The Creepy Gremlin Voice: Timothy Jones Jr

A kindergartner’s school folder came back torn in half, the day after a teacher’s aide called the state about the bruises on his neck. That kindergartner was Nahtahn Jones. He was 6, and his mom called him Tater. He lived with his dad and his brothers and sisters up a hillside in Red Bank, South Carolina, and his dad was an engineer at Intel.

Who Was Timothy Ray Jones Jr.?

Timothy Ray Jones Jr. was mostly raised by his dad, Timothy Sr., because his mom was out of the picture early. His dad remembers a good kid who got angrier in high school.

Tim picked up an Illinois conviction at 19 for a pile of stuff, like cocaine possession and stealing a car and burglary, and he’d forged checks on his own dad’s bank account. That’s a pretty bold move.

He met Amber Kyzer in the Chicago area, and they got married in 2004 after a really short courtship. He finished a computer engineering degree at Mississippi State in 2011, and then he took a job with Intel in South Carolina.

Tim told a psychiatrist he wanted country living, and for a while you’d find the family in a mobile home on a wooded lot at the end of a sand road. They had chickens and goats and turkeys and rabbits. That’s a lot of animals for an Intel engineer. Amber didn’t have a car out there.

Amber told the jury Tim got really strict about religion after they married, and she testified he head-butted her and threatened to cut her up.

The marriage fell apart after Amber had an affair with a teenage neighbor, and they divorced. Tim got the kids. Amber told the jury she went along with that because Tim had a steady income and transportation, and she trusted him when he promised to take care of them. The transportation was a Cadillac Escalade.

Tim and the kids ended up in a mobile-home community up a hillside in Red Bank, and if you asked the neighbors there about Tim, about all they could tell you was that they’d see his Escalade pull in.

The Jones Kids: Merah, Eli, Nahtahn, Gabriel and Abigail

There were 5 kids in that house. Merah was the oldest, at 8, and Janet Ricard, an administrator at Saxe Gotha Elementary, remembered her as sweet and usually quiet. Merah started 1st grade behind in reading and math, so the school got her extra help, and Janet told the jury Merah made such big progress that she won recognition for how much her reading improved. She loved princess costumes and brushing other people’s hair.

Next came Eli. He was 7, and his teacher, Jacquelyn Moran, called him her “little buddy.” She told the jury he’d come in every morning wanting a hug, and when kids got left out during partner reading, Eli would pull them into his group. He loved Spider-Man, and Janet remembered he brought a turtle to school one time.

Then there was Nahtahn, who was 6. Ask his teachers and you’d hear about a busy, friendly kid. He loved Iron Man and fishing and riding his bike and a Woody doll from Toy Story. Amber called him Tater.

Gabriel was 2, and a neighbor watched him and his baby sister Abigail while Tim was at work. Abigail was 1. You get a lot from the teachers on the older 3, and past their ages, the record barely has anything on Gabriel and Abigail. Nobody knows what they were like.

DSS Warning Signs and the Teachers Who Noticed

The state’s child welfare agency, DSS, was coming around by 2011, and back then it was mostly about the house, with clothes and food scattered around and tools lying out, and on a later visit the place was cleaned up.

Then the school started noticing Nahtahn. His kindergarten teacher, Johnathan Stone, stopped sending frowny faces home with Nahtahn after he came back upset one day and said his dad made him exercise for hours.

Amy Shearer was a teacher’s aide, and one day she saw bruises on Nahtahn’s neck. He told her his dad held him by the neck against a wall, and Amy called DSS. The next day his school folder came back torn in half. Amy said you’d see him in the same shoes all through kindergarten, holes and all. Nahtahn made her a necklace at church one time, and she kept it.

DSS looked into things in May 2014 and set up a safety plan, and Tim agreed to no physical punishment and no rough handling.

The State newspaper reported that Joy Lorick was 17, and that she went from babysitting for Tim to living with him as his girlfriend. The paper said she left because he was abusive. Joy told the jury she reported Tim to DSS for whipping the kids and not giving them enough to eat.

