because he took money and it supported the avoiding arrest aggravator because he tried to kill Lacey to cover up what he did.
And it also definitely supported the especially cruel or depraved aggravator because Mary went through hell while her daughters tied up a few feet away.
And then he tells a child, I'm going to hurt you.
So unbelievable.
Now, a criminalist testifies named Chantel Beckett and testified that hairs taken from Mary Phillips body were microscopically similar to known samples from Jack Jones.
So now they also there's a picture here.
That is a big deal.
It's a photo of Lacey's open skull.
Oh, OK.
Now, the judge had thrown out a number of photographs out of the trial as cumulative, like there's enough.
You know, we see what happened.
But he left this one in because the doctor said it accurately showed the injuries and would help a jury of non doctors understand them.
I think we get cracked skull, don't we?
I'm familiar.
Yeah.
They put that in there.
Probably pretty red.
Yeah, I would say pretty gross would be the best way to put it.
That photograph will come up later.
That's a big deal.
The defense calls one witness.
One.
Just the one.
And it isn't Jack.
It's a pharmacology pharmacology professor.
Yeah.
Apparently a doctor here.
Turns out.
Turns out this guy to talk about how the Ritalin would make him hallucinate and see bugs and shit.
And then that made him crazy and medication on a child caused him to be a really fucked up adult.
Yeah.
But this doctor is fucking crazy.
Had surrendered his medical license for a year to go through substance abuse treatment and told jurors that because he himself was bipolar, he knew that Jones wasn't actually bipolar.
That wasn't the problem.
So you have a bipolar.
You have a bipolar substance addicted doctor up there, which is not the greatest witness for your defense.
Bipolar substance addicted license suspended doctor.
Yeah.
Not to say that you can't be bipolar and have substance addiction and have be a fine person and all.
But if you're a doctor testifying in court, it might ding your credibility just a bit.
We're looking for squeaky clean.
It's hypocritical.
Yeah.
A little bit.
So the verdict comes in and it's no surprise because literally the only defense is he was all fucked up, man.
Yeah.
Take it from me.
I'm fucked up.
I'm fucked up.
I know fucked up when I see fucked up.
And this boy, he all fucked up.
They convict him guilty of capital murder, rape and attempted capital murder.
This, by the way, they came back in 30 minutes.
That is like you got to get right in as soon as you sit in that fucking jury room immediately.
Guilty.
Holy shit.
Let's get back out there.
I got to be home for lunch.
Like it's smoke off the pen.
Yeah.
Smoking.
Now, when Jack is convicted, his father told the rest of the family not to talk to him, not to talk to his defense team and not to talk, not to testify for him at sentencing.
Basically, fuck him.
Oh, no.
This is the same guy who beat him and everything else over the years.
So fuck that guy.
But one sister, Lynn, the one who's his actual both parents sister.
Sure.
Yeah.
She defies the dad and says, I'm not leaving my brother alone.
And I'm going to fucking testify for him.
And I'm going to, you know, keep in contact with him.
Yeah.
So she speaks and says he had a horrible childhood and all that at sentencing.
Jack speaks at sentencing and doesn't ask for any consideration.
Just says, I'm deeply sorry for what happened.
Like to make this easy for everybody.
You should kill me.
Essentially.
That was his deal.
So the judge says, well, you, sir, may fuck off death penalty.
Enjoy.
Oblige him.
Obliged, sir.
Okay.
So this all seems fairly simple for Arkansas here.
There's a murder.
Horrible murder.
Horrible thing.
All sorts of aggravators.
Child involved.
You name it.
They send him to death.
And you'd think that would be it.
Scumbag.
And that's that.
It's not it.
There's a whole lot more going on here than that, which comes out here.
Yeah.
He might have been feeling some.
If he felt any guilt.
It wasn't just for this.
There's more.
Okay.
Oh, Jack.
Sister Lynn stays in contact with him, corresponds with him, and basically is here.
His key to the outside world here.
His rock.
His rock.
She said he missed walking barefoot in the grass and he missed ice and he missed grapes.
I give a fuck.
Who cares?
Yeah.
He tells his attorneys he does not want to pursue appeals, but he has to.
There's automatic appeals.
It's just in the law.
Part of that is to protect against someone who just goes, all is lost.
Fuck it.
Kill me.
Which is not what you're allowed to do.
There was an account published by an anti-death penalty group saying that he felt like he
deserved to die for what he had done.
But the appeals happen anyway.
And just a quick overview on that is basically Arkansas capital punishment juries fill out
a series of written forms.
And this is a big deal.
Form one.
The jury unanimously found five aggravating circumstances.
He had previously committed a felony, including involving violence or the threat of violence.
He knowingly created a great risk of death to someone other than the victim, which is
Lacey.
He committed murder to avoid or prevent arrest and to gain money.
And it was especially cruel and depraved.
They found three mitigating factors.
One, he voluntarily accompanied the police.
They didn't have to, like, chase him through.
He didn't have to drive him through the woods for a week or anything.
