Woman who murdered son, 7, believed husband was a serial killer, Georgia prosecutor says

A Georgia mother who in 2021 shot and killed her 7-year-old son, in part because she was under the delusion that her husband, the boy’s father, was a serial killer, on Wednesday pleaded guilty but mentally ill to a murder charge.

The woman, Alison Jones, wept and was “extremely emotional” as she made a statement at a hearing in Morgan County Superior Court, District Attorney T. Wright Barksdale III told The Telegraph.

Jones, 39, was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole, for the March 1, 2021, shooting death of her son, Maddox Jones.

The boy, a first-grader, was in his pajamas the morning he suffered a fatal gunshot wound to the head while in his parents’ bed at the family’s home between Athens and Madison, about an hour’s drive east of Atlanta.

Details of what prompted the boy’s death emerged for the first time publicly in court Wednesday.

Barksdale, the Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit DA, said the boy’s father, Doug Jones, a pharmacist, heard a gunshot in the house the morning of the shooting and rushed to see what had happened. Doug Jones was shot at by his wife. The bullet missed and he wrested the gun, a 9-mm pistol, from her.

Barksdale said Alison Jones had been deemed competent to stand trial, that she knew right from wrong and that she understood the proceedings at her plea hearing.

“She had a documented history of mental health issues going back to when she was 15,” Barksdale said, adding that Alison Jones had twice over the years attempted suicide.

The DA said a state psychiatrist and Alison Jones’ own doctor had diagnosed her with “major depressive disorder” and “major anxiety disorder.”

“Her doctor also diagnosed her with unspecified delusional disorder of a severe type,” Barksdale said.

In fall of 2020, about six months before the killing, Jones showed up at the Morgan County Sheriff’s Office to report, falsely as it were, that her husband was a serial killer.

For half an hour, as Barksdale described it, she outlined her “sincere belief that her husband, Doug Jones, was a serial killer from Indiana. ... She is in a frantic, panicked state, talking about this, how he is responsible for multiple deaths.”

Nothing could have been further from the truth, Barksdale said.

Barksdale said Alison Jones’ compulsion to shoot and kill her son some six months later was, at least in part, attributable to her continued false belief that Doug Jones was a danger to them.

A video recording of Jones making the false report showed her claim to be so far-fetched and her belief so fantastical, Barksdale said, that “no rational person would have given her any credibility.”

Barksdale, after Wednesday morning’s hearing, said, “In her mind, she felt like the only way she and her son could escape this dangerous person that is, in her mind, her husband, was for her and Maddox to essentially be dead. So in her mind she was killing her son to protect him. That’s absolutely crazy to say, but that’s ... pretty much what emerged.”

The DA said the plea agreement came about in the wake of a thorough review of medical reports and Alison Jones’ medical history. He said she had also been diagnosed with a dependence disorder to opioids.

“We came to the conclusion that it would be best to resolve the case with the recommendation of life with the possibility of parole, and she would plead guilty but mentally ill,” Barksdale said.

Her plea to felony murder means she must serve at least 30 years in prison before she can become eligible to be considered for release.

“She may or may not ever be paroled,” Barksdale said.

Barksdale further mentioned that investigators in the case along with Doug Jones and family members were included in discussions about resolving the matter without a trial.

“Everybody agreed that this was a just resolution,” the DA said. “Everybody was in support of it.”

He said that when a sobbing Alison Jones addressed Judge Stephen A. Bradley on Wednesday, she apologized “to her husband and her family, to the community and to her son.”

Barksdale described Alison Jones as “very tearful” and that she “appeared to me to be broken.”

He said the case had struck him particularly hard because he has young children of his own.

“This is a case, I went to the scene. I’ll never forget the horror that I found at this house,” Barksdale said. “It just highlights again the mental health issues that we’re facing as a state and nation. It’s just heartbreaking.”