Crimelines · Mode Podcast

Timothy Jones Jr: The Monster Behind the Mobile Home Murders

March 10, 2026·38 min·3 clips

Timothy Jones strangled his five children one by one, with his daughter Mira saying 'Daddy, I love you' as she died.

August 28 starts quietly. In Red Bank, South Carolina, five children, Mara, Elias, Natan, Gabriel, and Abigail Elaine, disappear from a home where they should have been safe. Their father, Timothy Jones Jr., should have been that safety. He is described as a 32-year-old Intel engineer with a computer science degree, a man whose plain public life sat beside a crime investigators could barely process. That betrayal is where the episode stays. It follows the case from the disappearance to the cover-up, keeping close to the evidence without letting the children turn into case-file shorthand. One detail is almost impossible to hear: trial testimony says his eldest daughter told him she loved him while he was strangling her. The killings happened inside the mobile home, with neighbors only yards away as five young lives, all between one and eight, ended inside. Jones moved quickly afterward. He wrapped the bodies in black garbage bags, poured bleach over them, and put them in the trunk of his Cadillac Escalade. Then he drove. For nine days, he crossed the southeastern United States with his children's remains in the vehicle, trying to get rid of evidence as the pressure closed in. The bags later became part of the case. A medical examiner testified that summer heat and black plastic sped up decomposition. The host also recounts Jones's explanation about the smaller children, whose necks he said were too small for his hands. The episode ends by returning to Mara, Elias, Natan, Gabriel, and Abigail Elaine as children who deserved protection, attention, and witness.

As heard by us

A grim, measured account of betrayal, concealment, and murder.

The Red Bank case lands as a bleak story of betrayal, with five children between one and eight disappearing from home and later ending up in the care of the father who should have protected them.

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Why you'd press play

Press play for a meticulous account of the Red Bank case where five children vanished from home and investigators uncovered their father's role.

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