He got right in the car and signed a Miranda form and admitted what he did.
That's a mitigator, huh?
Yep.
That he did.
That he handled that.
He gave a full confession and accepted responsibility.
That's a mitigator.
And he did have a real fucked up childhood, judging by everything involved here.
On form two, some jurors found some jurors, but not all found five more mitigators.
ADHD, repeated misdiagnosis and inappropriate medication.
Inconsistent parental discipline.
His son, Chris, loves him and depends on him as a father and that Chris would be psychologically harmed if his father was executed.
Okay.
Now, the problem is on form two, where jurors are supposed to list the mitigators that they unanimously found there was no evidence for,
they checked three of the same items that they had just marked in two.
So it was just basically paperwork error by the jury here.
So the same jury said some of them believed he had ADHD.
And was misdiagnosed.
And also said all of them agreed there was no evidence of it.
So it made no sense, basically.
On form three, the jurors found that the aggravators outweighed any mitigators found.
And, you know, death was justified.
So he is sentenced to death, life in prison for rape, and 30 plus years, 30 years plus a $15,000 fine for the attempted murder.
So he's in.
That's a tough sentence.
It's never happening.
Yeah.
So his direct appeal goes, that fails, that's based on the juror stuff, and then it goes from there.
2002, John Curcio, or Curcio, Curcio, I think, Curcio is a Fort Lauderdale police detective.
Yeah.
Okay.
Now, in 1983, he had seen, this is when he was a detective then, he had seen a case of a young lady named Regina Harrison who was murdered.
Yeah.
On television, and he thought it sounded like a guy he knew, a serial killer that he was, a serial rapist that he had helped arrest.
So he said, I'm going to connect those two, and that's what he does.
This is a guy named Ronald Stewart.
Okay.
So this guy in the mid-'80s pins the Regina Harrison murder and rape on Ronald Stewart.
Okay.
Now, a little bit on Jack's past.
Early 1980s, Jack was in South Florida.
Okay.
Yeah.
In Broward County, Hollywood, Fort Lauderdale, places like that.
You've seen it on cops.
You know it all.
You've seen people screaming and yelling while shirtless in that area.
You've seen live TV.
Yeah.
So Regina Harrison, by the way, the young lady we're talking about, was a 20-year-old in the spring of 83.
She was a student at Palm Beach Atlantic College, and she's described as a very deeply religious girl who was going to college.
She lived with her parents near the North Beach neighborhood of Hollywood.
On May 2nd, 83, around dinnertime, she left her parents home for a quick bike ride.
Just a little tool around.
Bicycle, yeah.
Bicycle.
She was last seen on the Hollywood boardwalk, and she never came home.
Oh.
So people went looking for her, and the next day they found her body in the woods in West Lake Park, dead.
Fuck.
She'd been sexually assaulted and strangled.
Okay, witnesses said they had seen her riding with a
skinny long-haired man on a black bike police put together a composite sketch from a friend's
description and nothing came of it basically um not until the detective john cursio saw the case
on television and put him put this together to ronald henry stewart okay now this cursio guy
was part of a task force that caught a serial rapist that which who is ronald henry stewart
stewart had attacked women in broward county and in mississippi as well
so um when he looked when cursio saw the sketch of the guy that the friends saw
regina last talking to he said that looks like stewart and i know stewart owns a black bike
and i know he likes rape so this is all fitting together here um and a witness who had seen
regina on the beach picked stewart out of a photo lineup wow they also have an acquaintance of
stewart now we don't know
if this was to get out of his own trouble or what but an acquaintance of stewart said that
stewart confessed to this murder and rape stewart admitted to the rapes that they caught him for the
serial rapes but he denied the murder of regina harrison so they didn't do that not me his
fingerprints didn't match prints found at the scene either but that's a public place that could
that doesn't mean a whole lot he was already facing 350 year sentences for rapes so the
plead no contest to second-degree murder,
and we'll run your murder sentence concurrent with your rape sentence,
and it doesn't matter, basically.
So just take this off our books, essentially.
Let us close this and let the sheriff look good.
Yeah.
So he pleaded no contest to second-degree murder
because he knew if he went to trial, it re-risked the death penalty.
They're going to get him.
With his background, with all these rapes he's admitted to,
it's not going to look great for him.
So he gets the deal in January 85, gets 50 years concurrent with his rapes.
Now, what was Jack up to at that time?
Okay, now let's find that out.
Jack was 18 years old in May of 83,
and he also, by the way, was a skinny, long-haired man back then here.
He was still around Fort Lauderdale in 91.
We'll get to that.
He had tattoos by then, barbed wire.
Hearts with names etched into them, all that kind of shit.
So in 1991, a police sketch artist in Fort Lauderdale
drew a sketch of a man with a bunch of tattoos
and passed it around Broward County, and no one came forward.
The reason they had a sketch is because a woman named Lorraine Ann Barrett
went by Lori.
Lori Barrett was 32 years old in 91.
She was from Bridgeville.
Pennsylvania, which is outside Pittsburgh.
