- FEMALE NARRATOR: On the heels of divorce and disappointment,
they found each other.
- When she got engaged to him, she was just beaming.
- NARRATOR: Until one fall afternoon,
when she suddenly goes missing.
- DAN: She had not shown up for church,
and into the evening, she didn't show up.
- PAUL: There was a hole in the wall over the phone.
There was actually some hair around the hole.
- DAN: There was a bed and a bed frame
that was missing from the basement of the house.
- DANIEL: The feeling, um, almost from the beginning was
this was not a missing person's case.
- NARRATOR: Detectives uncover a suspect with an ax to grind.
- She could be very ornery,
especially if she'd been drinking.
- That just caused a worse row between them.
- It's a little bit suspicious that it took
until late in the evening for him to call the police.
- Things just started to spin out of control.
- NARRATOR: And an unlikely accomplice leads investigators
to the truth.
- DANIEL: Once the gate opened, it just opened.
Everything came out.
- DAN: And I was told also in the house was his daughter.
That immediately seemed odd to me.
- GARY: She just couldn't handle somebody sleeping
in the bed she used to sleep in.
- DANIEL: There was a catastrophic house fire
where someone had died in the house.
- HEATHER: This obviously was a story of jealousy.
A murder of jealousy.
- What's the old saying,
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned"?
- ♪
- NARRATOR: October 25, 1998. Jerome County, Idaho.
It's just after 11 p.m. on a chilly fall night
when the Jerome County Sheriff's Office
gets a call from local man, Milo Ross.
Milo is concerned about his fiancee, Meta Jones.
- Milo Ross had reported his fiancee missing.
She had not shown up for church.
She also didn't show up for the family dinner after.
- NARRATOR: Additionally, Milo says
he and his teenage son, Paul, found signs inside the home
that something is amiss.
- GARY: He called them to say,
"Hey, we smell cleaner in the house
"and we think we found a bullet hole
or something that looks like blood."
- NARRATOR: When officers arrive at the home,
Milo and Paul lead them to the dining room.
- There was some carpet that looked like it had
been recently cleaned and was still wet.
- There was a hole in the wall over the phone.
There was actually some hair around the hole.
- DAN: It was about five and a half feet up the wall.
You could see the brass coloration, something
inside the hole that looked like it was a, uh, bullet.
- Things like that, obviously, as an investigator,
would raise some pretty big red flags
- GARY: They knew, based on the evidence
that they were seeing, there was some foul play
involved, obviously.
- NARRATOR: Officers immediately summon homicide detectives
to the scene.
When investigators arrive, they begin collecting details
about the missing woman, Meta Jones.
- DAN: I met with Milo Ross.
He was concerned about his fiancee being missing.
You kind of have to assume that you're looking at something
more than a missing person.
- NARRATOR: Meta Jones spent her childhood
on an idyllic farm in southern Idaho.
- HEATHER: She was born in 1952.
She grew up on her family ranch in Lake Channel.
When she was growing up, she liked to obviously
be outside with her family, tending her ranch.
- NARRATOR: Meta thrived in her rural upbringing,
but struggled to find fulfillment in her love life.
After two marriages led to two divorces,
Meta focused her energy on raising her four children.
- HEATHER: As a mother, she was very caring to her children.
Her kids were always involved in sports in high school
and she never missed a game.
She always had two to three different jobs
trying to make the best for her kids and her family.
- NARRATOR: In 1997, 45-year-old Meta met
a handsome new suitor: Milo Ross.
- HEATHER: She was working actually as a waitress
at the Hill Top Café in American Falls,
and Milo was managing trucks at that time,
and they crossed paths at that café.
- He's quiet. He has the appeal of authority.
He doesn't need to say anything, he was a boss,
you know what I mean? We always showed him respect.
- NARRATOR: Milo, a devout Mormon,
confided in Meta that he was going
through a difficult divorce.
After 17 years and two kids, he and his soon-to-be-ex,
Sandra Jonas, had reached the end of their marriage.
Sandra was Milo's second wife,
and when they originally met, Sandra was in her mid-20s.
- JACKIE: She had just gotten out of the army
and she needed a job, and I was getting ready
to leave for college.
