Joseph Jones, 13, and his uncle and his uncle’s girlfriend gang-raped and murdered 10-year-old Tiffany Lang.
The Truth
“[Ten-year-old] Tiffany Long’s body was discovered under a heavy cloth in the backyard of 614 Lakeside Avenue. A TV cable was looped around her neck, and her shirt was stained with fecal matter. S.B.I. Crime Scene Specialist William Lemons found a pool of blood in the right front bedroom and drag marks in the house and on a path outside the house. He found a backpack purse by the back porch, later identified as Tiffany’s, which contained, among other things, church ‘bus bucks,’ candy, an earring, and a note which read ‘Dorthia loves Harold.’…
“Examination of Tiffany’s corpse showed that she had lacerations on her head, wounds from the back of her head down to her skull, and ligature marks around her neck, which indicated strangulation. Dr. John Butts, the Chief Medical Examiner of North Carolina and an expert in forensic pathology, determined that the cause of Tiffany’s death was ‘blows to the head that broke, cracked the skull, caused bruising and bleeding over the brain and within the brain.’ He also opined that the lacerations on Tiffany’s head were caused by a heavy object with a narrow edge. Additionally, Tiffany’s vagina and rectum showed signs of trauma….”
“On 21 October 1998, defendant was taken into police custody and interviewed in the presence of his aunt…. Defendant gave a statement, which was re-read to him sentence by sentence. Upon reviewing it, he signed it. In the statement, defendant said he brought Tiffany to 614 Lakeside Avenue after being requested to do so by Dorthia Bynum. Once there, he admitted to
placing his penis in Tiffany’s rectum and being present when Tiffany was hit on the head with the bed rail. He also stated that he helped drag Tiffany’s body outside and threw the bed rail over the fence in the backyard.”
“‘I’ve been in the legal field for 35 years now. Of those 35, in prosecution over 27 years, and I’ve dealt with quite a number of very brutal crimes,’ [Alamance County District Attorney Rob Johnson] said. ‘This one ranks right up there with the most brutal crimes that I’ve dealt with
in terms of violence and ugliness.’”
Court of Appeals of North Carolina.
STATE of North Carolina v. Harold Wesley JONES, Defendant.
No. COA01-1422.
Decided: October 15, 2002
The evidence tended to establish the following. At the time of the offense defendant was sixteen years old and had been living with his twenty-three-year-old sister Al-Nesia Jones and his thirteen-year-old nephew J.J. Defendant moved in with his sister following the death of his mother in 1997, leaving his father, who continued living in New Jersey. Until 29 September 1998, defendant lived in a rental house located at 614 Lakeside Avenue in Burlington, approximately one block away from the victim’s home. However, on 16 October 1998, defendant was living on Morningside Drive in Burlington. Defendant’s seventeen-year-old girlfriend, D.B., frequently visited defendant and occasionally lived with him and the other members of his family. Consequently, the defendant, D.B., and J.J. all knew the ten-year-old, female victim, T.L.
After school on 16 October 1998, defendant, D.B. and J.J. went to Elmira Park near Lakeside Avenue in Burlington. Defendant and D.B. watched from the Elmira Recreation Center while J.J. played football with some of his friends. At some point in the afternoon, the victim walked by the park and recreation center on her way home from a local convenience store. Defendant and D.B. followed the victim away from the park on foot, in the direction of Lakeside Avenue. J.J. left the park a short time later, also in the direction of Lakeside Avenue. J.J. caught up with the victim sometime thereafter and accompanied her to the house located at 614 Lakeside Avenue, which had been vacant and under repair since defendant and his family moved out.
Once the defendant, the victim, J.J. and D.B. were all inside the house, J.J. began strangling the victim with a piece of coaxial television cable that he found in the house. D.B. directed defendant and J.J. to pull down the victim’s pants. After J.J. did so, J.J. pushed the victim to the ground. D.B. then held the victim down while J.J. engaged in vaginal intercourse and defendant engaged in anal intercourse with the victim. Once this was over, D.B. and J.J. attempted to clean up the victim. When their efforts proved to be unsuccessful, defendant watched as J.J. and D.B. beat the victim about the head with a wooden bed rail that was found in the house. However, the victim did not die, so J.J. again wrapped the coaxial wire around the victim’s neck and strangled her. Defendant then held the door while J.J. and D.B. dragged the victim’s body out of the house by the coaxial cable wrapped around her neck. The victim was covered with a large piece of cloth and left between the fence and an oil drum in the back yard. She later died as a result of blunt force trauma to the head. In the days following discovery of the victim’s body, the defendant, as well as J.J. and D.B. were all identified by police as suspects in the victim’s death.
The Misrepresentation By Anti-JLWOP Activists
From the Equal Justice Initiative’s report Cruel and Unusual: Sentencing 13- and 14-Year-Old Children to Die in Prison, page 31. https://eji.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/cruel-and-unusual.pdf
“One afternoon, while 13-year-old Joseph, who is black, was riding his bike, his
uncle and an 18-year-old friend told him to invite home a white girl they knew from
the neighborhood. Thinking nothing of it, Joseph complied. When the older teens
began beating and sexually assaulting the girl, Joseph turned to run. His older and
bigger uncle forced him to participate. After Joseph left, the girl was killed by the older teens, who threatened Joseph not to tell anyone.”
Where did the EJI get the idea that Jones was forced to rape Tiffany? Its likely that they are only going off of what Jones told them.
Sources
State v. Jones, 556 S.E.2d 644, 646–47 (N.C. Ct. App. 2001)
Keren Rivas, The Tiffany Long Case: Part III—The Prosecutors, Times–News (North Carolina), October 20, 2008.
Research from the Heritage Foundation’s Adult Time For Adult Crime and by NOVJM.
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