She graduated from South Fayette High School in 1977,
worked as a customer service rep for Bell of Pennsylvania,
the phone company in Washington, Pennsylvania.
So by the end of 91, or the end of May of 91,
she flew down to Fort Lauderdale to visit some friends and go on a vacation.
Have a nice time.
Have a nice time.
She checked into the Days Inn Lauderdale Surf Motel on Seabreeze Boulevard,
and that night, she was there.
That night, she went to the Elbow Room,
which is Elbow Room, but Elbow without the W.
E-L-B-O.
The Elbow Room, which is a beach bar on the corner of Los Alas Boulevard
and the A1A.
Beachfront Avenue.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's been there since the 1930s.
Wow.
Everyone knows this joint, basically.
Everybody knows Elbow Room.
Witnesses saw her talking with a man,
a white guy who was heavily tattooed,
Now, another witness later said she saw the two of them
get into an elevator at the Days Inn where she was staying.
Okay.
About noon on June 1st, 1991, the next day,
a cleaning woman went into room 824 and found Lori dead.
God damn it.
She'd been raped and strangled.
That sounds familiar.
The medical examiner obviously rules it a homicide by asphyxiation.
She had just fucking got there.
She was less than 12 hours.
She was in Florida before this happened to her.
Her father, John, said it was a very bad time for us.
You know, talked about the mother and said she took it hard
because it was her mother's 55th birthday when her daughter was found dead, too.
Very nice.
Now, police released the sketch of the tattooed man,
barbed wire, hearts, and all that shit.
Nobody calls in.
The case goes cold.
Sure.
Now, in the early 90s, Jack left Florida,
ended up back in Arkansas where he has a wife, has a kid,
Chris, has a son, Chris, and all that kind of thing.
You know, he's known to the police there and everything like that.
Also, this is when he's talking about his wife got raped and the cops didn't do anything.
95, he has his meltdown.
He's prescribed lithium.
He's doing meth and drinking,
and then he's painting a sign and ending up at the tax accounting office, okay?
So, March 2003, fast forward.
John Curcio, the guy who connected Stewart with the Regina Harrison murder,
reopened the Laurie Barrett file because it's a cold case.
No one has come forward with that.
It's from 91.
And sent the evidence in for DNA testing, which is readily available in 2003.
Now, they enter all of this.
So, March 14, 2003, he gets a hit.
Yeah.
Someone in the system.
And it's confirmed.
They learn that it is fucking Jack Jones.
Of course it is.
Of course it is.
He's sitting in prison in fucking Arkansas on death row at this point.
And they're like, holy shit.
Then he's found the picture of him and said, that's the fucking composite.
That's our guy.
That's the guy.
Same tattoos, same everything.
So, they fly him down to Florida in 2005 and charge him with Laurie Barrett's murder.
Prosecutors offer to waive the death penalty in exchange for a guilty plea since he's already got a death penalty.
And he does.
He says, sure.
No problem.
The detective said, quote, he says he is going to accept responsibility and plead guilty.
Okay.
That's it.
The cop also said that Jones, in talking to him, said that basically he was trying to make everything easier for the victim's families in both cases.
And he said, if me pleading guilty and just getting whatever gets it all out of the way makes them have it off of their chests or whatever it is, then I'll just do that.
That is very interesting because if you know that he's got one and then he's got another one and that second one, the first one, really.
But that second one is so heinous and so planned and calculated.
What are the chances that that is his very first one right before it?
That's how he decided to do this.
Right.
Yeah.
There was no, like, crime of opportunity.
And then he realized he liked it.
He put together a kill kit in his first kill.
Out of the gate?
And this is 1995.
This isn't now.
Like a Brian Koberger did that because he had looked into all this and studied.
This guy didn't do any of that shit.
He went to college for it.
That's what I mean.
You could just listen to our show and have a whole.
You could get a pretty good idea of how to get away with it.
None of that shit was available in 1995.
There's barely law and order.
Right.
So anyway, they sent him back to Arkansas.
And that's that.
To serve death.
All right.
In 2006, Jack writes a letter to his sister Lynn and gives it to her.
And gives her very specific instructions.
Do not open this letter.
It's not to you.
Oh.
Okay.
It's for somebody else.
He said, this is for a detective named John Curcio.
And his nickname is Mongo John Curcio.
And he says it's addressed to him to Mongo.
Okay.
All right.
He says, give this to this detective one year after I'm dead.
Wait a year and give it to him.
Give it to him one year after I'm dead.
And so she keeps it and holds on to it.
Puts it in a little file already.
So 2007 execution dates get set.
Yeah.
Clemency hearings are starting and all that kind of shit here.
His longtime lawyer said that he was basically asking for clemency.
He's talking about his fucked up life and his sexual abuse.
Saved his life.
He's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah.
He gave him the laundry list of his woes and said that none of which excuses what he did.
But it does explain it and should, you know, whatever.
It should help.
So they set an execution date for October 16th, 2007.
And there was that.
Now, his attorneys went to the parole board with the mental health evidence that the jury never heard.