So I asked her if she wanted to take my job,
and then I took her out and I introduced her to Milo.
He was my boss. And then I asked Milo if she could take my job.
They began to like each other, spent time together.
- CINDY: He's a big, tall, good-looking dude.
And she was the little, short lady,
the stick of dynamite, you know?
She liked him. [chuckles]
- NARRATOR: Both Sandra and Milo grew up in the Mormon church,
but as things grew serious between the young couple,
Sandra made it clear that religion wouldn't be a part
of their future.
- PAUL: It was all witchery to her.
It was it was makeup to try and make people feel good
about the terribleness and the awkwardness of life.
- NARRATOR: In 1981, 27-year-old Sandra
and 38-year-old Milo married.
- My parents were married on the 1st of May, 1981,
in Elko, Nevada.
They went down and were married
in front of the Justice of the Peace.
- NARRATOR: Within a few years of marriage,
Sandra and Milo had a son and daughter:
Paul and Andra.
When it came to parenting, Sandra took the driver's seat.
- She was very strict. She was headstrong.
She had a strong personality and when she gave a command
or a look, you obeyed.
- NARRATOR: Sandra didn't sugarcoat her feeling
about religion with her kids.
- PAUL: If you brought up any sort of religious topic,
she would just fly off the handle she'd berate
and just ridicule.
- NARRATOR: But Sandra couldn't stop Paul from growing curious
about the church she abandoned.
- PAUL: I started attending a church when I was about seven,
going on eight years of age.
And then, uh, some short time later,
my father started going with us, with me and my sister.
And then my mother put her foot down and said, "No more,"
and so, we stopped going to church.
- NARRATOR: When Paul was in his early teens,
he sought out the church once again.
Milo supported him, but this time,
they hid their Sunday outings from Sandra.
- JACKIE: Milo and the kids wanted to go to church
and she forbid them to go, but they went anyway.
They had to sneak-- sneak off to go.
- PAUL: I think a lot of things just sort of started to spin
out of control in our home.
It was very tumultuous after about 13 or 14 years of age.
- NARRATOR: Over the next few years,
tensions between Sandra and Milo grew.
- PAUL: That finally sort of boiled up into about 1997 or so.
I graduated from high school, my parents separated.
- NARRATOR: While finalizing his divorce from Sandra,
Milo's new friendship with waitress Meta Jones
was a breath of fresh air.
- PAUL: My dad had first told me about Meta
when I was at college at Utah State,
and I had learned that, you know, he had taken
an interest in her, but he didn't want to have
any view of impropriety or inappropriateness.
And so, he was going to maintain his arm length.
- NARRATOR: Milo took Meta under his wing,
and helped the single mother of four secure a stable job.
- She actually worked with Milo.
She was a dispatcher for Circle A dispatching trucks.
- PAUL: I got to know Meta quite a bit more.
I thought she was a great woman, just very, very kind.
There was nothing about her that I didn't like.
- NARRATOR: It wasn't long before Meta and Milo
started a relationship.
- Meta's dream in life was to, um, have a good life
with a good man and raise her kids that way.
So, I'm assuming that she saw in him that that's
what she would have with him.
- NARRATOR: In May of 1998,
Milo's divorce from Sandra was official.
Around the same time, Meta found herself
in need of a place to stay.
- PAUL: At some point, she was having some remodeling
done on her home, and so she ended up staying
in--in the guest bedroom in our house.
- NARRATOR: The couple agreed they wouldn't share a bed
before marriage.
In October, Milo decided he wanted that day
to come sooner rather than later.
- PAUL: He pulled me aside and showed me a ring
that he had purchased, and that he was planning
on inviting Meta to marry him.
- NARRATOR: Milo proposed on October 23,
and Meta said yes.
- HEATHER: When she got engaged to him, she was just beaming.
A lot of people would say that she was the happiest
that she was ever...with Milo.
- NARRATOR: Just two days after their engagement,
Meta spent the morning preparing a pot roast
for a mission send-off for her soon-to-be stepson, Paul.
She urged Milo and the kids to head on to the church
while she finished up at home.
