William “Billy” Jones

Welcome to Primetime Crime. I'm your host, Kylie. Let's talk right now on true crime, and then together we're going to work on warming up some cold cases. Let's go. Hey, guys, welcome to this week's episode of Primetime Crime. It's Kylie. We are going to get into a little right now in True Crime, and then we're going to get into this week's episode, which I feel like I've had recorded for a while. I think I recorded it well before Crime Con, but then, of course I had to do my Crime Con recap, and I had a couple of other filler guest episodes planned. So I'm looking forward to bringing you this episode today. So right now in True Crime, a few things have happened since last week that either happened after I recorded last week, because let me tell you, I often like to record right now in True Crime Wednesday evening, and I tell you every single time something happens on Thursday when I record on Wednesday, every single time. With that being said, I'm recording this on Wednesday. If anything crazy happens, I will sure to tack it on to the last little bit of this episode, all right, So getting into it. First thing up is an update in the Anna Keepner case. Now, the last time we talked about her case. She is the young lady who was allegedly murdered by her step brother on a cruise ship last year. Late last year. The last time we talked, they had ordered that he could be out of custody and travel around with an ankle monitor and be monitored that way until he stood trial. But they have officially ordered him into federal custody and that is where he will remain until his trial. So I don't know why the change of heart. That is exactly where he should be. He should be in federal custody. He should be behind bars because going through everything that has been released thus far on this case is actually terrifying, and he's only sixteen, and that's really scary and really alarming. So I'm glad that you ever made that decision, that they made that decision, and that is where he will remain until the trial. Okay, next thing I want to get into is the Long Island serial killer was sentenced on Wednesday, and the judge that did the sentencing, I am not familiar with him. I had to look up how to say his last name because I try to make sure that I'm saying things the correct way. His name is Timothy Matts. He did not hold back whatsoever during this sentencing. I'm going to play a short little clip of him that Nate Eaton had posted on Facebook of the interaction between him and Rex Humerman, the confessed Long Island serial killer. It's a very short clip, a couple of minutes long. I'm gonna play that now. Responsible said in this room's day. The words I would say have no meaning, and I'm gonna be ver there. Speak up, just a human, As mister Tierney said, I know that you're sorry that you got caught. I assume that you're sorry for what you've done. To your wife and children. Are you a little bit sorry for what you did to these poor innocent women? Eight women that is strangled to death, at least. Eight that we know of. Are you at least a little bit sorry for that? Yes, yes, you know what. You've been described as a very big man, but you're a disgusting and despicable small man. If you're a man at all, and you're a coward. Never in my life have I heard a judge allow cheering in the courtroom like that. That to me is absolutely wild. I have one hundred and ten percent behind it because this guy is a actual monster. He showed no emotion, and honestly, when people were cheering at the end, I could almost see him. To me, it looked like he was smiling, smirking, like he was honestly loving the attention. I think that's the type of person this guy is. No matter what type of attention it is, whether it's negative or positive, he likes attention. But bravo to the judge. I really liked him. I thought that he did a great job and he's going away for life. He's never gonna see the light of day again. I know his wife and I believe his daughter as well, did not attend the sentencing. They originally, I think, had planned on attending, and then they made a decision not to attend. Next up is Didty's release date has been moved up by two months, which I guess it's a little over two months. I think it was originally going to be May. I might have made that up. Maybe it was April. Now it's going to be February of twenty twenty eight. I don't know why we are doing Diddy any favors and giving him any extra time out amongst the human population free. It's astonishing that these decisions are made. I will never make any sense of it, and I wouldn't be surprised if it gets cut even more than February twenty twenty eight. I wouldn't be surprised if he's not out in twenty twenty seven. That's just my opinion on things. I don't know the legalities behind all of that, But how is this made in getting out earlier than we thought? I mean, it's bad enough that he's going to be out anyway, but yeah, that's the Diddy update. All right, guys, I think that just about does it for right now. In True Crime, we are going to go ahead and get into this week's