The jury didn't hear a bunch of stuff here.
There's a 2005 affidavit from a defense investigator.
And it says the defense should have shown strong evidence of major mental illness with genetic components.
That's what this investigator put together.
So they put this all together to the board.
By the way, Lacey's there.
Darla's there.
Everybody's there.
She's 30-something.
Yeah, Lacey's 23 now.
Darla's in her 30s.
Or 30, I would say.
So she also tells reporters that he's an evil person and he belongs where he's going is what Lacey says.
The board rejects clemency.
But he does get a.
Stay because his lawyers join him to a lawsuit against the state's lethal injection protocol.
which now we know is very much fucking warranted after Tennessee.
Boy, are they not good at it.
They are terrible at that shit.
Now, Ronald Henry Stewart, remember him?
The rapist from Florida there?
He never appealed the Regina Harrison thing.
He never filed anything.
In 2008, yeah, just took it.
In 2008, he died of cancer in prison at the age of 48.
Oh, I'm sure that was nice treatment.
Yeah, he did great.
I'm sure they really were.
That's how you want to go, is cancer in prison.
I'm sure it's whatever's left on the chemo.
Yeah.
The drugs that are left.
I use it on those guys.
Flicking shit, and they're like, we'll stick that in them.
Flicking the hoses, too, to make it flow.
Just to get a little extra, yeah, a little extra drop.
Mixing it with water, like when you're poor and you're out of hand soap.
Put a little squirt of water in there.
That'll work.
Yeah.
So, now, they said that, so, yeah,
he's a serial killer.
He's a serial killer.
He's a serial rapist, and nobody cries for him, obviously.
And he would have been in prison either way.
2008, a federal appeals court lifts his stay of execution.
A new execution date is set for March of 2010.
The parole board holds another clemency hearing in February 2010
with a victim's input session in the afternoon.
But nothing happened.
Nothing happens because of these, the drugs, the lethal injection protocol lawsuits.
They're setting execution dates and acting like everything's happening,
but nothing's actually happening.
They're not executing anybody.
It's not happening at all.
They're crossing their fingers that everything's going to go okay?
That's pretty much it.
Yeah, that's it.
So, 2010, remember Jack had a daughter that went up for adoption
from some lady he was with or whatever?
Well, here she is.
She pops up in 2010.
This is Gina Grimm with 2010.
Two Ms.
Grimm is right.
This poor girl.
Well, actually, not poor girl.
She dodged a bullet.
Rather than growing up with this fucking scumbag as her father and a terrible thing,
she got adopted into a nice family.
Good for her.
And her adopted parents raised her,
and they knew that, obviously, she had a birth family out there somewhere.
And she always said she wanted to find her birth family eventually.
She said, I made it very clear since I was young
that eventually one day I would find them.
Well, she didn't learn who her biologicals,
biological father was until 2010 when she learns,
oh, he's a death penalty having fucking rapist murderer.
Rapist murderer, yeah.
Great.
And she immediately wrote to him,
which I think I'd be like, well, dodged a bullet there.
Moving on.
She wrote to him because she had went to the probate court
to get her original birth certificate.
That led to her birth mother, which then led to Jack.
That's how she found him.
She wrote him.
He wrote back right away.
And they had a,
they had a correspondence with tons of letters going back and forth.
He would paint pictures for her children,
who I guess would be his grandchildren, technically.
She said that she believed that he belonged in prison,
but that he had changed.
He's a changed man now.
But he did belong in for what he did,
but now he's a changed man, but you shouldn't let him out.
She said that she was happy that she found him,
and she also wanted him to know that giving her up was the right decision
because she was a changed man.
She had a very good childhood and loving parents.
I don't blame you.
Everything's fine.
And came out well.
She said, we built, we just built a very intense bond.
Okay.
Yeah.
This is a girl who's been searching for that hole in her life forever.
She always knew that was there, and now she's searching for it,
and she found it and that.
Now, okay.
Let's do a catch-up section here.
The fate of all concerned, we'll call this.
Lacey grew up, which she's lucky that she grew up.
It's an amazing sentence.
Yeah.
She married a man named Darren and lives in Piggott, Arkansas.
P-I-G-G-O-T-T, Arkansas.
Which is in the far northeast corner of the state.
She had kids.
She became a big supporter of victims' rights,
and she told people she'd never be free of the scars,
but she refused to let them define her.
In 2007, she called Jack an evil person who belonged where he was headed.
Later on, she said, I don't care if he claimed to be on TV.
I don't care if he claimed to be on drugs
or whatever he has claimed all these years.
He made a choice.
It was to murder my mom, and he tried to kill me.
He has to pay for what he did.
Now, Darla grew up, got married, and became Darla Jones.
No relation, obviously.
Just Jones is a common name.
That's crazy.
She worked as a real estate agent in Little Rock,
and still might be to this day.
We don't know.
She attended three clemency hearings over the time,
and she said the endless appeals have really hurt her family.
Right.