- GARY: He was going, I think, to England,
on a two-year Mormon mission,
and it was customary for the LDS religion
to have a farewell at their church
and have family and friends over to listen to him speak,
to kind of give his farewell.
- DAN: She was going to meet them at the church.
She had stayed behind to start cooking food
for the dinner after church.
- NARRATOR: But Meta never showed.
Milo tells detectives that upon returning home
to check on Meta, he began noticing
a number of worrisome clues.
- PAUL: The roast was still in the oven,
and it had completely burned to a crisp,
which was not like Meta.
My dad said, "Something's just not right."
- NARRATOR: Based on Milo's observations and their own,
Jerome County sheriff's detectives fear the worst.
- GARY: They noticed what they thought looked
like a bullet hole in the wall,
and a little bit of blood splatter on the wall.
It smelled of cleaning solution.
- DANIEL: The feeling, um, almost from the beginning was,
this was not a missing person's case.
We were almost immediately convinced
we were looking for a body.
- NARRATOR: Coming up, detectives try to make sense
of more bizarre clues.
- There was a bed and a bed frame that was missing
from the basement of the house.
- NARRATOR: And a snap judgment pays off.
- And that's one of the smartest decisions
I've made in my career.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Just two days after accepting a marriage proposal
from her boyfriend, Milo Ross,
46-year-old Meta Jones is missing.
- She was very excited, she was telling everybody
that she got engaged and how excited she was.
She loved Milo. She was very happy with him.
- NARRATOR: Around 1:30 a.m., Jerome County investigators
gather at Meta's home to speak with her fiance
and his children.
- DAN: I met with Milo Ross and his son, Paul,
and I was told also in the house was his daughter.
Uh, she was 16, 17 years old at that time.
Her name was Andra Ross,
and that she was sick and was in bed.
- She was in her bedroom downstairs,
and she told her dad she was feeling ill
and didn't wanna talk.
- DAN: That immediately seemed odd to me.
If your soon-to-be stepmother's missing
and you just go to bed.
The police are there, lots of activity,
I would think if it wasn't something life and death,
she would probably be out there seeing what was going on.
- NARRATOR: With Andra self-sequestered to her room,
detectives try to feel out Milo and 19-year-old Paul.
- DANIEL: Paul was pretty quiet most of my conversation
with Milo. Milo seemed just, you know,
appropriately concerned and kind of lost and confused
about things going on and, you know,
as distracted as you would expect.
- NARRATOR: Paul explains that when Meta didn't show up
for his mission trip send-off at the church,
they considered the possibility that she'd gone into work.
- She worked the graveyard shift and she did not show up to work.
And so they had called the house asking where Meta was...
at 11 o'clock-- about 11:30.
- DAN: Neither Milo nor Paul could really explain why
she wouldn't show up or that she wouldn't come home
that evening, go to work, all that.
They were just kind of perplexed by the whole thing.
- PAUL: She was gonna come back for sacrament meeting,
but she never appeared.
My sister was gonna come and she never showed up,
so we knew something was happening.
- NARRATOR: Based on detectives' initial impression,
Meta doesn't fit the typical profile of a runaway.
- It's a little less common to have an adult turn up missing,
and especially without some major event, you know,
a fight with the husband or wife, or something like that
that precedes them going missing.
Losing a job, an event like that.
There was no event. In fact, uh, she was engaged to be married.
Her soon-to-be stepson was going on a mission for the church.
She had a job. Uh, no known reason for her to go missing.
- NARRATOR: Detectives ask Milo and Paul to take a look
around the house to see if anything is missing
or out of place.
In the dining room, the father and son point out
a few oddities.
- We realized that the newspapers--
the five or six newspapers that were on the dining room table
were all gone and that the carpet underneath
the dining room table-- the throw rug--was also gone.
- DAN: The other thing that we determined during
the process of this is that there was a bed and a bed frame
that was missing from the basement of the house.
We were told that that was where the victim had been sleeping.
So, there's some question as to why that bed's missing.
- NARRATOR: Why would an intruder take
such strangely specific items
but leave actual valuables behind?
