BREAKING NEWS: South Carolina father who murdered his five children with his own hands is sentenced to death
A South Carolina father who killed his five children with his own hands and then drove around with their bodies in his truck for nine days has been sentenced to death.
Timothy Jones Jr. showed no emotion as the jury delivered the unanimous verdict after less than two hours of deliberation on Thursday.
Jurors could have also sentenced him to life without parole.
The same Lexington County jury convicted Jones of five counts of murder last week in the deaths of his children, ages 1 to 8, in their Lexington home in August 2014.
Timothy Jones Jr. was sentenced to death on Thursday for killing his five children in South Carolina in 2014
Prosecutors had been pushing for the death penalty but multiple members of Jones’ family – including the mother of the five children – had urged the jury to spare his life.
In his confession to authorities, Jones admitted to killing his six-year-old son Nahtahn by exercising the boy to death as a punishment after he refused to admit he broke an electrical outlet.
Jones didn’t call 911 when he found his son dead and chose to watch a prison rape scene from a movie on his cellphone instead.
Several hours later, Jones said he decided to kill the other children, strangling 8-year-old Merah and 7-year-old Elias with his hands and using a belt to choke 2-year-old Gabriel and 1-year-old Abigail because his hands were too big.
He went on the run for several days with the bodies of his children in his SUV before dumping them in garbage bags on a hillside in Alabama.