Dodge County man guilty in long-secret slaying, disposal of drifter brother-in-law

In the Dodge County countryside more than 15 years ago, down along Turnpike Creek and Sweet Home Church Road, a man was killed and a family secret was born.

It was kept so quiet the police never knew the man was missing, much less dead.

Or that the man had been unceremoniously buried behind a mobile home. Not to mention that a concrete slab had been poured over his makeshift grave. Or that a year or so later, the slab was dug up, the body disinterred, its skeletal remains scattered and the grave filled with the carcass of a dog.

When William Marcus Walters, a drifter with a drug habit, vanished in the late 1990s, his disappearance went unnoticed.

He was 48, an Ohio native who’d lived in Kentucky and a string of other locales, including a homeless shelter in Salinas, California.

In late 1997 or ’98, he showed up at his sister Irene’s place between Milan and Chauncey, a dozen or so miles south of Eastman.

Then, before long, Walters was gone.

And, best anyone can tell, he was never reported missing -- or slain.

Until late last year when, as a Dodge County prosecutor put it, “a family dispute arose.”

Ricky Lamar Jones Jr., the husband of Walters’ sister, argued with his eldest son, authorities have said. Jones apparently disapproved of the fiancee his son had met on the Internet.

The son, who’d been a teen when Walters vanished, had long suspected his father of having a hand in his wayward uncle’s disappearance.

In December, the son, perhaps in fear of his own safety after the spat with his dad, went to Dodge sheriff’s investigators and told them about Walters’ death, District Attorney Tim Vaughn said.

“The boy reported that he believed this had occurred,” Vaughn said.

Jones fessed up when questioned and was charged with murder that day.

On Wednesday, Jones, 54, whose family runs a saw shop, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter. He was sentenced to 17 years in prison.

Vaughn said Jones, in admitting his guilt, told the court, “There are rules that we all have to go by, but I didn’t follow them.”

The district attorney said that in the late 1990s while Walters was staying with the Jones family on its 40-acre tract, Ricky Jones confronted Walters about Walters’ drug use.

The men argued “and Ricky shot him and buried him,” Vaughn said.

Months after pouring a concrete slab over the patch where Walters was laid to rest, Jones busted the slab and dug up his brother-in-law’s remains.

Vaughn said Jones then “grilled or cooked” the bones and sprinkled some of the ash in a horse pasture. Some was tossed in the trash.

Walters’ remains were never found by investigators who scoured the property last December.

They did, however, find something in Walters’ original resting place: dog bones.

To contact writer Joe Kovac Jr., call 744-4397.

This story was originally published September 24, 2014 at 6:33 PM.