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Claude Howard
JONES
Classification: Murderer
Characteristics: Robberies
Number of victims: 3
Date of murders: 1976 - 1989
Date
of arrest:
December 2,
1989
Date of birth:
September 24,
1940
Victims profile: Allen Hilzendager
(owner of a liquor store)
/ A fellow inmate
Method of murder:
Shooting
(.357 Magnum revolver)
/ Gasoline
- Fire
Location: San Jacinto County, Texas, USA
Status: Executed
by lethal injection in Texas on December 7,
2000
Summary:
In November 1989, Jones entered Zell's liquor store in Point Blank
and asked the owner, Allen Hilzendager, to retrieve a bottle for him.
As Hilzendager turned to get the bottle, Jones shot him three times
with a .357 Magnum revolver. Jones took $900 from the cash register
and fled in a getaway vehicle waiting outside.
Waiting in the car were Jones' two accomplices, Kerry Daniel Dixon
Jr. and Timothy Mark Jordan, in the middle of a multi-state crime
pree that ended when Jones was arrested in Florida for bank robbery.
Dixon received a 60 year sentence, Jordan a 10 year sentence. Jones
had spent much of this adult life in prison following numerous
convictions in Texas and Kansas.
While in a Kansas prison serving a life sentence for murder, he
killed another inmate. He served a total of 8 years on his life
sentence.
Texas Attorney General
MEDIA ADVISORY
Claude Howard Jones Scheduled To
Be Executed
AUSTIN - Texas Attorney General John Cornyn
offers the following information on Claude Howard Jones who is
scheduled to be executed after 6 p.m., Thursday, December 7th.
Jones was convicted and sentenced to death for
the November 1989 murder of Allen Hilzendager, the owner of a liquor
store in Point Blank, Texas.
FACTS OF THE CRIME
On November 14, 1989, Jones and two other men,
Kerry Dixon and Mark Jordan, gathered at the home of Jordan's father.
Between 4 and 4:30 in the afternoon, Jones and
Dixon left and drove to Zell's liquor store where Allen Hilzaendager
was. Before they left, Jordan gave the men his Taurus .357 magnum
revolver, which had been purchased by Jordan's girlfriend, Terry
Hardin. Jordan stayed behind at the mobile home.
That same day, Leon Goodson and his 14-year-old
daughter Wendy were busy working on their family vehicle at a
friend's house located across the highway from Zell's liquor store.
While assisting her father, Wendy saw a pickup
truck pull into the front of the liquor store. The passenger, who
was wearing a light-colored shirt with long sleeves and had a "pot"
belly, got out of the truck and greeted Hilzendager. Hilzendager
placed his arm around the man and they went into the store.
The driver of the truck then turned the truck
around on a nearby road, turned his lights off, and pulled up beside
the store. Through a window in the front of the store, Wendy could
see Hilzendager walk around the side of the counter.
Two minutes later, Wendy heard two gun shots in
rapid succession, and after a short pause, she heard another. She
then asked her father, "Do you think they shot him?" Mr. Goodson,
who was on the ground fixing the car at the time, heard the three
bangs, but dismissed them thinking that Hilzendager might be banging
on some metal doors.
After hearing his daughter's words, however, Mr.
Goodson stopped working on the car, stood up, and looked across the
street. He and his daughter observed the man walk from the front of
the counter to behind the counter, then out from behind the counter
again. The door to the store was then pulled open and the man came
out walking very briskly.
According to Mr. Goodson, the man appeared to be
a white male, in his forties, approximately 5 feet, 10 inches tall,
200 to 230 pounds in weight, wearing a tight fitting gray jogging
shirt and had a "beer belly." The man got into the passenger side of
the vehicle, and the vehicle was driven off toward Oakhurst at a
high rate of speed.
Several minutes later, after finishing the
repairs, the Goodsons drove across the street to check on
Hilzendager. After calling for Hilzendager, Goodson stepped up
toward the counter and, through the storeroom door, saw the lower
part of Hilzendager's torso and legs lying in a pool of blood.