Which she said we couldn't move on and have that closure
because they wouldn't let us.
It's like they trapped us.
That's the problem with the death penalty.
It makes everybody stuck in this limbo for years and years.
She said that she has young children,
and she didn't want them growing up with this in the background all the time.
Mom's got to go to another clemency hearing type of shit.
She said,
This is dragged on for so long, it's affecting another generation.
We don't want our babies to hear any of this.
James Phillips, husband and father of Lacey and Darla,
understandably has a huge bloodlust here.
He's not a happy man.
I mean, understandably.
This is one of those things you'd be like,
Well, let me in there, and I'll kill him no problem by myself.
It's fine.
You try to kill my daughter and rape and kill my wife.
You don't want to kill this motherfucker, and that's understandable.
He's been an Arkansas man from a certain generation.
I don't care where you're from or how old you are.
Extra rage.
Yeah, I don't care how you're from or how old you are.
This is fucking crazy.
I don't care if you're from fucking Washington State in the 20s.
You still want death and blood.
So anyway, he goes to all these clemency hearings and all that kind of shit.
He really wants this death penalty to happen.
He said that he they said,
Well, how will you feel watching the execution?
Is that?
Kind of weird to you.
And he said,
I don't think it'll bother me a bit, which is creepy.
It should bother you a bit because it's weird.
Certainly change you.
He said,
Asked about the protesters outside the prison who oppose death penalties.
He said,
Anybody that doesn't want to watch it or is there against it?
That's fine and dandy with me.
So you're entitled to your opinion is what he said.
I'm going to watch this guy die.
And then they said that basically,
if they don't want to carry out with this execution,
then turn him out.
Turn him out in the street and see how long he last not last last.
Yeah, so now he wants to tar and feather this man in the streets as well.
He said he's been waiting for justice for a long time.
He planned to sit in the front row of the witness room and watch.
He said that he's going to bring his son,
his father in law,
Mary's sister.
We'll do it over Memorial Day.
We'll have a barbecue while you're at it.
They're all flying into town anyway.
Yeah.
Mary's sister,
her sister's husband and their son and they're even
having some friends up from South Arkansas.
This is not a fucking barbecue.
There'll be less people at my Thanksgiving than,
uh,
than at this murder.
Yeah,
she,
he just described my Christmas Eve.
This is crazy.
So March 2007,
Governor Asa Hutchinson schedules eight executions in 11 days.
It's like one of Asia.
It's like one of those big summer music festivals where it's like,
wow,
look at these headliners every day.
It's this is what he's got going on.
Eight days.
He's trying to cram them in while he has a window before they say he's not allowed to do it anymore.
So that's what's going on,
which is crazy in itself.
Getting in under the line.
The state's supply of midazolam,
the first drug in the three drug protocol was set to expire at the end of the month and they couldn't get more.
That's why they're doing it.
So they have to do it now.
The line Chobani's about to turn.
We got to do something.
Um,
and,
uh,
amnesty,
amnesty international said bipolar disorder not raised at trial.
And that's what they're talking about with Jack and they're trying to get him stayed basically because of that jurors who sentenced him did not know he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder shortly before the crime.
They didn't,
they weren't allowed to hear that he just got out of a mental institution and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and put on medication.
They weren't allowed to know which they really should have been allowed to know that obviously.
Um,
defense advocates also pointed to the expert who testified at trial,
the expert who surrendered his medical license to so he could enter substance abuse treatment and,
uh,
is was bipolar himself and said,
that's how I know he's not bipolar because I am.
Yeah.
Okay.
Um,
April 7th,
2017 Jones does not attend his final clemency hearing.
Didn't even go.
Didn't even go.
He told the parole board through his lawyer that he does not want.
Clemency.
He wrote a letter.
Um,
he said he only applied for that lawsuit to stand in solidarity with the other men suing over the lethal injection drugs.
So he didn't get beat up all the time.
Basically,
you can't say,
fuck all you guys.
You're on your own in prison.
They'll kill you.
These guys,
yeah,
they'll beat you up and do other things to you.
So,
um,
he said that he wants to,
uh,
um,
he only did it for that reason and that he would like to apologize publicly to Lacey.
He said, I'm so very, very sorry.
sorry, I haven't wanted clemency ever.
I have no interest in it.
For so many years,
I kept a grainy black and white Xerox photo
of you on the surgical table
talking about Lacey,
the picture they showed in court
with her head split open.
They gave him that?
It's a defense.
It's an exhibit.
Yeah, if he wants that,
he can have,
it's part of his legal shit.
Sure.
And part of his appeals too.
It's in all the packets and everything.
Where'd they keep it?
He said that, quote,
kept it taped to the inside of my notebook
and at the bottom,
I wrote in bold letters,
you did this,
meaning me.
This is why you're here.
He said,
I kept it so I would never forget to remember.
Some guys don't.
Some make every effort not to
or they lie to themselves
and survive on denial.
All right.
So he said,
I know what I did.
He said,
I'm sorry,
not only for what I did,
but for you having to come here,
talking to Lacey.