In order to piece together what went on in Milo's house,
investigators call on a mobile crime lab for assistance.
- We're a very small organization, and we don't have
crime scene techs, and we don't have people who do that.
- NARRATOR: It will be morning before the crime lab
makes the 100-mile drive from Pocatello.
To preserve the evidence, detectives secure Milo's home.
- I made the decision that we were going to move everybody
out of the house.
We instructed them to just take a change of clothes
and some personal items and everything else
was to stay in the home.
- PAUL: They were asking us to grab toothbrushes
and whatever else we needed to stay the night somewhere else.
- NARRATOR: Milo gathers his family,
including his 17-year-old daughter, Andra,
who emerges from her room for the first time
since detectives arrived.
- DANIEL: Extremely quiet, looking down,
would not make eye contact with me at all.
Her face was just as white as a sheet
and I'd asked Milo about that again,
and he said she'd been up throwing up most of the night,
had an upset stomach, didn't sleep at all.
- NARRATOR: As the family prepares to leave,
Andra speaks up with a request for detectives.
- DAN: The daughter, Andra, wanted to take
her pickup with her.
I thought about it and I decided that, no,
we would give everybody a ride.
There would be no reason for them to have their cars,
so everything would stay on the property.
- DANIEL: She was very insistent that she wanted her pickup.
That was just one more thing that did not make any sense.
The pickup was part of the crime scene,
so we obviously decided not to release the pickup.
- DAN: Nobody's a suspect at that point,
but we wanna control the scene, and Milo Ross agreed,
and we arranged for a hotel room for the family.
- NARRATOR: The next morning, as detectives await
the arrival of the mobile crime lab,
they begin outreach in an attempt to find Meta.
- DAN: Everybody pretty much were shocked that Meta
would not show up for work,
that she wouldn't have showed up at church,
that her and Milo's relationship seemed to be pretty good,
and that she was a good worker at her job,
and that she hadn't called in sick,
never had a period of time where she just
didn't show up for work.
And all that was, uh, fairly early on.
It fell in line with the fact that she didn't go missing
on her own.
- NARRATOR: Detectives also verify Milo's alibi.
- DAN: With Milo, it was fairly early on that his story
of being in church, being at the dinner,
he was never really alone.
Some of Sandra's family saw him at the dinner.
He and Paul were together at the house after the events.
Andra came home a little bit later, she didn't go to church.
We pretty much established a timeline for the movements
of Milo and Paul during the course of the early part
of the investigation.
- NARRATOR: At 1 p.m. on October 27,
investigators get word that the crime lab has arrived
at Milo's home.
Partnering with the technicians,
detectives search for new evidence.
- DAN: We went into the house and I'm videotaping everything
that you see in that house, taking photographs.
- NARRATOR: Shortly after arriving,
crime scene technicians retrieve a single bullet
from inside the dining room wall.
- DAN: It was badly misshapen, it was a small caliber.
Those of us that looked at it believed that it was probably
a .22, uh, round.
-NARRATOR: Outside the home, Detective Kennedy
takes a look at Andra's truck.
- DANIEL: I walked back, saw the pickup, looked at--
made a closer look at it, and almost immediately
what rang out to me as I walked towards the back of the pickup,
was, coming under the tailgate, to me looked like blood stains.
- It looked like blood had run out of the bed of the truck
and was dried on the back bumper.
- DAN: That was Andra Ross' pickup,
the same pickup she had wanted to take with her.
It's the first thing I thought of.
I thought that's one of the smartest decisions I've made
in my career, is not allowing somebody to take their vehicle
from the crime scene.
- NARRATOR: Coming up, investigators zero in
on their most compelling evidence yet.
- Andra became what we'd call now a person of interest.
- NARRATOR: But a surprise witness sends them
in an unexpected direction.
- She had said that her daughter could be very ornery,
especially if she'd been drinking.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Less than 24 hours after 46-year-old Meta Jones
was reported missing,
detectives have just discovered blood on the bumper
of a vehicle driven by her soon-to-be stepdaughter,
Andra Ross.
- DANIEL: It looked like somebody had actually
attempted to clean it.
But they were able to confirm that it was human blood
that was found in the back of the pickup.