Goodson immediately left the store, got into his
car, and went back to his neighbor's house to call the ambulance and
police. Goodson then returned to the store and checked to see if
Hilzendager was breathing. After determining that Hilzendager was
not alive, he waited for the authorities to arrive at the scene.
Law enforcement officials found the body of Allen
Hilzendager lying on the floor in the doorway of the storeroom. He
had received three gunshot wounds. Hilzendager received wounds to
his right shoulder area under the collar bone, to his right lower
abdomen, and to his back.
A crime scene expert believed that the first shot
was the one to his upper left back, which resulted in a severed
aortic artery and a punctured lung. The second shot, which was fired
between 18 to 24 inches from the victim, was made as the victim held
up his hands. The third shot struck Hilzendager in the side as he
lay on the floor.
Hilzendager's sister, who occasionally worked at
the liquor store, estimated that $900 was stolen from the cash
register in the store. However, approximately $6,000 was left in the
store in a bag pushed up under the counter near the floor.
Another
$1,000 was left in a bank bag under the cash register. After the
murder, Jones told friends of his that he had killed Hilzendager
because he was gay.
Convicted
murderer to be third executed this week; 40th this
year
The Daily Texan
December 8, 2000
HUNTSVILLE -- Career criminal and
convicted murderer Claude Howard Jones headed to the
Texas death chamber Thursday night and notoriety as
the 40th and last Texas inmate to be put to death in
a record year for executions in the state.
Jones, 60, condemned for the 1989
shooting death of a liquor store owner near Point
Blank in San Jacinto County, also would be third
inmate to receive lethal injection in Texas in as
many nights.
The total for 2000 would top the
previous state record, set in 1997, by three and add
to Texas' distinction this year as the most active
state for capital punishment in American history.
Jones' appeals were rejected in
October by the U.S. Supreme Court but the inmate
Thursday filed, and later asked to withdraw, an
11th-hour state court plea seeking DNA testing of
evidence. He made no clemency request to Gov. George
W. Bush, who had authority to grant him a one-time
30-day reprieve.
Only once in his nearly six years
in office has Bush used the power to stop an
execution and that inmate eventually was put to
death. Jones would be the 239th inmate executed
since Texas resumed carrying out capital punishment
in 1982 and the 152nd during Bush's tenure as
governor.
Jones, with nearly a dozen
convictions and a prison record that stretched over
more than 40 years, was condemned for the Nov. 14,
1989 fatal shooting of Allen Hilzendager, 37, at a
rural liquor store about 70 miles north of Houston
and not far from the prison that now houses death
row inmates.
Witnesses and evidence showed
Jones walked into the store, asked for a bottle of
whiskey and shot Hilzendager while the store owner's
back was turned, then shot the man two more times,
including once while the victim's hands were raised.
Then he grabbed $900 from a cash register,
unknowingly missing some $7,000 in cash bags nearby,
and jumped into a pickup truck to join two
companions.
"He did not need to kill," Scott
Rosekrans, the district attorney in San Jacinto
County, said this week. "It was really kind of
senseless."
Three days later, Jones held up a
suburban Houston bank, getting more than $14,000
while his partners again waited outside. They used
the loot for a weekend trip to Las Vegas. Nearly
three weeks after that, Jones was arrested in Fort
Myers, Fla., and charged with robbery and bank
robbery there.
A single strand of Jones' hair
was found at the murder scene and one of Jones'
partners made a plea agreement to testify against
him. Another accomplice led authorities to the
Trinity River where the murder weapon was recovered.
One accomplice, Kerry Dixon Jr., received a 60-year
prison term. The other, Timothy Jordan, got 10 years.
"It's my personal belief that if
(Jones) ever was paroled, there's a likelihood he
would kill again and try to fine tune his robberies
so as not to leave any witnesses," said Bill Burnett,
who was one of the prosecutors in the case and now
teaches criminal justice at Angelina College.
Jones, a Harris County native who
refused to speak with reporters in the weeks leading
up to his execution, first was convicted of robbery
and imprisoned in 1959. Among his other multiple
prison sentences was time in Kansas for robbery,
murder and assault. While locked up there, he was
convicted of killing a fellow inmate by throwing
gasoline on him and setting him on fire. By 1984,
however, he was out on parole despite a life term,
records show.
