A mother broke down helplessly during her testimony on Monday at the death penalty trial of her ex-husband who was charged with killing their five young children.
According to a report by Daily mail, as part of her testimony, Amber Kyzer, read a letter she wrote to her oldest child, Merah Jones, who she had tried to comfort over the divorce and the pain of suddenly being in a broken home.
‘You kids are my world and Mommy and Daddy were really blessed to have you’ Kyzer said, pausing, then burying her head in her hands on the witness stand and breaking into heaving sobs.
‘Oh god. Oh god. My babies. My babies,’ Kyzer cried as the judge rushed to get the jury out of the courtroom. Kyzer’s ex-husband on trial for his life, Timothy Jones Jr, stood up and looked at her, but showed no emotion.
Kyzer testified in the sixth day of Jones’ death penalty trial. Jones, 37, who is charged with five counts of murder, has plead guilty by reason of insanity.
His lawyers don’t dispute that he killed the children, but they are trying to have him found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Prosecutors said he killed six-year-old Nahtahn in a rage after finding the boy, fascinated by electricity, had broken an outlet in their home near Lexington in August 2014.
Jones then strangled eight-year-old Merah and seven-year-old Elias with his hands and two-year-old Gabriel and one-year-old Abigail with a belt, prosecutors said.
After killing the children, authorities said Jones wrapped their bodies in plastic and put them in his SUV, driving aimlessly around the Southeast US for most of nine days before leaving their bodies on a hilltop in Camden, Alabama.
Jones was arrested at a Smith County, Mississippi, traffic checkpoint, where an officer testified he recognized a strong odor coming from the car he recognized as ‘the smell of death’.