episode. Alrighty, guys, we are getting into a brand new unsolved case today. In today's episode, I'm going to be telling you about the still unsolved December nineteen sixty two disappearance of three year old William Ebenezer Jones Junior, better known as Billy Jones, from Vineland, New Jersey. He went missing in the middle of the morning on a Monday, right before Christmas in nineteen sixty two. He vanished into thin air quite literally and all of these years later, his disappearance has us with more questions than answers. Billy's case is considered one of the oldest missing children cases under the age of five in New Jersey. I personally believe that this is a child abduction, and I'm unsure why it was ever considered anything but that. But let's step back in time and talk about Billy's early life and the details surrounding his disappearance. William Ebenezer Jones Junior was born in Bridgton, New Jersey, on March fifth of nineteen fifty nine, to his parents, Evelyn Jones and his father, William Ebenezer Jones Senior. Billy was the oldest child, and he had a younger sister named Jill, who was two, and a younger brother, Bart who was one when Billy went missing, so the Jones family had three young kids, ages one, two, and three. William had worked outside of the home at the New York Shipping Building Company in Camden, New Jersey. Evelyn was a homemaker who stayed at home with her children. The family of five lived in Vineland, New Jersey, and in a home that was located on Taylor Avenue, Vineland, New Jersey is located in South Jersey, and the city of Vineland was incorporated on July first of nineteen fifty two, which, fun fact, is actually my mom's birthday July first, nineteen fifty two. In present day twenty twenty six, it is described as the most populous municipality in Cumberland County. According to the twenty twenty United States Census, the city's population was sixty thousand, seven hundred and eighty. Although census records from back in nineteen sixty two, when Billy's alleged in my opinion, abduction occurred, are not available, it is safe to say that the number was much less back in nineteen sixty two. The Jones family had two dogs. One was a basset hound named baby Cakes, and a Collie. Billy especially loved dogs and is described as the type that would do anything for I would imagine that this was the case, especially for his family dogs. He loved them, they were his family. Billy was reportedly especially close to baby Cakes, the family's basset hound. Billy also loved reading and playing with toy cars. I'm sure he was your typical three year old boy, and he was only a few months away from celebrating his fourth birthday. The date was Monday, December seventeenth of nineteen sixty two, with it being just a week before Christmas. It was a chilly winter morning and the Jones family home was decorated for Christmas. The family Christmas tree was up and decorated, and underneath the tree were some of Billy's presents that included coloring books and a toy tank. This day started just like any other for the Jones family. William Senior had departed that morning for work and Evelyn had run some errands with the children that morning as well. Billy got a haircut and then Evelyn ran to the bake Once they got home, Evelyn went inside to prepare lunch for the children and tend to the youngest child, Bart Billy and Jill proceeded to go outside with the family dogs. It was pretty typical for the kids to play outside while Evelyn was inside prepping lunch and doing her other chores. She would watch them from the window and keep an eye on them. And remember this was a different time in nineteen sixty two, kids could safely play outside in front of their home, especially in a safe area of town which from everything I've seen, Vinelyn was described as being very safe during this time. There was nothing that previously would alert the Jones family to this being an unsafe area or that the kids would not be safe outside of their own home. So, like I said, once they got home, Billy and Jill took the family's dogs and they went outside. Billy was dressed in a blue gray snowsuit with silver buttons and a navy collar. In his pockets, he had a dime that his mother had given him. He also wore tan high top tennis shoes with yellow laces. There was nothing unusual about this day or about the series of events of Billy and Jill going outside to play while their mom prepared lunch and looked after their younger brother. Around eleven forty five am that morning, a neighbor spotted Billy nearby and told him to go ahead and head home. Then, at one pm, Evelyn, who had stepped into a bedroom to check on her youngest child, Bart, heard a knock on the door. When she opened the door, she saw two year old Jill standing there in the doorway holding a plastic potted points set up plant, and she said that she had either gotten it from Billy or from a man who took Billy. Now, I do want to be clear, as with any older case, the details vary depending on which source is used, So I did want to state that I've seen both reports accounted on numerous