Kriti Mehrotra
ABC’s ’20/20: Missing Escort Service Mom’ chronicles the baffling disappearance and murder case of Paige Birgfeld, which wasn’t brought to a close until 2016, nearly a decade after it transpired. The 34-year-old single mother had vanished from near her Grand Junction, Colorado, home in June 2007, only for her remains to be discovered in March 2012. Then, more than two years later, just before Thanksgiving 2014, her assailant, Lester Jones, was charged and arrested for the crime. However, the one person who never gave up on him was his wife, Elaine Jones.
Who Was Elaine Jones?
In 2007, when suspicion for the abduction and murder of Paige first fell upon 56-year-old Lester Jones, he and his wife, 52-year-old Elaine Jones, resided in a lovely home on Hill Avenue. From what we can determine, she was Lester’s third wife, whereas he was, at least, her second husband. In fact, having been a longtime Mesa County homeowner, Elaine was valued by her community, especially due to her stable white-collar job as a credit union worker. Thus, she and Lester were accepted despite the latter’s prison sentence for the assault and attempted kidnapping of his previous wife.
In July of the same year, after detectives from the Mesa County Sheriff’s Department, Grand Junction Police Department, and Colorado Bureau of Investigations executed a search warrant on their ranch-style home, their neighbors immediately came to their defense. While some attributed that they were nothing but generous, others called them decent. The Joneses, though, mostly kept quiet. With that said, by sticking beside her husband, even when he was apprehended in November 2014, Elaine let her actions speak louder than words. Having married him in 2004, she just couldn’t let him go.
How Did Elaine Jones Die?
When Lester Jones stood trial in late 2016, Elaine Jones told the court all about their relationship, his actions in June 2007, and what she continued to feel about him. She said that she discovered her husband’s need to call escorts shortly before Paige went missing, which led to a few fights and a brief separation between them. Yet, they reconciled soon after, and that’s when their world turned upside down. Then, Elaine incriminated Lester by revealing that on the night Paige’s car was torched, he’d left their shared home after telling her that he needed to go to his workplace because he was worried he’d left the lights on.
“I had suspected him of [being with] other women, and I thought he was going to meet someone else or calling someone else,” Elaine said, adding that, “I’m still married to him because I’m a Christian, and my faith asked me to forgive him. I feel like I need to give him another chance…I do [love him].” Despite being in chemotherapy treatment at the time, Elaine rarely missed a court date for her husband, showing her support for him in every way possible. Unfortunately, though, just a year later, in November 2017, she passed away from natural cause while in her early 60s.
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