He said that he wasn't asking for mercy.
He said he would not spend enough
money to spend another day
or 20 years in prison.
Lacey said she didn't,
she doesn't want him to be alive.
The board votes seven,
nothing,
obviously that the,
he doesn't even want clemency for Christ's sake.
His lawyer said he does feel a sense of shame
and remorse about it
and wishes he could take it back.
Well,
I bet they do too.
But the family wishes he could take it back too.
So his sister,
Lynn wants to be there at the execution
because she basically says
the room is full of a bunch of fucking jackals
that are there to cheer a man's death,
which is creepy as fuck.
I don't care what they did.
So a part of the body.
Yeah.
Yeah.
She said what my brother did was inexcusable,
but I'm losing someone too.
Like it's not about him.
It's about me and about the family.
So fuck him and his comfort.
What about me?
He said,
my brother's going to be in front of a room full of people
begging to stand in line to watch him be executed.
Why can't I be there?
And they tell her she can't be there.
They tell her she can't be there.
She can be in like some separate room in the prison.
But then what they do is they give her a time
that he's going to be executed.
They leave the prison for a while.
Then they call her and they say that we moved his time.
So we're doing it now.
And she's too far away to do anything.
Pretty ridiculous.
April 23rd,
2017,
the last legal argument here,
the Arkansas Supreme Court rejects the challenge
based on the old jury form problem.
Remember the different things filled out?
His lawyer says,
I don't get it.
Every other case,
of the jury form being fucked up,
you let him go.
It's tossed.
The lawyer said,
it's win, win, win.
Jones loses.
Win, win, win.
And we think that's improper.
So April 23rd, 24th,
he's got his spiritual advisor there.
April 24th is his execution day.
He shared coffee and snacks
with the man in the next cell,
Marcel Williams,
who will be executed right after him.
They got him stacked up.
They're like planes on a roller coaster.
Runway ready to take off.
He was pasting.
He spent his last days
pasting photos of his daughter
into a scrapbook.
And his daughter visited him
the day before the execution
and all that kind of thing.
He gave her his wedding ring,
which she wore on a chain around her neck.
April 24th, 2017,
execution day is here.
Here we go.
Last meals, everybody.
Yeah, it's Arkansas.
It's Arkansas.
First of all, Marcel Williams,
because I have two.
Last meals here.
He got three pieces of fried chicken,
banana pudding,
nachos with chili, cheese,
and jalapeno peppers.
Great choice.
Two Mountain Dews.
And I believe this has got to be French fries,
but the prison calls them potato logs
because nothing can be French in Arkansas
because they're still in another century.
Potato logs with ketchup,
which sounds disgusting.
Sounds like what a potato would ship.
We make French fries unappetizing.
How does that work?
How did you do that?
It's the only way possible.
Jack got three pieces of fried chicken,
potato logs with tartar sauce.
Ew.
Okay, I've heard of mayonnaise.
I know the Canadians are weird
and Southerners put mayonnaise on them sometimes,
but fucking tartar sauce?
I've never heard of that one before.
Beef jerky bites,
because he loves beef jerky.
Okay.
Three Butterfinger bars.
Nice choice.
His favorite candy.
Favorite candy.
Yeah.
And one chocolate milkshake
with Butterfinger pieces in it.
Okay.
Yeah.
A blizzard, basically.
His sister said it's his favorite thing.
And fruit punch.
Okay.
So that's what he had.
I'm shocked neither of them wanted fried okra.
That is a very popular thing in Arkansas.
Well, he's from Ohio,
and I don't know where Mark Saul Williams is from,
so I'm not sure.
His final words come here,
and he said,
I hope over time you can learn,
you could learn who I really am
and that I'm not a monster.
I'm to his own daughter.
Then he said,
I'm so sorry, Lacey.
There was a reason why those things happened that day.
I love you like a child.
Ew.
Be like,
but don't tell me that, motherfucker.
Lacey was not in the witness room, though.
She waited in a separate waiting room
because she chose not to watch
because she's got scruples.
And maybe some trauma.
And some trauma, too.
There's a lot going on with this poor Lacey.
I mean, you can't be through a worse,
and then have it dragged out for decades, too.
It's got to be like getting your guts
ripped out constantly.
He has a written statement of his last words.
He said,
there are no words that would fully express
my remorse for the pain I caused.
He said,
I made up my mind I would be a better person
when I left than when I came in.
So now,
I'm a better person than when I got here.
Now I'm a better guy.
After the execution,
Lacey called it exhausting,
mentally exhausting,
and said,
I don't want to talk about that.
I'm glad it's done.
That chapter is closed.
James Phillips,
Mary's husband,
said,
I hope the state of Arkansas learns from this.
It don't take 22 years to get something done.
Good Lord.
Oh, my God.
That's, uh. Yes, it does sometimes, sir.
Yeah, I don't want to say anything,
but Jesus Christ, man.
I mean, that's. Sometimes it takes some time.
Yeah.