sites, one that said she got the pot of plant from Billy and one that said she got it from the man who took Billy. Jill then went on to say that the boogeyman took Billy. Evelyn was obviously panicked and raced out of the house and went up and down the street looking for Billy. While she was searching, an unknown man approached her and asked her if she was okay. The man, although a stranger to her, knew her by name Missus Jones, and Evelyn didn't respond to him or even ask what he wanted. She just continued on with her search. And I'm sure in the moment she was obviously frazzled, she had a lot of thoughts probably racing through her mind. I don't think that it even occurred to her to stop and see what this man wanted, what this man had to say, and who this man was, because she said that he was a stranger to her and she was not familiar with him, but yet he did know her by the name Missus Jones. So Evelyn continued with her search, and she searched and searched, with no luck in finding Billy. Evelyn also discovered that the family's basket hound was also missing. Evelyn then reported Billy missing to the police. Now, the family's basket hound would later be found a short distance from the home, and when she returned, she was soaking wet, which again is a really interesting little tidbit of information. Once Billy was reported missing, everyone got involved in trying to find him. By December eighteenth, over five hundred people were searching and scouring the area trying to find Billy. Neighbors were helping in the search along with law enforcement and first responder personnel, and this kicked off a four day search. They were searching on foot, by air, and also by boat. The wooded area near the Jones home was searched, as well as nearby Maurice River, but there was no sign of little Billy that turned up in all of these searches. Bloodhounds also were brought in, but they lost the scent of Billy near the Jones home. Soon the search ended because They truly had covered all of the ground that they could, and there was no place else left to look. Rumors began to swirl that Billy was abducted, and tips began to pour in by the dozens. All tips were looked into and checked out. One notable tip came in from a woman named Dorothy de Palma who lived on Baylor Avenue, which was about a block away from the Jones home. She recalled seeing a girl in her late teens going across the back of her property carrying a young child in her arms. Now, this child was reportedly wearing a blue outfit. She of course didn't think anything of this initially until after she heard that Billy was missing and what he had been wearing. But authorities still to this day have never been able to identify who this girl was or get a chance to question her. So one of the biggest clues in this case is the plastic point seta that Jill had in her hands right after Billy had disappeared, and law enforcement did attempt to try to figure out where this point set it came from. Had it possibly been given to Billy by the kidnapper, and then it was given to Jill Kind of as a distraction. Either way, the Jones family didn't know the origin of the point seta. This was not something that they owned. This was not theirs, and it was a plastic type of plant, so it was not a real point seta. It was plastic. So this was kind of helpful to the investigation because law enforcement knew that maybe they could track the origin of where this point set it came from. There were some rumors that there was possibly somebody in the neighborhood that was selling these plastic point SETAs in the days leading up to Billy's disappearance, but this was proven to be false. But at the end of this investigation into where this plastic point seta came from, it was concluded that this was likely from one of the Jones' neighbors who had thrown away some point SETAs in the days before, and it had kind of been passed around between the kids in the neighborhood and investigators thought that Billy had maybe come across it and that's how it ended up in Joel's possession. Investigators learned that there was a trash collection in the area where the Jones family lived between one point thirty and two pm that day that Billy was taken, and there was speculation that maybe Billy could have crawled into a trash bin and maybe all of this was just a tragic accident. Investigators were able to speak with one of the trash men who said he did not see Billy at all. And this was back in the day when trash men would actually go pick up the trash can themselves physically and throw it in the back of the garbage truck. And if Billy had been in there, he would have seen him. There's no way around it. But investigators did what they had to, and they did actually go out and search the landfill and there was no sign of Billy there either. So for me, the whole point set a thing I think is such an important part of this case. It is very likely that this point seta was thrown in the trash by a neighbor and Billy just happened upon it. But I also think there's room to say that that point seto was brought to Billy and Jill