Ex-wife of Valley murder suspect tells ‘Dateline’ warning signs started early

PHOENIX — The ex-wife of a man suspected of killing six people in the Phoenix area over a four-day period before killing himself said she started to see warning signs early in their relationship.

Connie Jones spoke publicly about her early relationship with Dwight Lamon Jones in a June 29 episode of NBC’s “Dateline.”

In the episode, she said she met her ex-husband when she was 18 and on summer break from college. He was 22 and stationed at Fort Bragg Army Base in North Carolina.

Connie Jones said she was attending medical school to become a doctor, but after her husband dropped out of the military after three years, he would only work a few days on a job before quitting due to various issues.

She said Dwight Jones would spend days in bed, was hostile and was verbally and emotionally abusive toward her. Connie Jones said she believed her husband was mentally ill and urged him to get treatment, but he refused.

The “escalating hostility and verbal abuse” continued for eight years before Connie Jones told her husband that she wanted a divorce, but backed down after he reportedly spent three days crying on the floor and promising to change.

While Connie said her ex-husband’s behavior improved shortly after their son was born in 1997, he then became more and more obsessive and controlling and began physically abusing her.

“After I had my son, I thought it was my obligation to try and make this work,” Connie Jones said.

Jones said her ex-husband would abuse her in a way that it would not be obvious to other people.

“If you punch someone in the eye, it’s obvious that you’re being abused,” she said. “But hitting you with their forearm, physically holding me down, pushing me into walls, those don’t leave bruises but they are very violent.”

She said she began sleeping with a knife under her pillow.

When her son was 12, Connie Jones said her ex-husband began threatening her, saying he would murder his son and then kill himself “so I would suffer rest of my life knowing my child is dead because I didn’t do what he said.”

At that point, in early 2009, she said she started preparing to leave, gathering clothes, important paperwork and other items they may need and taking them to another location.

Connie Jones also said she started placing audio recorders around the home to capture the abuse.

One of those tapes was played on “Dateline” and showed Dwight Jones threatening to drown his then-wife in the pool and saying if she called 911 that “I would be dead before they got there.” That night, Dwight Jones held his son hostage and had an hour-long standoff with police before surrendering.

He was arrested on suspicion of domestic violence in 2009. The arrest did not legally prevent Dwight Jones from buying the .40-caliber Glock handgun that he would use in the shooting deaths of six people, most of whom were related to his divorce from Connie Jones.

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