U.S. father faces murder charges in deaths of his five children

A man accused of killing his five children in South Carolina and driving their corpses through several states before dumping them in Alabama will be charged with murder, law enforcement authorities said on Wednesday. Timothy Ray Jones Jr., 32, confessed to the killings of the children, ages 8 and under, but did not reveal a motive, authorities said. On Tuesday, he led police to the decomposed bodies, which had been stuffed in garbage bags and left near a logging road about 80 kilometres southwest of Montgomery, authorities added. “This case has been a nightmare,” Lewis McCarty, sheriff of South Carolina’s Lexington County, told a news conference on Wednesday.

In all my years of law enforcement, I have never seen a case like this.

Sheriff Lewis McCarty, South Carolina’s Lexington County

The children were reported missing by their mother on Sept 3 and were last seen with their father on Aug 28, authorities said. An Amber alert was not issued because Jones had legal custody of the children, said South Carolina Law Enforcement Division Chief Mark Keel. Jones appears to have killed the children shortly after they were last seen and then began driving a circuitous route that computer tracking indicates included South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, McCarty said. The South Carolina Department of Social Services received a report on Aug 7 that Jones had abused the children. Authorities interviewed Jones and the children but saw no evidence of abuse or that the children were in imminent danger, the department said.

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