Police seek clues to the final 12 hours of a Columbia man’s life before his 2011 murder
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
Nearly 15 years after his death, Columbia Police are still trying to piece together the last 12 hours of Timothy Jones' life.
A jogger found the 43-year-old Columbia man just after 9:30 a.m. Dec. 20, 2011, at the end of White Oak Lane in Columbia near the MKT trail connector entrance.
"He was found deceased, face down," said Lt. Matt Gremore with the Columbia Police Department Criminal Investigations Division. "I can't get into the amount, but I can tell you that he had stab wounds."
Gremore was in his third year with the department, working as a midnight patrol officer at the time of Jones' death. He says he had only interacted with Jones once, three days before his death. He took over the Jones homicide investigation in 2020.
Police did not immediately identify Jones publicly after he was found dead. However, by Christmas of 2011, CPD had publicly identified Jones and released surveillance footage and a still photo from two locations where they believed he was last seen alive.
"The detectives back then collected evidence all over downtown, all the way down to Forum, anywhere that they think that he could have been seen on video," Gremore said.
The still photo taken from surveillance footage at Jimmy John's downtown, in the 1000 block of East Broadway, shows Jones leaving the restaurant just after 10 p.m. Then, footage from a nearby building shows him walking west along East Broadway on the sidewalk across the street. It was raining in the surveillance footage.
Gremore said even with the images police were able to retrieve from around the time of his death, the lack of technology at the time has hindered the investigation.
"If you go through a neighborhood now, the odds of showing up on a Ring doorbell, surveillance cameras like that stuff's everywhere," Gremore said. "There's not video everywhere like there is now or even cellphone data."
Check back and watch ABC 17 News at 6 p.m. to hear more about the case.
