TOLEDO, Ohio (Court TV) — An Ohio teenager is facing a list of charges after she allegedly confessed to murdering her adult boyfriend’s mother and disposing of the body.
Kaitlyn Coones is charged with murdering her adult boyfriend’s mother with a rock. (Cochise County, AZ Sheriff’s Office)
Kaitlyn Coones, 18, is charged with aggravated murder, murder, tampering with evidence, abuse of a corpse and felonious assault for the murder of Nicole Jones on April 19, 2023.
In court documents obtained by Court TV, investigators said that Coones, who was 17 at the time of the murder, told police that she initially told her boyfriend, Jonathon Jones, to kill his mother, but when he failed to act she took matters into her own hands. Coones told police that she went to Jones’ home and snuck inside without his mother knowing. After giving Jones a time frame of five hours in which “to do something about his mother and mentioned killing her because his mother was preventing them from being together,” Coones took action when he failed to.
“Kaitlyn Coones stated that she waited for an opportunity when [the victim] was bending down in front of the refrigerator and strangled Nicole Jones and hit her with the rock until she heard gurgling sounds and blood from [the victim’s] mouth.”
Investigators said that after the murder, Coones and her boyfriend drove to a store to buy a tarp and cleaning supplies. After returning home, they cleaned the kitchen, wrapped the victim’s body in a tarp and then threw it into a dumpster.
Coones was reported missing from her foster home on April 18, and later contacted an acquaintance saying that she killed two people, one of whom was her boyfriend’s mother, according to an arrest report.
Jonathon Jones is charged with murder in the death of his mother. (U.S. Marshals Service)
Jones, who faces similar charges, including murder, robbery and abuse of a corpse, was wearing an ankle monitor at the time of the murder. Jones had previously pleaded guilty to endangering children and attempting to commit pandering obscenities after picking Coones up in Oct. 2022, according to court records reviewed by Court TV. At the time of the 2022 arrest, police found videos of the couple having sex. Jones was later required to register as a sex offender. The GPS coordinates from Jones’ ankle monitor matched the locations of the store where Coones said they bought cleaning products and the dumpster where the body was allegedly dumped.
At a court hearing prior to her formal indictment, Coones’ attorneys told the Court that their client was a victim of Jones, who was not supposed to have any contact with her.
Nicole Jones’ body was never recovered, because the dumpster had been emptied and taken to a dump site before police being made aware of the body.
Coones is scheduled to be arraigned Feb. 28.
