Investigators look into Alabama murder suspect's ties to Georgia cases

<p>Police were asking for the public's help Friday with identifying eight women whose photos were found in the local storage shed of a man accused of killing a woman in Alabama and being investigated in the deaths of at least two others in Georgia.</p><p>"We don't know if these women are alive," Douglas County Sheriff Phil Miller said, referring to the photos. "We have no reason to think they've come to any harm, except that they were in the personal belongings of a suspected serial killer."</p><p>Authorities found the pictures after searching the shed belonging to Jeremy Brian Jones, 31, who has been charged with capital murder and rape in last month's death of 45-year-old Lisa Nichols near Mobile, Ala.</p><p>Two of the women in the photographs had come forward Friday after their images were posted on the Internet and aired on television. Both of the women were from Mobile.</p><p>Jones, a fugitive from Oklahoma wanted in that state for rape and failure to register as a sex offender, was arrested in Mobile but had been living in the Douglasville area until last month.</p><p>Georgia authorities have questioned Jones in the slayings of 38-year-old Tina Mayberry, who was stabbed to death in the parking lot of a Douglasville restaurant and bar on Oct. 31, 2002; and 16-year-old Amanda Greenwell, who was a neighbor of Jones in Douglasville and was missing for a month before her skeletal remains were found off of an access road in April.</p><p>Investigators from at least five states hope to question Jones, a construction worker. On Thursday, during a hearing in Mobile County District Court, a prosecutor suggested that investigators in California, Arkansas, Tennessee, Oklahoma and elsewhere in Alabama have expressed interest in Jones as a suspect in unsolved murders in their jurisdictions.</p><p>"Anytime somebody is identified as a serial rapist or a serial killer, it perks law enforcement's interest anywhere there's an unsolved crime that's similar," Miller said.</p><p>Miller said women's jewelry also was found in Jones' Douglasville shed, but he declined to say whether police knew who it belonged to. Police also searched in and underneath Jones' rented mobile home in Douglasville, but declined to reveal what they found, if anything.</p><p>At the Arbor Village Mobile Home Park, where Jones and Greenwell were neighbors, residents remembered him for his drug problem and quick temper.</p><p>"He was always pretty high," said Eric Hensley, a 31-year-old neighbor who used to drink Budweiser and play chess with Jones. "He had a pretty hard drug problem. He was always paranoid, always wondering if the cops were looking for him."</p><p>The two were friends until Hensley suggested praying together, he said.</p><p>"He completely flipped out," Hensley said. "He said he couldn't handle prayer in his house. We know why now."</p><p>Another neighbor, Tammy Norris, remembers Jones fighting with a woman he lived with and sobbing loudly at the mobile home park's pay phone after the two would argue.</p><p>"It gives me chills just thinking about it," said Norris, a mother of three.</p><p>Greenwell's stepbrother, 18-year-old James Strickland, said he has been restless since Amanda's disappearance, but won't been calmed until Jones is charged with her death.</p><p>"I feel better they're looking at a suspect, but until I actually find out it was him, it won't be OK," he said, adding both he and his stepsister would see Jones around the trailer park but did not know him well.</p><p>Jones recently came to Mobile to find work as a laborer and carpenter in the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan, said his court-appointed attorney Habib Yazdi. Yazdi has said Jones is "mentally incompetent" for trial. Yazdi did not immediately return phone calls for comment Friday.</p><p>When Jones lived in Douglasville, he used the alias John Paul Chapman. Under the alias, he had spent time in Douglas County Jail, first for a drug charge and next for indecent exposure. He also had been arrested in neighboring Carroll County for trespassing. But Georgia officials never knew Jones was wanted by Oklahoma authorities because jail fingerprinting did not reveal that he was using a false name.</p><p>Miller insisted the county followed the correct fingerprinting process, which includes sending the fingerprints to the state crime lab for analysis.</p><p>"I don't have a computer bank of all the fingerprints in America sitting here in Douglas County," Miller said. "To suggest that we dropped the ball, and as a result there are at least two women dead, is a bald-faced lie."</p><p>---</p><p>On the Net:</p><p>HASH(0x2862e24)</p>

http://accesswdun.com/article/2004/10/159185