- DAN: The fact that Andra had wanted to take that pickup
raised a huge red flag, and she became
what we'd call now a person of interest,
back then we'd say a suspect.
And I knew that we needed to focus a little bit more on her.
- NARRATOR: While detectives have yet to piece together
exactly what happened,
the blood on the pickup confirms
their worst suspicions.
- DAN: We pretty much assumed at that point that
we were dealing with a homicide,
and that Meta was no longer with us.
And so it was not a missing persons case
from that moment on.
- [phone ringing]
- NARRATOR: Before investigators get a chance to question Andra,
they are contacted by her maternal grandmother,
Colleen Jonas.
Colleen tells detectives that she fears her daughter Sandra,
Milo's ex-wife, might have had something to do
with Meta's disappearance.
- GARY: Colleen had said that her daughter
could be very ornery,
and that she could be mean when she was drinking.
I know--and that she had an alcohol problem.
- NARRATOR: Colleen tells the detective
that her daughter's drinking contributed to the end
of her 14-year marriage to Milo.
- CINDY: He quit drinking and she didn't.
And then he started going back to church
and getting back in the religion
and that just caused a worse row between them.
- PAUL: My parents separated about 1997 or so.
And my parents were divorced, I believe, in May of '98.
- JACKIE: Milo and her got separated and divorced,
and then she went to work doing road construction,
and it took her up to Sun Valley,
and so she--she borrowed my mom's trailer
and she was living up there.
She lost a lot of weight, and she was looking really good.
She seemed like she was happy, but she still loved Milo.
- Colleen said that Sandra had never accepted the divorce.
In her mind, her and Milo,
although they weren't legally married,
they were still, uh, together.
- NARRATOR: When Meta moved in with Milo,
Sandra became enraged.
- GARY: She just couldn't handle somebody taking her place,
being around her kids,
living in the house she used to live in,
sleeping in the bed she used to sleep in, and it wasn't her.
- NARRATOR: Adding fuel to the fire,
Sandra learned about Paul's mission trip.
- DAN: Sandra was very anti-LDS at that time.
She was upset that her son was going on a mission,
kind of blamed Meta for directing him in that pursuit.
- NARRATOR: Colleen tells detectives that when she saw
Sandra on the morning Meta disappeared,
her daughter was even more bad-tempered than usual,
and she was armed.
- DAN: Sandra had been seen with a .22-caliber pistol
on Sunday afternoon.
And she had even made a comment that--to her mother,
I believe it was-- that she should kill Meta.
If a mother says, "I think my child did this,"
then you spend a little more time weighing that
against everything.
- NARRATOR: While investigators look into Sandra's whereabouts,
they come across another possible clue.
- We found out that Sandra had a storage unit in Burley.
The sheriff took the lead on that search warrant.
- NARRATOR: At the front of the unit,
investigators spot a promising piece of evidence.
- DAN: They noticed that there was a blue paper towel
outside the door of the storage unit
that looked like it had some blood smears on it.
They opened up the storage unit.
They found a bed frame, mattress, box springs,
cleaning supplies with blood residue on them.
We determined during the process that was the bed
and bed frame missing from the basement.
- NARRATOR: Now, investigators must determine
whether Sandra is trying to cover her own tracks
or someone else's.
And the blood found in Andra's truck
doesn't bode well for the 17-year-old.
- During this time, I'm also trying to piece together, uh,
Sandra's movements on, uh, Sunday,
and also trying to find out where
she is probably at right now.
But we didn't have what we needed
to make an arrest on Sandra.
Andra was definitely a suspect at that point.
- GARY: The circumstantial evidence in this case
was overwhelming.
Obviously, the daughter knew what had happened,
but hadn't been interviewed at this point
and made any kind of confession.
- NARRATOR: Hoping to get answers,
detectives go straight to 17-year-old Andra.
- Every moment counts, but you also have to, uh,
proceed pretty cautiously because you're not gonna get
a second chance to get that confession.
- NARRATOR: They locate Andra at a home where she is staying
with her father and brother.
- DAN: We knew that Andra and her dad were staying
at the home of some people in their church
about a mile from their house.
