“This is the Tim I was scared of”: Jones Jr.’s father takes the stand

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LEXINGTON, S.C. (WOLO) — Timothy Jones Sr., the father of a man who was charged with the murders of his five children in August 2014, took the stand in Day 11 of his son’s murder trial.

After his mother was institutionalized, Jones Jr. grew up living with his father and his grandmother, Roberta Thornsberry. Jones Sr. testified that the home was not the most ideal for a young child to grow up in, saying there was rampant violence, alcohol, and drug use.

Jones Sr. says he was proud of how his son turned out to be smart, but he says he did not find the life Jones Jr. led after his religious conversion (which occurred while Jones Jr. was in prison for, among other things, drug possession and car theft) favorable.

Jones Sr. says he thought his son joined a cult upon his release from prison.

“I’m trying to get back to my son, like let’s have some fun or something, not like doing drugs, but just to have fun, and he could not do nothing without sitting with that Bible,” Jones Sr. said.

On the stand, Jones Sr. said he was not a big fan of his son’s marriage to Amber. Jones Sr. thought the two rushed into the marriage. He says he wanted his son to at least date somebody long enough so he can get to know them better.

One area about the marriage Jones Sr. says he found troublesome was that Jones Jr. enforced extreme religious virtues on Amber, choosing to live a modest life in a Red Bank trailer while dictating how his wife dressed and acted around him.

“I preached to this boy that the Bible is just a guideline to life; if there’s a Ying, there’s a Yang. He wanted to make her happy. He truly thought she was happy that way. I knew she wasn’t. I could see it. I talked to the girl. It was a train wreck,” Jones Sr. said.

After the divorce, Jones Sr. said he didn’t think his son could handle raising a big family on his own.

“If something happened, me and my wife already discussed that we’d take them kids. Man, if I took Tim’s kids, he might kill me because he loved them so much,” testified the elder Jones.

Jones Sr. said he last saw the children during the holidays in 2012.

When he found out what his son did to his grandchildren nearly two years later, he says his worst fears were realized.

“I could have talked to him that day but I didn’t because my son wouldn’t do such a thing. This is the Tim I was scared I was going to see one day,” Jones Sr. said.

In addition to Jones Sr., former babysitters for Jones’s children took the stand, saying they witnessed instances where he physically disciplined his children.

Before Jones Jr. got divorced, Jodie Durney, a former babysitter for Jones, testified about how she admired Jones’s devotion to his children.

“Tim was an amazing father. He would take them skating. He would take them to church,” said Durney, who took turns supervising the children with her mother-in-law, Robin.

However, once Jones Jr. was divorced, some witnesses said they noticed a change in how he treated his children.

“You could hear it through the walls. He whipped them pretty hard and he had them stand on the corner on their tippie-toes all day long,” said Chrystal Ballentine, a former babysitter who also dated Jones after the divorce.

Ballentine says she had a relationship with Jones shortly after she turned seventeen. She says she broke it off when she saw Jones try to discipline her one-year-old daughter.

“He didn’t get to whip her, but it was getting up to that point,” Ballentine said.

A year later, Joy Lorick, another babysitter for the Jones children, testified that she came along with the family on trips to Myrtle Beach and Disney.

On the way to Disney, Lorick says Jones Jr. threatened to pull the car over and make the children do squats on the side of the road if they did not stop misbehaving.

Lorick, who was referred to Jones by his neighbor, Christina Elhke (who took the stand on the first day of testimony), says one instance resulted in Jones Jr. disciplining two of his children.

“Nahtahn was jumping around, and I asked him to stop, then Gabe just started screaming at the top of his lungs. Mr. Jones came back in, he heard it, and he spanked them with a belt,” Lorick said.

Lorick says three weeks before the murders, after she says she saw roaches in their clothes and Jones only wanting his children to be fed oatmeal, she made a call to the Department of Social Services.

“I felt like if I made that call to DSS nothing would be done. And after all that, they did nothing,” Lorick said.

In addition to Jones Sr. and the babysitters, Karen Willeford, Jones Sr.’s ex-wife, testified about how Jones Jr. acted when he grew up.

She said Jones Jr.’s aunt and uncle were drinking while driving with Jones Jr. in the car one night, leading to the accident that the defense says led to a traumatic brain injury that led to psychological issues.

Jones Sr. was asked about the car accident, saying his son started to act differently, saying that he needed to teach him some common sense after he started to act more hard-headed.

Sgt. Sandra Black, an investigator with the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department, also took the stand, corroborating details of a police interview with Ballentine back in 2014.

Jones’s ex-girlfriend told investigators she heard Jones Jr. talking to himself, but in her testimony today, she says it sounded like he was talking on the phone and he did not exhibit any symptoms of mental illness in her presence.

Jones Sr. will be back on the stand Thursday morning. Solicitor Rick Hubbard was doing his cross-examination on Jones Sr. when Judge Eugene Griffith sent the jury home for the day.