"One of our arguments was ... he
had demonstrated his dangerousness even in the
prison environment," Burnett said.
Claude Jones
Txexecutions.org
Claude Jones, 60, was executed by lethal
injection on 7 December in Huntsville, Texas for the murder of a
liquor store owner.
In November 1989, Jones entered Zell's liquor
store in Point Blank and asked the owner, Allen Hilzendager, to
retrieve a bottle for him. As Hilzendager turned to get the bottle,
Jones shot him three times with a .357 Magnum revolver.
Jones took
$900 from the cash register and fled in a getaway vehicle waiting
outside. Waiting in the car were Jones' two accomplices, Kerry
Daniel Dixon Jr. and Timothy Mark Jordan.
Three days later, the trio robbed a bank in
Humble, Texas, obtaining $14,000 in loot. They then went on a
weekend trip to Las Vegas. About three weeks after the liquor store
robbery, Jones was arrested in Florida for bank robbery.
Jones, who also used the aliases Carl Roy Davis,
Butch Jones, and Douglas Ray Starke, had eleven prior convictions in
Texas for crimes including murder, armed robbery, assault, and
burglary.
He served 6 years of a 9-year prison sentence
from 1959 to 1963 and three years of a 5-year sentence from 1963 to
1965. In 1976, he was convicted of murder, robbery, and assault in
Kansas and received a life sentence. While in Kansas prison, Jones
killed another inmate. He was paroled in 1984.
Kerry Dixon also had a lengthy prior record that
included murder and two prison terms.
The evidence at Jones' trial was conclusive. A
number of witnesses placed Jones at the scene of the crime,
including Leon Goodson, who heard the shots and watched Jones leave
the liquor store. A strand of Jones' hair was found at the murder
scene.
Also, Timothy Jordan testified against his partners in crime.
Jones was convicted of capital murder and received the death
sentence. Dixon was convicted of murder and received a 60-year
prison term. Jordan received a 10-year prison term.
Jones' execution was delayed by about a half an
hour because prison staff were unable to find suitable veins in his
hands and arms. Executions are usually performed with an IV in each
arm.
In Jones' case, only one IV was used, and it was inserted in
his left thigh. In his brief final statement, Jones apologized to
the victim's family and expressed love to his own family. He was
pronounced dead at 6:42 p.m.
Timeline of
Events in the Case of Claude Jones
InnocenceProject.org
October 1989 -
Terry Hardin purchases a .357 revolver from WalMart
for her boyfriend, Timothy Mark Jordan, who was on
parole and could not purchase a gun.
November 1989 -
Jordan and Hardin host visitors Claude Howard Jones
and Kerry Dixon at a deer camp owned by Hardin's
parents.
November 1989 -
Allen Hilzendager is shot to death while working at
a liquor store in San Jacinto County, Texas. Police
officers arrive at the liquor store and collect
crime scene evidence, including several hairs from
the counter near the cash register and one from the
cash drawer itself.
November 1989 -
Jordan and Dixon are arrested for the murder after
eyewitnesses place Dixon's beige Ford truck at the
liquor store at the time of the murder.
December 1989 -
Jones is arrested.
August 1990 -
The prosecution alleges that Jones robbed the store
and shot the victim with Jordan's gun while Dixon
waited in the car in the parking lot. Jordan
testifies that Jones confessed to the murder several
times. Jones, who has a lengthy criminal record,
does not testify. Stephen Robertson, a chemist at
the Texas Department of Public Safety, testifies
that a hair fragment found on the counter of the
liquor store could have belonged to Jones but not to
Dixon, the victim, or any of the other 12
individuals whose samples were collected. Jordan's
sample was not collected.
August 1990 -
Jones is convicted of capital murder and sentenced
to die. Dixon is convicted of capital murder and
given a 60-year sentence. (Jordan was charged with
capital murder and with a separate robbery in
another county, but plea bargained both charges down
to a 10-year sentence for a lesser offense.)
December 1994 -
A divided Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, in a 3-2
decision, upholds Jones's conviction and death
sentence. In a strongly worded dissent, two judges
conclude that the evidence against Jones is not
sufficient to justify his conviction for murder.