The people they were staying with were very active
in the church, I suspected that,
come around 10 o'clock,
the family would be praying for Meta's safe return.
Emotions were going to be high,
and that's the time that I wanted to show up
to talk to Andra.
I asked Milo if I could speak with him and his daughter Andra,
because she's still a minor,
and he gave permission for me to talk to her.
And I asked Andra if she was willing to talk to me
about what happened with Meta, and she looked at her dad,
asked him to leave the room.
- NARRATOR: Alone with Andra,
investigators encourage her to open up.
- You have to pretty much say, "Yeah we know,"
you know, "Nothing's gonna shock us,
you just go ahead and tell us."
- NARRATOR: But what she says does come as a shock.
- She proceeded to tell me, "One thing that you gotta know
before we start." I said, "What's that?"
She goes, "The head's not with the body."
- DANIEL: Once the gate opened, it just opened,
and just everything came out.
- NARRATOR: Andra tells detectives it started
when Sandra asked her to help retrieve a bed
from Milo's home.
The bed Meta had been sleeping on.
- DAN: She heard that Meta was living in the house,
sleeping in a bed that Sandra thought was her bed,
and she wasn't going to allow that to happen.
She was so obsessed with, uh,
getting that bed out of that house.
- NARRATOR: She agreed to help her mother transport the bed
in her truck on Sunday while the rest of the family
was still at church.
- DAN: So, they go to the house and Meta is in the kitchen.
And her and, uh, Sandy start yelling at each other.
Sandra tells Andra to go down in the basement
and wait for her.
- NARRATOR: Andra claims she did as her mother asked.
- DAN: Andra says, "I hear loud voices and arguing,
and then I hear a gunshot."
- [gunshot]
- DAN: A few seconds later, she hears a second gunshot.
- [gunshot]
- Her mother tells her, "Stay in the basement,
I've got a mess to clean up."
And after a little bit, says that her mother called her
to come upstairs because she needed help.
And she says that Meta's body was wrapped
in the, uh, area rug.
- GARY: She claimed she didn't see the actual shooting,
but heard the two gunshots,
and the mother wanted her to help her get rid of the body
and help clean up, which she did.
- NARRATOR: Together, they loaded Meta's body
into the pickup truck, placing the bed frame on top.
- DAN: Then they drove a mile or so from the house
along the canal, which is a large canal,
and that her mother told her to wait in the truck,
and she says that she saw through the mirror her mom
disrobed Meta's body,
and then using a hunting knife, cut her head off.
Her mother threw her head, uh, into the canal.
Drug the body out to the canal as well.
And when her mom came back,
told her, "Don't worry, nobody will ever be able
to identify her if they do find her."
- NARRATOR: After dumping the body,
they took the bed frame to Sandra's storage locker
in Burley.
Andra returned home and went straight to bed.
- DAN: She was very believable with her story.
It matched with the physical evidence
that we'd found in her pickup,
it matched with the fact the rug's missing,
and there was, uh, blood droplets on the back step,
but you didn't find blood droplets on the sidewalk
leading to the driveway, that kind of stuff.
- NARRATOR: Following Andra's confession,
Detective Chatterton has a tough conversation
with her father, Milo.
- DAN: We didn't handcuff her at that time, I don't believe,
and when we came out of the room, I explained to Milo
what we had learned and that, uh, she was gonna go
to the sheriff's office with us.
He wasn't greatly upset.
He was just kind of...accepting of what was going on.
- NARRATOR: As they transport Andra to the station,
detectives have one more stop to make.
- She'd helped her mom transport the body out to the canal.
She was with her when the body was disposed of in the canal
and when the head was severed from the body.
- I asked her to take us to where this happened.
- NARRATOR: Coming up, detectives attempt
to recover Meta's remains.
- They were able to shut the water off at the Milner Dam.
- Our searchers had noticed a severed human head
on the canal bank.
- NARRATOR: And as detectives close in on a killer,
a chilling piece of evidence falls into their laps.