Darla said she wasn't sure
she could watch the whole thing,
but she said from now on,
it'll just be positive things.
Now I don't have to worry about this.
And her husband said
she's ready for it to be done.
It's going to bring some closure
to the entire family.
Well, good.
Yeah.
And Jesse James, the son,
Mary's son,
said,
I don't dwell on how she was taken from me.
No events from today will bring her back,
which is the only reasonable way to look at it.
No matter what happens,
she's still gone.
November 2018.
Remember that letter he gave his sister?
Said, hang on to this for a year.
Here it is.
She does.
She gives it to Detective John Curcio,
Mongo,
and in the end,
and in that letter,
he describes a killing he committed
in Hollywood, Florida in 1983.
A young woman near the beach.
This is from the letter.
I want people to know
that when I came to prison,
I made up my mind
that I would be a better person,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I had no doubt in my mind
I'd make every effort to do this.
I make every effort to be a good person.
I practice Buddhism.
I study physics.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Okay.
In the letter to the,
I think that's his last letter,
but in the letter to the cop,
he said that,
he described the murder,
details only the killer would know,
said she haunted me for three years
and we made peace.
She forgave me.
I never forgave myself.
If you just let them know
I'm deeply sorry
that I couldn't rest easy
until they knew the truth
about Regina's family.
She forgave me?
He's crazy.
Yeah, and also,
what about the guy
who went to prison?
He's a serial rapist,
so fuck him.
Did you forgive him?
Did you get,
yeah, he was gonna be,
he was gonna die of cancer
in there anyway.
Either way.
Well, let's not have him
die in cancer
for your fucking crime.
Yep, so they exhume his body,
retest the DNA,
and the results come in.
Jack is the rapist
who murdered fucking Regina Harrison,
not the other guy.
He's telling the fucking truth.
And the cops said
they moved to vacate
the conviction for Ronald Stewart.
They said,
although he's now deceased,
it's appropriate
that the record be corrected.
And, yeah,
they said that two agencies
said they regretted
the roles they had played,
and that they were
testing Jones' DNA
against other unsolved killings
in Florida and other states,
because I doubt
it's just the three of them.
I doubt he had that big
of a thing.
And they said,
and Jones has already
been executed,
and we can only
execute people once.
That's what Richard Harrison,
Regina's brother, said.
He's already been executed.
We can only execute people once.
What's the difference
at this point?
So there you go.
There's Bald Knob, Arkansas.
Oh, my God.
And what sounded like
just a random,
yeah,
robber-rapist
is actually
a serial killer.
That's three killings.
Terrible human being.
Yeah.
A frightening individual.
Oh, terrifying.
Crossing state lines.
No matter where he is,
he will murder and kill.
A terrifying man.
So there you go, everybody.
That's an uplifting story for you.
Well, we've never claimed
to be uplifting.
That's not part of this, really.
That one's amongst
the most disgusting.
It's horrifying.
And then he kept that one
in his pocket
until the,
that's fucking weird as shit.
So,
anyway,
there it is,
Bald Knob, Arkansas.
Hope you enjoyed the show.
If you enjoy,
I can't believe that.
The name of a story.
Vile, man.
This was a,
this was really
particularly
unbelievable.
It's gross.
When I saw Bald Knob,
I'm like,
I don't really care
what the murder is.
We're doing that one.
And then it turned out
to be this.
And I was like,
Christ,
it couldn't be more interesting
on top of it.
So, yeah,
Jesus Christ.
They went,
I feel bad for everybody
in this case,
except for Jack, really.
He can go fuck himself.
But anyway,
definitely,
if you enjoyed the story,
Tell everyone about it.
Get on whatever app you're on.
Give us five stars.
Netflix viewers, double thumbs up is huge stuff, so do that.
Thank you for doing that.
We appreciate it.
Head over to ShutUpAndGiveMeMurder.com.
Get your tickets for live shows, everybody.
Oh, yeah.
Last two of the year, and if you're listening right when this comes out,
they're this weekend, Tarrytown.
Pretty sure that's about sold out, so I don't even know if that's a viable deal.
That's on November the 13th.
November the 14th, we are in Medford, just outside Boston.
Get those tickets right now.
That's going to be a great show, and it's the last one of the year,
so we leave it all on the stage.
It's going to be a blast.
Get out there and do that and come see us.
New shows, next year's live shows, full schedule will be announced very soon,
and then the tickets will go on sale in December for those.
So excited for that.
Can't wait for that stuff.
And we're going to try to get a virtual live in there.
We've had so many people disappointed that we had no virtual live for Halloween.
We wanted to.
Trust us.
Not our fault.
They went belly up.
They went belly.
So we're looking to figure out a replacement for it.
So we will do that, and we will figure it out.
Follow on social media, at Small Town Murder on Instagram,
at Small Town Pod on Facebook, patreon.com slash crimeinsports.
That is where you get all of the bonus material.
Anybody, $5 a month or above, you get every goddamn thing we put out.
As soon as you subscribe, about almost 400 back bonus episodes immediately.
New ones every other week.
