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Dateline: The Last Dance, which aired on April 3, 2015, focuses on Heather Palumbo Jones, who was a kindergarten teacher at Frayser Achievement School. As Dateline reports, in January of 2013, she separated from her husband of eight years, Chris Jones, and was fighting for custody of their two children.
According to Dateline, people started noticing that Heather was missing when she was not seen at her place of work on April 16, 2013. Soon, on April 23, Heather Jones' body was found in a burnt condition in rural East Shelby County. She was killed by her husband, Chris Jones.
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This Dateline episode shows harrowing details about the case. Read more to find out.
5 harrowing details about Dateline: The Last Dance
This wasn't any murder case. As Dateline points out, it was pre-planned, with the intention of ensuring Heather did not get custody of her children. Here are the five harrowing details about the case.
Chris was an abusive husband
Heather had told her friends and family that Chris Jones, her husband, was physically abusive. It had gotten so bad that she had to seek a protection order against her husband. She did not want him to get custody of their two children, given his abusive tendencies.
This was one of the reasons Heather had separated from Chris in January 2013. According to Dateline, she had joined a dance class a few months prior, which helped her lose a significant amount of weight and made her confident. She was choosing herself and no longer wanted to tolerate abuse. Another reason as to why Heather left was because she had discovered that Chris was cheating on her with women he met on the internet.
Murdered by husband, Chris Jones
On April 16, 2013, people started noticing Heather's absence when she did not show up at Frayser Achievement School for work. Dateline reports, as said by Heather's best friend Melissa Smith:
''Heather would never miss a day of school. She was totally dedicated.''
It was an unusual incident that was followed by another. A custody hearing was set on April 19, 2013, and only Chris showed up. He told the court that Heather had informed him via text that she had decided to leave. However, as commercial appeal reports, according to the appeals court opinion, Jones had sent himself those messages from Heather's computer:
"to make it appear she had decided to leave her home and disappear."
Upon investigation, Chris Jones gave up the location of Heather's body to the police, and her body was found on April 23, 2013, in the rural part of East Shelby County. He had killed her by strangling her.
Chris burned her body after killing her
As Dateline reports, Chris had murdered her by strangulation and then buried her body. What Chris Jones did to his wife was deeply unsettling. According to commercial appeal, Chris had said that he burnt her body because he wanted to give her a
“Viking burial funeral."
Killed just so Heather could not testify
As we mentioned before, Chris was physically abusive, and Heather wanted both her and her children to escape that. She had proof of physical abuse, which was going to aid her in gaining custody of their two children. Chris, however, could not let that happen. To ensure that Heather did not open her mouth, Chris killed her, burned her body, and pretended she had left by herself.
Chris Jones appealed to the court not to consider important evidence for his trial
Despite being the murderer, Chris Jones made an absurd appeal to the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals not to consider his earlier proof of abusing Heather and the pictures of her dead body as evidence in the trial. As commercial appeal reports, the court, according to Judge Alan Glenn, came to the conclusion that:
"a reasonable jury could determine that the defendant killed the victim to prevent her from testifying regarding child custody at (an) upcoming court hearing, that he strangled her to death, and that he undertook complicated concealment efforts to make it appear she had decided to abandon the children and disappear, later taking her body to a remote location and setting it ablaze."
Chris Jones was given a fair trial and was sentenced to prison for life.
You can visit this case in detail by streaming Dateline: The Last Dance on Peacock. New episodes of Dateline come out on Fridays on NBC at 10 pm ET.
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