- DAN: Something small and shiny fell to the floor,
and both of us looked at that
as it bounced and landed on the floor.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: On October 26, 1998,
escorted by Jerome County investigators,
17-year-old Andra Ross leads detectives
to the spot where her mother, Sandra Jonas,
dumped the body of 46-year-old Meta Jones.
- She led us on the path, uh, to where, uh,
they went with Meta.
And she showed us the spot on the road there by the canal
where she backed up to the canal.
At that point, that becomes another crime scene.
- NARRATOR: Investigators put in a request
to have the canal drained.
- GARY: They were able to shut the water off at the Milner Dam,
but it did take about eight or nine hours for it to drain
low enough to start searching that canal.
- DANIEL: We knew we weren't gonna get started
until the next morning, so the plan was to have
other people kind of come and secure the secondary site,
and then just lining up divers to help us.
- NARRATOR: Back at the station,
detectives officially place Andra under arrest.
- DAN: We charged her with accessory to murder
and then we immediately began working on a warrant
to have Sandra arrested.
- PAUL: My mom was--uh, she was very strict.
So, I wasn't surprised that when I found out
my sister was there that she ended up having to participate.
And I think I would've had to have participated as well.
- NARRATOR: Detectives decide to wait until morning
to execute the arrest warrant for Sandra.
- DAN: In rural homes like this,
if you go up in the dark, could she get away from us?
She's gonna know why we're there if we go up
and start beating on the door.
And so, the tactical decision was to wait until she came out
to go to work the next morning and then take her into custody.
- NARRATOR: Now, two days after Meta was reported missing,
detectives get word from officers at the canal.
- As we were waiting for the arrest to take place,
the sheriff had advised me that the canal water
had been dropping down since about 11 o'clock,
and that our searchers had noticed a severed human head,
uh, on the canal bank.
The human head doesn't float if it's severed from the body.
It weighs roughly eight pounds,
and when you fling it out into the water,
it's gonna reach the apex of your throw,
hit the water, and sink.
And that's literally, uh, where we found the head.
- NARRATOR: But Meta's body didn't stay put.
- The body floated downstream about a mile, mile and a half.
- NARRATOR: Detectives transport the recovered remains
to the medical examiner for autopsy.
Then, they get word that Sandra was taken into custody
in Blaine County on her way into work.
- DAN: It is the first contact that any police had had
directly with her, uh, involving this case.
- NARRATOR: Detective Chatterton comes face to face with Sandra
as she is booked.
While taking inventory of her personal items,
investigators make a shocking discovery in her pockets.
- It was a typical hunting knife.
It was a fixed blade, it wasn't a folding blade,
probably about four to five inches in length,
with a very sturdy handle,
and it was a sturdy, broad knife.
It wasn't a flimsy one, like a filet knife.
It was a--a hunting knife.
- NARRATOR: Detective Chatterton discovers that's not
the only thing Sandra's been carrying around.
- DAN: When the property was being taken off of her person,
something small and shiny came out of her pocket
and fell to the floor.
Both of us looked at that as it bounced and landed on the floor.
- Dan hears this ding-ding-ding, and he looks down and...
there's Meta Jones's ring rolling down the floor.
- DAN: I scooped it up and it was just the top
of a diamond ring.
The band itself was cut off from that.
The significance of finding the head of the ring,
with the decapitation of the victim...
kind of a chilling thing.
- NARRATOR: Shortly after booking Sandra,
police get confirmation of what they already suspected.
The medical examiner verifies that the head and body
found in the canal belong to Meta.
- GARY: The dentist that did the records,
did the X-rays and took all the photos,
compared it with her family dentist who had record
of all of her dental records.
The cause of death was gunshot wound to the head.
There were two, there was one below her--I think it was
her right eye, and then one behind the ear.
- NARRATOR: Milo is able to verify that the ring
Sandra had in her pocket was indeed the one
he gave to Meta.
- Milo had a receipt for the ring that he had
purchased for Meta.
That is the same diamond that was sold to Milo.
- NARRATOR: As the evidence piles up against Sandra,
prosecutors and investigators feel confident about
their changes of putting her away for good.
Still, they keep digging.
- DANIEL: We're doing a murder investigation, so we're just
kind of going back and looking to see if there was, you know,
any issues with violence in her past, and this came up.
