A judge on Wednesday detained a man accused of strangling his estranged wife to death inside her apartment last fall.
Brandon Jones, 37, is charged with one count of first-degree murder and issuance of a warrant after his wife, Carolyn Jones — from whom he was separated — was found dead the day before Thanksgiving in her Greater Grand Crossing home. He was arrested in Indiana on Monday.
Around 6 a.m. on November 26, Carolyn Jones was transported to the hospital by Brandon Jones and her two sons after they found her “lifeless” in her bedroom, state’s attorneys said. The previous day, Brandon Jones had called one of the sons upset by the sight of his estranged wife with another man outside their home. She had informed him she wanted a divorce months beforehand and told him she had been seeing someone else via text.
Video surveillance footage showed Brandon Jones entering and exiting the home multiple times within the time frame that Carolyn Jones was killed. Witnesses reported seeing Brandon Jones with a scratch on his face early in the morning on November 26, and he told one of them he had “gotten into an argument” with her overnight, state’s attorneys said.
According to state’s attorneys, the two sons had smelled a gas leak throughout the course of the night their mother was killed. As they were investigating the cause of the leak, they heard Brandon Jones repeating the word “Yo” inside their mother’s bedroom. That’s when they went inside the bedroom and saw their mother was unresponsive.
Brandon Jones told the two men, who are both in their 20s, that an ambulance would not be fast enough and they needed to take their mother to the hospital themselves. When they arrived, doctors made a preliminary finding that she died from cardiac arrest. Brandon Jones left the hospital after she was pronounced dead.
On November 27, an autopsy was conducted and the medical examiner ruled the cause of her death to be strangulation, making notes of marks on her neck, petechia to her eyes and the fact that she had been bleeding from her nostrils.
An analysis conducted by Illinois State Police Crime Lab revealed a considerable amount of the DNA found behind Carolyn Jones’ fingernails belonged to Brandon Jones. Detectives executed search warrants on both of their cell phones and found that the last text Carolyn Jones received was a text from her estranged husband that said “I’m sorry about the fight we had when you got home, it’s just hard to know my wife is leaving.” She never opened the text.
Prior to his most recent arrest, Brandon Jones was arrested for domestic battery after being accused of pushing his then-girlfriend into a parked car. The matter was later dismissed. According to state’s attorneys, in 2011 a woman reported to police two instances in which Jones had punched her in the face and threatened to kill her, but she chose not to proceed with the matter.
Brandon Jones is scheduled to next appear in court on July 1.
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