Jack Harold Jones

Jack Harold Jones Jr. (August 10, 1964 – April 24, 2017) was an American serial killer who murdered at least three women in Florida and Arkansas between 1983 and 1995. Convicted of two murders during his lifetime and executed in 2017, he was posthumously linked via DNA to the third murder, for which a serial rapist had pleaded no contest.

Murders Regina Harrison On May 2, 1983, Regina Harrison, a 20-year-old college student, left her parents' home for a nightly bike ride in Hollywood's North Beach neighborhood, but failed to return home. Friends and family found her nude body in the woods in West Lake Park. and took notice that Stewart resembled the suspect sketch, in addition to being in possession of a black bike at the time of his arrest.

Fearing a death sentence and offered a sentence that could run concurrently to his rape sentences, Stewart had entered a plea of no contest and was given 50 years imprisonment in January 1985, to run concurrently with his other sentences for the sexual offenses.

Immediately following the body's discovery, police created a facial composite, complete with descriptions of the suspect's tattoos (barbed wire and hearts etched with names), and distributed it around Broward County. However, it was to no avail, and the case quickly went cold. Jones, equipped with latex gloves, a wire, and a BB gun, broke into the office, He took Lacey to the bathroom and tied the girl to a chair. When he returned, Lacey, now crying, pleaded him not to hurt her mother. Jones replied, I'm not. I'm going to hurt you." He then choked her unconscious and attempted to beat her to death with the barrel of the BB gun, striking her at least eight times in the head. The girl suffered severe lacerations and multiple skull fractures. Jones also raped and murdered Mary Phillips.

Arrest, trial, and imprisonment The local sheriff's department dispatched three officers to the scene. Upon arrival, one officer entered the building and found Mary Phillips, deceased. He exited the building and told the other officers on scene that it was a scene of a homicide. When they reentered the building, they located Phillips' 11-year-old daughter, Lacey, in the building's bathroom, tied to a chair, beaten severely about the head and covered in blood. The officers initially believed Lacey to be deceased also, due to the severity of her injuries. However, while taking flash photographs of the bathroom crime scene, Lacey turned her head and looked at the crime scene photographer. Lacey Phillips was rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment. Once her condition stabilized, she gave a description of her assailant, a man with a tattoo on his arm and a teardrop tattoo under his left eye. The officers present during her interview identified the man she described as Jack Harold Jones, an Ohio native who was well known to police. Jones was brought in for interrogation and confessed to the crime. He was brought to trial, found guilty, and sentenced to death for killing Mary Phillips.

Over the years, Jones' execution was stayed several times, due to illnesses such as high blood pressure and diabetes, which resulted in one of his legs being amputated.

Shortly before his execution, he gave his sister a letter he had penned in 2006, with instructions to open it a year after his execution date. In the letter, he confessed in detail to the murder of Regina Harrison, providing details only the killer would know.