- NARRATOR: Detectives learn that, eight years ago,
a mysterious fire broke out in the home
of Milo's first wife, Vicky.
- PAUL: My dad, he had met Vicky.
They were married in 1961,
and I believe they were divorced, um, 1980 or so.
- DANIEL: She had a catastrophic house fire
where somebody had died in the house.
Nobody ever conducted a serious interview with Vicky,
the only survivor of the house fire.
- NARRATOR: Was Meta Sandra's first victim?
Or had Sandra Jonas killed before?
Coming up: the investigation expands yet again,
and Sandra's motive crystallizes.
- There's just no way that one plus two
didn't equal three in that case.
- That was her home, her husband, her children.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: As Jerome County investigators continue
to build their case against accused murderer Sandra Jonas,
they find evidence that Meta Jones may not have been
her first victim.
Eight years prior, a mysterious fire broke out
at the home of Milo Ross's first wife, Vicky.
- DANIEL: There was a house fire and somebody died.
Vicky had some very strong and definite concerns
about the fire, that it occurred shortly after
the last confrontation that she had with Sandra.
- NARRATOR: Vicky explains to police that she and Milo
had remained in touch throughout his marriage to Sandra,
and Sandra didn't like it.
- DANIEL: She started off making threats towards Vicky,
and then a few short weeks later, we have, you know,
the fire at the house.
- NARRATOR: But while investigators have plenty
of questions about the fire,
the eight-year-old case is already closed.
- DANIEL: The state fire marshal's office wasn't willing
to re-look at that because they had seen it
as an accidental electrical fire,
so there would be no way we could present that as evidence.
- NARRATOR: Though never charged with starting the fire,
the confrontations between the two women could be
an indication of a motive towards Meta.
- It shows the violent attitude that Sandra has,
especially when it comes to anyone
in a relationship with Milo.
And it kind of corroborated the potential motive
of why Sandra would be so upset
that another woman's sleeping in the house
that she considers to be hers,
in a bed that she considered to be hers,
and in a relationship with a man
that she considered to be her husband.
The circumstance of Meta having stayed behind
that morning and fixing food for their uh, family dinner,
it just led to the perfect storm.
This was brewing for a long time,
and the main catalyst is she never accepted
the divorce between her and Milo.
That was her home, her husband, her children.
- [gunshot]
- NARRATOR: Even with all the evidence stacked against her,
Sandra refuses to confess.
In December 1998, Andra accepts a plea.
As part of her deal, she agrees to take the stand
against her mother.
- DAN: She was charged as a juvenile,
with--I believe it was accessory to murder.
Her agreement to cooperate with the State
in prosecuting her mother was taken into account.
- NARRATOR: Andra is sentenced to two years' probation.
- Personally, I don't think she should have gotten anything.
I think she was reacting to what her mother
basically told her to do.
You know, "You either do this or else."
- NARRATOR: Almost ten months later,
in July 1999,
prosecutors learn that Sandra is ready
to talk about a deal.
- Initially we charged her with, uh, first-degree murder,
and through the process of negotiations and pre-trial,
she pled guilty to second-degree murder
and was sentenced to 25 to life.
- This obviously was a story of jealousy.
A murder of jealousy.
- DAN: To strip a victim naked, cut her head off,
take an artifact from her body, the engagement ring,
that's pretty heinous.
That goes up there on the list of some
of the worst things you could do to somebody.
- GARY: What's the old saying,
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned"?
I think she just couldn't handle
somebody taking her place, being around her kids,
living in the house she used to live in,
sleeping in the bed she used to sleep in, and it wasn't her.
- PAUL: The most tragic part of this thing is that
it all could have been prevented.
I don't put any responsibility on Meta.
I don't put any on Andra.
I don't put any on me or my Aunt Jackie or my grandma,
but on my mom alone.
My mom doesn't recognize that she's done anything wrong,
or--and I don't know that she ever will.
- HEATHER: Such a wonderful woman was taken from our family
in such a tragic way that was super unnecessary,
and it didn't need to happen.
She just missed out on so many good things in her life.
- ♪