A new report came in that August about beatings and the kids not getting enough food. A caseworker went out and wrote, “Dad appears to be overwhelmed,” and noted that Tim couldn’t keep up the house and the kids looked clean and dressed okay. You get a second safety plan. The kids stayed with Tim.

August 28, 2014 in Red Bank, South Carolina

The South Carolina Supreme Court wrote that Tim was stressed about a project at work that Thursday, and that he smoked spice at work and more at home. Spice is synthetic weed, basically. Sketchy stuff.

Late that afternoon he picked up the 3 oldest kids from their after-school program, and there’s surveillance video from that pickup where you can see Merah walking with her dad, and she asks him if he’s feeling better.

Amber got Nahtahn on the phone 7:12 that night. She told the jury he sounded upset, and she could hear Tim going off about the electrical outlets, and then the call ended.

You only get the rest of this night from Tim, and his story changed on the big points. He accused Nahtahn of messing with the outlets, and he made him do calisthenics for a long time.

Nahtahn died.

Tim showed Merah and Eli that their brother wasn’t breathing, and he sent them away. Around 1 in the morning he took Merah with him to a store for cigarettes. Tim told the court’s psychiatrist that on the drive home, a “creepy gremlin voice” told him to kill the other kids. Merah went to bed when they got back.

Tim strangled Eli and Merah with his hands. He used a belt on Gabriel and Abigail.

Eight Days in a Cadillac Escalade

Tim woke up the next day scared he’d get arrested. He wrapped up his kids’ bodies and put them in the Escalade. He got in touch with the sitter with an excuse about running late, and then he drove.

For 8 days he went through South Carolina and Georgia and Alabama and Mississippi, and you can follow the trip by what he bought along the way, like trash bags and chemicals and protective gear and a saw.

Amber couldn’t reach anybody, and on September 3 she reported it. That had happened before, with the kids turning up fine. You couldn’t get an Amber Alert, because Tim had legal custody.

Somewhere in there, Tim left the kids in separate bags beside a rural road near Camden, Alabama. Nobody knows why he picked that spot.

His drive ended on the night of September 6 at a routine traffic safety checkpoint near Raleigh, Mississippi. A veteran lawman told the jury he smelled death in that SUV. They arrested Tim for DUI and ran the Escalade’s plate, and it came back connected to 5 missing kids.

Questioning stalled, so the investigators brought in Tim’s dad. Smart call. After that meeting, Tim admitted the kids were dead, and on September 9 he led investigators to them in Alabama.

The Timothy Jones Jr. Trial and Insanity Defense

Tim’s lawyers agreed at the 2019 trial that he caused the deaths, and he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. If you were on that jury, a lot of it came down to the court’s psychiatrist and the defense psychiatrist, who each spent about 19 hours with Tim and came back with completely different answers about what was going on in his head.

The court’s psychiatrist said the spice caused the psychosis and that Tim knew right from wrong. He called the gremlin voice anxious thoughts. The defense psychiatrist said Tim had a serious schizoaffective illness, and that when he killed 4 of the kids, he couldn’t tell moral right from wrong. After about 6 hours, the jury convicted him on every count.

At sentencing, Amy Shearer wore the necklace Nahtahn made her at church. Amber told the jury that some days she wanted Tim to fry, and she asked them to spare his life because the kids loved him. His dad asked them to spare him too, and showed the jury tattoos for all 5 grandkids. The jury recommended death on June 13.

Where the Timothy Jones Jr. Case Stands Today

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Tim’s appeal on February 26, 2024. His lawyers filed for post-conviction relief the next month, the state supreme court put his execution on hold while that plays out, and if you look at the docket through August 2026, you’ll see competency and evaluation orders with no final ruling yet. Amber sued the state and county DSS agencies and got a $1.5 million settlement. The agencies denied liability. As of November of 2026, Tim is on death row at Broad River Secure Facility.