Kriti Mehrotra
The 2007 disappearance and murder of a 34-year-old single mother of three, Paige Birgfeld, has been profiled on ’20/20: Missing Escort Service Mom’ to give us a look into the case that had baffled the nation for nearly ten years. Paige had gone missing on June 28, 2007, but her skeletal remains weren’t found until March 2012. However, even with that, the authorities only apprehended her perpetrator, Lester Ralph Jones, in November 2014. So now that it’s been a while, let’s find out all the details about the felon and his current whereabouts, shall we?
Who is Lester Jones?
In 2007, a 56-year-old Lester Ralph Jones resided with his third wife and worked at a Recreational Vehicle (RV) dealership as a mechanic in Colorado. It seemed like the father of two grown kids had created a stable life for himself, but the truth is that he was just getting back on his feet as a somewhat newly released convicted felon. After all, in 1999, Lester had been arrested for the assault and second-degree attempted kidnapping of his estranged wife, Lisa. He eventually pleaded guilty to these charges and received five years behind bars.
Lester’s ways hadn’t truly changed, though. Weeks after Paige went missing and was found to be living a secret life as an escort, he was identified as one of her clients. Then, despite her burning car which was located in the parking lot right across the street from his workplace, when interrogated, Lester denied knowing anything about her case or her service. He even went as far as to lie about going to Walmart to buy a prepaid TracFone, particularly to communicate with Paige.
A search warrant for Lester’s home yielded handwritten notes about other escorts, Viagra pills, and a few men’s wigs. But because none of these directly linked him to Paige’s vanishing, he wasn’t caught at that time. It was only when he had a bizarre and unprompted phone conversation with a local sheriff years later, where he randomly said something about burying a body, that he was apprehended. He was arrested days before Thanksgiving 2014 owing to circumstantial evidence.
Where is Lester Jones Now?
Lester Jones stood trial for the charges against him in 2016. His first hearing concluded in a mistrial in September, with a deadlocked nine to three jury in favor of the guilty verdict after three and a half days of deliberations. “Nobody in their minds didn’t think that he wasn’t doing something wrong,” a juror said, “But [we] couldn’t get past the ‘reasonable doubt.'” Yet, just months later, his second trial ended with him being convicted of first and second-degree murder, along with second-degree kidnapping.
In December of the same year, Lester was sentenced to serve life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus an added twelve years for the count of abduction, to be run concurrently. It took close to a decade for justice to be served, but Paige’s killer still never revealed his true motives. Therefore, today, at the age of 70, Lester Ralph Jones is incarcerated at the Fremont Correctional Facility in Fremont County, just east of Canon City, Colorado. He is expected to remain here for the rest of his natural life.
Read More: Where Are Paige Birgfeld’s Kids Now?