by this alleged of doctor as kind of a distraction. But again, like I said, that is just my opinion, because all reports that I've seen say that that point that it did, in fact come from a neighbor's trash, and it was one of those kind of things that had just been passed around between all of the neighborhood kids. But what if that is the missing piece of the puzzle. What if they missed out on a huge piece of evidence by saying, okay, it belonged to a neighbor. In the days following the disappearance of Billy, local radio station WWBZ offered a five hundred dollars reward leading to information about the disappearance of young Billy Jones. The FBI was called in and they did get involved, and this is where the turning point of the case happened, because everybody thought that it would officially be classified as a child abduction case and not just a missing child's case. But they insisted that they didn't have enough evidence to call this a child abduction and they proceeded on as if it was just a missing child's case. Billy's pair obviously very much struggled with everything that happened, and they ended up leaving the area shortly after Billy went missing. Billy's father especially struggled, and the family as a whole didn't really speak of what happened to them. It was obviously a very traumatic experience and I can't even imagine personally what they went through and how it changed the trajectory of their lives, because it did, and not having those answers still all of these years later has to be so hard. In the investigation, the Jones family didn't really know what else to do, so they ended up turning to a local psychic. This particular psychic claimed that Billy was in fact still alive. She said that Billy had been abducted by a man whose wife had been in the process of having a mental breakdown because she had lost her son. She said that she believed that Billy had been taken to the Amish area of Pennsylvania and was being raised by this new family. Investigators didn't believe this to be true because they thought that Billy was old enough to have memories of his life, and as he got older, he would have said something to somebody about these people not being his family, which I don't entirely agree with, because Stockholm syndrome is a real thing, and the ability to brainwash somebody, especially somebody so young, is also a real thing, and Billy was so young when this abduction happened, alleged abduction happened, So I do think it's entirely possible that Billy was taken by somebody who wanted a child and they just went on to raise him as their own, and he knows no different because that is his life. In nineteen sixty four, another psychic came forward and told the family that Billy had been accidentally struck and killed by somebody. The psychic then went on to say that Billy had been buried, and she even gave a description of the man in his car that alleged hit Billy. Years later, Jill was placed under hypnosis in hopes that she would remember something from the day of the abduction, because you have to remember, she is the key eyewitness here to what happened, and she was only two years old, and I'm sure this whole thing was so traumatic for her her brain likely blocked a lot of it out. While under hypnosis, Jill was able to recall that she was holding hands with Billy, and she remembers seeing two men fighting in front of an oil drum fire at a place called the Palace of Depression, which was a landmark that was located near the Jones family home. Jill recalls running and before she knew it, she was at the front door of her house. Now, the Palace of Depression was extensively searched, and nothing tied to Billy ended up coming up there. Still to this day, Jill vows that she is going to find her brother and has not given up her search. In an interview with New Jersey dot Com from a twenty seventeen article, Jill stated this about her brother's disappearance. Quote, It's amazing how things get blocked in your brain and you can't unlock them. I give anything to remember all of it. End quote. Now, there are some things from Jill's childhood that she remembers so vividly, like she can remember holding Billy's hand, but she doesn't remember what happened to him. She doesn't remember what happened in those moments after she was holding his hand. And like I said, we have to remember that Jill was only two years old when all of this happened. Age progress photos of Billy have been done and I will be sharing those on my social media's, so please be sure to head over to my Instagram or Facebook pages and check them out. Jill has also submitted and given her DNA sample over the years, and there have been a lot of leads and tips that have come in. Billy has never been found. There's also been no remains found that have been tied to him. Retired Vinlin police Sergeant Patrick Daughtry says that somebody has to know something, and he has been quoted as saying that he's not going to rule out that Billy is alive. And after all of these years, it is now generally believed that Billy was abducted versus he just wandered off