One crime and sports, one small town murder, and you get them all.
Everybody, this week, what you're going to get for crime and sports, we're going to
talk about the Harlem Globetrotters, the most interesting basketball team of all time.
And there's no league involved.
Everybody played for them.
They were on Gilligan's Island and shit.
It's just a weird story and fun.
Then for small town murder, speaking of a weird story, how did the Nazis influence the
hippies when it came to LSD?
We'll fucking tell you all about it because we are going to continue the Nazis on drugs
blitz book.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This is like part two of that.
Basically, uh, the same guy wrote it.
So it's very, very interesting.
Can't wait to get into that.
That is patrion.com slash crime in sports.
And in addition to all that, you also get everything we put out ad free.
Yeah.
And on top of that, you also get a shout out at the end of the regular show.
You can't beat it.
You want to follow us on social media, on social media, uh, shut up and give me murder.com
is how you do that.
You'll find us keep coming back and seeing us and tell your friends and all that good
shit.
And until next week, everybody.
Yes.
It's been our pleasure.
Bye.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
The episode explores the 1995 murder of Mary and 11-year-old Lacey Phillips in Bald Knob, Arkansas, a case involving brutal violence, a detailed crime scene, and a shocking confession.
The suspect, Jack Harrell Jr., admitted to strangling Mary, raping her, beating Lacey with a BB gun, and tying her to a chair in the bathroom, with a description from the child matching his appearance and behavior.
Jack’s background includes severe childhood trauma, sexual abuse, hallucinations, and a history of mental illness, which the defense used to argue for insanity, though the prosecution emphasized premeditation and criminal intent.
A key piece of evidence linking Jack to the crime is the microscopic match between hairs from Mary’s body and known samples from Jack, bolstered by a graphic photo of Lacey’s skull injuries in court.
Jack’s prior unsolved 1991 murder of Lori Barrett in Florida is later uncovered through DNA testing, revealing a pattern of serial violence and connecting him to a known serial rapist, Ronald Stewart, who died in prison.
The case shows a complex legal battle involving multiple appeals, jury forms with contradictory mitigating factors, and a death sentence upheld despite a troubled history.
Jack’s sister, Lynn, testified at sentencing and remained a moral support, while he requested death by refusing to appeal, showing deep psychological distress.
The case highlights the intersection of mental health, systemic failures, and justice, with critics questioning whether the death penalty was justified given Jack’s history of victimization and mental instability.
Summary:
The Small Town Murder Express episode details a harrowing 1995 murder in Bald Knob, Arkansas, where 17-year-old Darla Phillips was driving her 11-year-old sister Lacey to her mother Mary’s office. After the mother and daughter fail to return, police discover Mary strangled with a coffee machine cord and Lacey tied to a chair, severely beaten. A detailed crime scene reveals signs of premeditation: wire, a BB gun, and a specific tattoo described by Lacey.
, is identified through the description and the victim’s account. He confesses to the crimes, including rape and robbery, and claims his motive is revenge for police inaction in a prior case involving his wife’s rape. His defense cites severe childhood trauma, hallucinations, and bipolar disorder, while prosecutors argue for premeditation and cruelty.
The case proceeds to a death sentence, but Jack’s history is further exposed when DNA links him to the 1991 murder of Lori Barrett in Florida, a case previously linked to a convicted serial rapist, Ronald Stewart. A 2005 investigation confirms Jack’s guilt in both murders, leading to a second charge in Florida with a plea deal. The case remains controversial due to Jack’s mental health and the lack of clear evidence of premeditation in the initial crime.
Despite appeals and clemency efforts, he is sentenced to death. The episode underscores the intersection of trauma, mental illness, and justice, questioning whether the death penalty fits for a man with a history of abuse and psychological instability. It also highlights systemic issues, such as flawed jury forms and the failure to address mental health in capital cases, while showing how a single act of violence can ripple through decades of justice.
FAQs
The murder occurred in Bald Knob, Arkansas, a small town in white county known for its rural setting and location where the Ozarks meet the Delta.
The victims were Mary Elizabeth Phillips, a 34-year-old bookkeeper, and her 11-year-old daughter, Lacey Phillips, who was found tied to a chair and severely beaten.
Lacey described the attacker as a man with black hair and a teardrop tattoo under his left eye, who had previously visited the office to borrow books and later returned to commit the crime.
The perpetrator was Jack Jones Jr., identified through Lacey's detailed description and later confirmed by DNA evidence linking hairs from the victim to his sample.
Jack Jones Jr. committed murder, robbery, rape, and attempted murder by strangling Mary Phillips, beating Lacey with a BB gun, and raping her, all while using wire and a coffee machine cord to bind the victims.
Yes, Jack Jones Jr. was convicted of capital murder, rape, and attempted capital murder and sentenced to death, along with life in prison for rape and 30 years plus a $15,000 fine for attempted murder.
Chat with AI
Loading...
Pro features
Go deeper with this episode
Unlock creator-grade tools that turn any transcript into show notes and subtitle files.