The majority opinion cites the hair as critical
physical evidence tying Jones to the crime.
December 2000 -
State officials contemplate mitochondrial DNA
testing on a hair fragment found at the crime scene
and alleged to be Jones', but testing is never
performed. The possibility of DNA testing is
omitted from material prepared by state officials
for then-Governor George Bush to decide whether to
grant Jones' request for a temporary stay of
execution. (Months earlier, Bush ordered a stay of
execution in another death row case so DNA testing
could be conducted.)
December 2000 -
Claude Howard Jones is executed by the State of
Texas.
May 2004 -
Timothy Jordan signs an affidavit recanting his
testimony that Jones told him he committed the
murder. In the affidavit, he states that everything
he reported at trial about the robbery and killing
he learned from Dixon, not from Jones. He also
states that he testified against Jones in an attempt
to receive a reduced sentence in this case and an
unrelated robbery.
August 2007 -
Mayer Brown LLP, on behalf of The Texas Observer,
the Innocence Project, the Innocence Project of
Texas and the Texas Innocence Network, asks the San
Jacinto County District Attorney's office and local
officials to consent to DNA testing and preserve the
evidence while considering the request.
September 2007 -
The San Jacinto County DA denies the request.
September 2007 -
Mayer Brown LLP, on behalf on behalf of The Texas
Observer, the Innocence Project, the Innocence
Project of Texas and the Texas Innocence Network,
files a motion for DNA testing and asks the court to
issue a temporary restraining order to prevent the
destruction of evidence.
DNA Tests May
Show Whether Texas Man Was Wrongfully Executed
Legal Motions Filed to Hold
Evidence for Testing
Texas Observer and organizations that address
wrongful convictions today filed motions in state
court in the case of Claude Jones, executed in 2000
InnocenceProject.org
SAN JACINTO COUNTY, TX
September 7, 2007
Advanced DNA testing could prove
whether a Texas man was wrongfully executed in 2000,
so a state court should issue an immediate order
preventing local officials from destroying the
evidence and should also order DNA testing in the
case, papers filed today in state court said.
The Texas Observer, the Innocence
Project, the Innocence Project of Texas and the
Texas Innocence Network filed motions in state court
in San Jacinto County, Texas, today asking for a
temporary restraining order that would prevent
officials from destroying the only piece of physical
evidence in the case – a hair from the crime scene –
and seeking a court order to conduct DNA testing
that could determine whether the hair matches Claude
Jones, who was convicted of murder in 1990 and
executed on December 7, 2000.
The hair, which was found on the
counter in a liquor store where a man was shot and
killed, was central in Jones’ trial and post-conviction
appeals. An expert for the state testified at the
trial that the hair was consistent with Jones’. The
Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest
criminal court, narrowly upheld Jones’ conviction,
in a 3-2 ruling where the majority specifically
cited the hair evidence as the necessary
“corroboration” to uphold the conviction.
“The San Jacinto District
Attorney, who was one of the prosecutors during
Claude Jones’ trial, told us this week that he will
not agree to DNA testing without a court order. We
are asking for an emergency order from the court
that will mandate testing and prevent officials from
destroying this evidence in the meantime,” said
Barry Scheck, Co-Director of the Innocence Project,
which is affiliated with Cardozo School of Law. “The
public has a right to know whether Claude Jones
actually committed the crime for which he was
executed, and whether a serious breakdown in the
state’s legal and political process led to a
wrongful execution. Public confidence in the
criminal justice system is at stake.”
In the days prior to Jones’
execution, his attorneys appealed to courts and to
then-Governor George Bush’s office for a stay of
execution so that DNA testing on the hair could be
conducted. Documents later obtained by the Innocence
Project through Open Records Act requests show that
Governor Bush’s staff did not include the
possibility of DNA testing in the material they
prepared for him about the request for a stay of
execution, which was denied. (The request for a stay
of execution was being handled by Bush’s office
during the period of the Florida vote recount after
the 2000 presidential election.) Several months
earlier, Governor Bush granted another death row
inmate’s clemency request so that DNA testing could
be conducted; at the time, Bush said, “Any time DNA
can be used in its context and can be relevant as to
the guilt or innocence of a person on death row, we
need to use it.” Several weeks later, DNA results
showed that the man, Ricky McGinn, was guilty and he
was executed.