or accidentally got killed in some type of accident. Jill is the last remaining family member left of the Jones family, and she holds out hope that one day she will find her brother. She's quoted as saying, when somebody dies, you know where they're at, But with Billy, you don't have an answer. And with that being said, Jill does believe that Billy is alive and out there, and she still searches for him daily and tries to keep the word out there that Billy is still missing and he could very well be out there living his life and unaware that he was an abductive child all the way back in nineteen sixty two. Just to recap everything. Billy Jones was three years old when he disappeared. He stood three feet six inches tall and weighed thirty five pounds. He had a vaccination scar on the back of his left forearm, resembling a giraffe. He was wearing a blue gray snowsuit with silver buttons and a navy collar. In his pocket, he had a dime that his mother had given him. He also wore ten high top tennis shoes with yellow laces. He had piercing blue eyes. If you were in or around the area of the Jones family home that day, really go back and search your mind for anything that you might have seen or anything out of the ordinary that you might have heard after the fact. One clue in this could blow this investigation wide open. Anyone with information about Billy Jones's disappearance asked to call the Violent Police Department at eight five six six nine one for one point one one. One thing I found in my research for this case is that there is still a lot of talk and people talking about Billy's disappearance, sharing about Billy's disappearance, trying to keep the word out there because it has been so long. This is a older case, but I want to end on reading a post that Jill had made to a message board about Billy's disappearance. And this post was made by Jill in twenty eleven, so this was a while ago, but I still wanted to share. I am Billy Jones's sister, and the local paper won't even return my calls anymore. Yes, I am still looking for him. I have not stopped. I just hit a lot of walls. It took forty nine years just to get him on the missing network, and the violent police have new eyes looking into it. But like everyone else, I am not allowed to know much. But our mom and dad have passed away now they know the truth, and most of the people that helped with the case have also passed away. Billy is fifty two now and will turn fifty three on March fifth. I will never stop looking for him and missing him every day of my life. And thank you all. He'll still care about him, and please pass the word around. Maybe one day he will come home again. Thanks Jill Jones. And that absolutely just breaks my heart that she has done everything humanly possible to try to bring her brother home. Unfortunately. Yeah, all of the people who were involved in this case back in nineteen sixty two have passed away, and it has to be so hard trying to keep a case like this prevalent for people that are currently working at the Violin Police Department. I can't even imagine how difficult that is. And for her not to have access to anything after all of these years. Just give her access to the files. Maybe there's something in there that will spark a memory and will help bring Billy home. Like I said, I am going to be sharing the age progressed photos of Billy. If Billy were alive today, he would be sixty four years old, and he very well could be a normal, well adjusted human living his day to day life, not even realizing that he is in fact a missing child. We hear about these cases a lot, and I think these are the most important ones to share because unfortunately time is running out. This happened in nineteen sixty two. Both of Billy's parents have passed away. Billy's younger brother, Bart has passed away. There are people that this case has directly impacted, especially Jill, who are waiting for answers, and every day that goes by without answers, is another day closer to not figuring out what happened to Billy. Like I said, remains have never been found, so it is very probable that Billy could still be out there living under a completely different identity. Please take a minute to look at the age progress photos. Also, please take a minute to share this episode, especially if you knew or lived in the Vineland area at any point in time. There might be somebody that you know that has something to share about this case and doesn't even realize it until they hear the episode and they realize that they might have information. So please share. Look at the age progress photos, look at the younger photos of Billy, and share this episode. Share it on social media, share the picture carousel I'm going to post on social media. It really is important to get exposure to some of these older, lesser known cases. That is why I do what I do, and that is why I brought you Billy's episode today. So thank you guys so much for listening. As always, I appreciate you, and I will see you next week for a brand new unsolved case. Have a safe weekend and I will see you then. Bye.