Judge expected to make March ruling on death penalty
When she learned of her husband's arrest, Carrie acted surprised, Kavan said. In those early interviews, she also never indicated there was trouble with any of the neighbors and said that Joneses stuck to themselves. Another recording of Lundahl talking to two other neighbors was played during the hearing with one of the neighbors indicating he saw both of the Joneses running from the Ebeling home after an explo - sion and the house started on fire.
Carrie Jones was not seen in any surveillance videos or con- nected to the purchase of gas cans or gas, Dogett said. And it was confirmed that she was at work at the time the murders were com - mitted, he said. She also was not at home when the SWAT team arrived to arrest her husband. Instead, she was talking with investigators at a Laurel convenience store. There was no evidence that Carrie had received any burn injuries.
It wasn't until Sgt. Brad Hig gins’ follow-up interview of Carrie on Dec. 8 that she changed her account of the events leading up to and the day of the murders which ultimately lead to her own arrest. The new version of events includ - ed information which indicated Carrie had allegedly been harassed by Gene Twiford for several years with him driving by her home and making suggestive comments about bending over in shorts. She told her husband, "This (expletive) has gotta stop or I'm going to kill him." Investigators verified that comments had been overheard by witnesses at at least two public places in Laurel in which Twiford was asked to leave. The harass - ment never turned physical, Carrie Jones said, and she never gave a specific number of times the suggestive comments were made, just over a period of three years, Higgins said.
"She was offended by the com - ments. She didn't like them and thought something had to be done to put a stop to it." The situation came to a head when the Joneses argued Aug. 3. She blamed him for not doing any - thing about the harassment, being gone too much and not being around to protect her. She accused of him of cheating and watching pornography. She put a handgun to Jason's head and knife to his throat. "She wanted to get him to react. She wanted him to feel something and know that she was hurting," Hig gins said.
So when she arrived home from work around 3 a.m. on Aug. 4 to find the door to the garage open her first thought was fear that Ja - son had committed suicide. When she didn't find him there, Carrie went inside but didn't see him there, either. She heard three gunshots, went outside and saw someone stum- bling from the side door of the Eb - eling home across the street. She realized it was her husband and helped him into the house, helped him take off his clothes and get into the bathtub. She put the gun away and bagged the clothes. She took care of his wounds and when they laid in bed that night, Jones confessed to shooting Ebeling and "double-tapping" Gene Twiford but he ran into some problems at the Twiford home - the Twifords' security door and also the addition of Janet and Dana at the home which he hadn't expected. "It was supposed to be done before I ever got home from work," she told Higgins. Carrie Jones told Higgins that she had pushed her husband too far and she repeated over and over that she should've done it herself. "She started to get emotional. There was a change in her voice," Higgins said when Carrie talked about her husband but she never shed any tears that he recalled. But as far as any remorse for Gene Twiford, there wasn't any. "She said, 'The old man got what he deserved. He should've knocked off the harassment,'" Hig gins said.
Carrie Jones was not immedi- ately arrested after that interview because investigators wanted to gain additional information from reviewing the Jones' electronic de - vices and phones that were seized. A series of text messages in March and April 2022 between the couple indicate Carrie wanting Jason to track down Twiford and confront him about the harass - ment, giving him locations to check. According to an analysis of Jason's phone, a path of travel at that time indicated that he was trying to locate Twiford in Laurel.
Those messages were later de - leted from Carrie Jones' phone. Another message from Carrie to Jason suggested that she undergo sniper training and shooting Gene Twiford with a rifle.