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MADISON — On Aug. 11, 2022, Carrie Jones met with Nebraska State Patrol Investigator Tony Kavan, who had sought more information as part of an investigation into a quadruple homicide in Laurel a week earlier.
By Aug. 11, the patrol had executed search warrants at two crime scenes and at the 206 Elm St. home of Carrie and Jason Jones.
Law enforcement authorities collected hundreds of items of evidence, but by evidence they were unable to find was the clothing Jason Jones, 45, was wearing on the morning of Aug. 4, 2022, when he killed Gene Twiford, 86, his wife, Janet Twiford, 85, and their daughter, Dana Twiford, 55, at 503 Elm St. in Laurel, and Michele Ebeling, 53, at 209 Elm St.
Kavan and another investigator interviewed Carrie Jones at a Laurel gas station on Aug. 5, 2022, while the state patrol’s SWAT team prepared to arrest Jason Jones. Kavan was assigned to follow up with Carrie Jones and met her at the patrol’s troop headquarters in Norfolk on Aug. 11 in an effort to learn more about who Jason Jones was and to determine where his clothing was.
A Madison County juiy on Friday watched the 93-minute recording of Kavan’s interview with Carrie Jones in what was the third day of evidence presentation in the Laurel woman’s trial.
Carrie Jones, 46, is charged with first-degree murder, evidence tampering and being an accessory. She is accused of aiding and abetting the murder of Gene Twiford by allegedly pressuring her husband to kill the 86-year-old. She is also alleged to have harbored Jason Jones after the killings and disposed of the clothes he’d been wearing.
Initially, Kavan pursued information about Jason Jones. Carrie Jones said her husband, originally from Oklahoma, served in the militaiy after high school, traveled for jobs in security and mechanics after being honorably discharged, and later became a nursing assistant. He eventually pursued a career as a trucker. Carrie and Jason Jones met online around 2012 and got married soon after.
Jason Jones had an abusive father, according to his wife, and had rocky relationships with his parents as a result. But Carrie Jones said her husband didn't pick up any of his father’s violent tendencies.
“He is like the opposite of me,” Carrie Jones told Kavan. “I have a very hot temper, and his is very cold, and he’s had to learn to kind of make it that way. When I am upset, he calms me down.”
The interview eventually shifted to the events of Aug. 4. Carrie Jones had told Kavan days earlier she arrived at home from work shortly after 3 a.m. on Aug. 4. As she pulled into her driveway, she said she saw an orange flash coming out of Ebeling’s residence.
Carrie Jones said she killed the motor and shut off her headlights, so she went undetected. She then drove to her home, where she saw Jason Jones “fumbling around” the house wearing shorts. There was an overpowering smell of bleach, and he was changing shortly thereafter.
The couple walked into their home around the time their neighbor was calling 911 to report the fire at Ebeling’s house. Inside their house, Carrie Jones said, her husband removed his clothes in the kitchen.
While the two were in the kitchen, Carrie Jones said, her husband handed her a shotgun, which was a 14-gauge firearm. It would later be determined to be the weapon used to kill Ebeling. He asked his wife to put the weapon in a drawer, to which Carrie Jones complied without asking questions.
Carrie Jones said she bagged her husband's clothes up and threw them into the dining room, but she told Kavan she didn’t know what happened to the clothes afterward. When pressed by the investigators about the whereabouts of the bag of clothing, Carrie Jones repeatedly told Kavan she didn’t know what happened to it.
“It just stunk; it was really bad,” Carrie Jones said. “I was tiying to get it out of my way.”
Kavan said the state patrol had searched the Joneses’ entire property for the bags without success. Investigators obtained another warrant to search the home in hopes of finding Jason Jones’ clothing.
In an attempt to get Carrie Jones to reveal where the clothes went, Kavan told her that, in his experience, he'd learned that it’s universal for people to protect themselves. And often, he said, that protection extends to people they care about.
“So it makes sense to me that you would do what you can to protect [Jason Jones],” Kavan said. “And if you say, ‘I don’t have any heartbeat about that, that would be my expectation of most people.’ The difference is, in this particular instance, is we have the reference of people who have been killed. OK... But we’re being videotaped, you are here talking about a case where it makes sense that — because the Laurel are angiy and they’re hurt, right. And when people get like that, they start looking for people to blame.
‘Yeah, so where we kind of are here with this situation is, I would prefer that you help us out, and you have been helpful, but I think there — I know there are some things that you have not been completely forthcoming (about).”
Kavan warned Carrie Jones that investigators were combing surveillance footage throughout Laurel, and it would be problematic if it was found she had willfully disposed of evidence.
