Why? Missing Florida mother and four kids found murdered after dad kills family

Casei Jones Summerville, missing Florida mother and her 4 children found dead after husband allegedly killed family six weeks earlier and stored their bodies prior to weekend arrest. 

The husband of a Florida woman reported missing over the weekend has been charged with her murder after the woman’s body along with that of couple’s four children were accounted for after a car accident in Georgia led to police making a gruesome discovery.

Marion County sheriff’s deputies said Casei Jones, 32, had been reported missing Saturday by family members who hadn’t seen her or her four children – Cameron Bowers, 10; Preston Bowers, 5; Mercalli Jones, 2; and Aiyana Jones, 1 — for six weeks. The family lived in Summerfield.

Charged with the second degree murder of his wife was 38-year-old man, Michael Wayne Jones Jr. after the husband being involved in a car crash south of Hickox, Sunday afternoon, WKMG-TV reported.

Brantley County deputies said upon arriving at the scene of the crash, they smelled a foul odor.

Jones told deputies, ‘You may want to put me in handcuffs because there was a dead body’ inside the car, according to a news release from the Sheriff’s Office. The retrieved body was that of missing woman, Casei Jones.

Jones told deputies that prior to the crash, he concealed other bodies in Charlton County. Authorities in Charlton, Georgia went to the location Michael Jones mentioned and found four bodies there, believed to be those of the four children also reported missing. 

‘Unfortunately, true evil poked its head up here in Marion County. That’s about the only best way to describe it,’ Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods said Monday afternoon.

Family members had been communicating with someone they believed to the children’s mother by phone: 

Detectives said they believe Michael Jones murdered the family in Marion County and stored the bodies at his home and in his van for several weeks before transporting them to Brantley County, Georgia.

Deputies said family members had been communicating with someone they thought was Casei Jones but it was probably Michael Jones using her phone, which is why they waited so long to report her and her children missing. Authorities are investigating the phone records.

The nytimes reported following a missing persons investigation being initiated, a deputy was sent to the family’s last known address in Summerfield, which is around 150 miles south of where Jones crashed his van. The residence was vacant and had been for several weeks, with the deputy detecting a ‘foul odor of decomposition’ in the house, according to police records.