Ex-neighbor arrested in slaying of Central couple

• By JARED JANES
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: May 20, 2008 - Page: 1A - UPDATED: Homicides 2007

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DNA evidence found underneath the fingernails of a 63-year-old woman found stabbed to death along with her male companion in their Central mobile home led to an arrest this weekend of a former neighbor, authorities said Monday.

Linda Sharee Jones, 32, was arrested in Redding, Calif. — where she moved shortly after the Nov. 20 slayings — and booked Saturday into East Baton Rouge Parish Prison on two counts of first-degree murder, Sheriff Sid Gautreaux said Monday.

Jones is accused of stabbing Glenda V. Sanders and Jonathan E. Williamson numerous times at their Easby Road home, causing them to bleed to death.

Gautreaux said more arrests are possible as investigators continue to process evidence taken from the crime scene.

Gautreaux declined Monday to give a possible motive for the murders, but Sanders’ family members have said that Williamson had just received a $15,000 settlement from Social Security for disability and had been bragging about it at a local bar.

The arrest warrant indicates Williamson’s wallet and cell phones were the only known items missing from the home.

Jeff Roach, the husband of one of Sanders’ daughters, said several thousand dollars from Williamson’s settlement are still unaccounted for.

The family suspected the neighbors might have had a role in the homicide since they talked with them at the crime scene in November, Roach said.

“We suspected them all along,” he said. “Everything they said just didn’t sound right.”

The family is glad Jones has been arrested, Roach said, but they will not be satisfied until she is convicted and punished.
Arrest warrants in the case give the following accounts:

Jones, who told deputies in their initial investigation that she discovered the bodies, was one of four people who lived in a home next to where Williamson stayed with Sanders at 14813 Easby Drive in Central.

Jones told deputies that she went to investigate and found the bodies after their neighbors didn’t show up for a scheduled meeting about fixing a fence earlier that day.

When deputies questioned Jones the night the murders were reported, she consented an oral swab sample for DNA. That DNA was matched in late April to DNA evidence found underneath the fingernail clippings taken from Sanders.