Other than the hair, the primary
evidence against Jones was testimony from Timothy
Jordan, who said that Jones told him he committed
the murder. Jordan and Kerry Dixon were initially
arrested for the November 1989 liquor store robbery
and murder in San Jacinto County. Jones was later
arrested, and he and Dixon were charged in the crime.
In an affidavit in 2004, Jordan stated that
everything he reported at trial about the robbery
and killing he learned from Dixon, not from Jones.
Jordan’s affidavit also states that he testified
against Jones in an attempt to receive a reduced
sentence in this case and an unrelated robbery.
According to the Innocence
Project, mitochondrial DNA testing on the hair
evidence could establish any of the following:
(1)Jones was guilty;
(2)the hair comes from the
charged accomplice Dixon, which would strongly
support a claim Jones was innocent (since Dixon
denied being present in the store); or
(3) the hair came from the victim
or some other individual, which, by excluding Jones
and contradicting the critical evidence against him
at trial and relied on by the appeals courts, would
mean there was not legally sufficient evidence to
convict Jones, much less execute him.
On August 31, 2007, attorneys at
Mayer Brown LLP sent Open Records Act requests to
San Jacinto County District Attorney Bill Burnett
and District Court Clerk Rebecca Capers, asking for
access to the hair evidence to perform DNA testing.
Burnett denied the request earlier this week, two
days after telling attorneys that he didn’t think
DNA testing on the hair is scientifically possible (since
the hair does not have a follicle) and that Jones
confessed to the crime in his final statement in the
execution chamber.
“None of the reasons the District
Attorney has given for denying our request are valid,”
said Innocence Project Staff Attorney Nina Morrison.
“Mitochondrial DNA testing on this hair is
definitely possible, and similar testing has
exonerated several people who were wrongfully
convicted in other cases. We don’t know what the
testing will show, but mitochondrial DNA testing can
and should be conducted on this evidence. The record
from both the trial and the appeals clearly show
that the hair, which is the only physical evidence
against Jones, was key to securing and upholding his
conviction. Eyewitness testimony in this case was
shaky at best and did not identify Jones, and Jones
did not confess to this crime in the execution
chamber. He told the victim’s family that he hoped
they would find closure and that he was sorry for
their loss.”
“The bottom line is that Claude
Jones was convicted based on the hair evidence and
testimony from Timothy Jordan. Jordan has already
said, in a sworn affidavit, that his testimony was
false, and DNA testing on the hair could definitely
show whether or not Claude Jones was guilty,”
Morrison said.
Texas leads the nation in the
number of innocent people who were exonerated
through DNA testing after being wrongfully convicted.
Across the state, 29 people have been exonerated
with DNA since 1994. They served a total of 354
years in prison. Nationwide, 207 people have been
exonerated through DNA testing, 15 of whom were
sentenced to die, according to the Innocence
Project, which is affiliated with Cardozo School of
Law.
The Texas Observer, the Innocence
Project, the Innocence Project of Texas and the
Texas Innocence Network are represented by Mayer
Brown LLP in Houston and New York.
Fight the Death Penalty USA
Career criminal and convicted murderer Claude
Howard Jones was executed Thursday night, the 40th and last Texas
inmate to be put to death in a record year for executions in the
state.
Jones looked at 5 members of his victim's family
and spoke directly to them, saying, "I hope this can bring some
closure to y'all. I'm sorry for your loss." Then he looked toward
another window and said "Hey, I love y'all."Jones looked at the
warden and said "Let's go."
He gasped twice, sputtered, gasped 2 more times
and then exhaled. He was pronounced dead at 6:42, 10 minutes after
the lethal drugs began taking effect. "Although the grief will never
end, we thank God tonight for this time, that has brought to a close
this part of the dreadful deed brought upon our lives, 11 years and
23 days ago, that took the life of our loved one," the victim's
family said in a statement.
The execution was delayed by about 30 minutes
because of difficulties finding a vein in either arm to insert the
drugs. Authorities ended up using a vein in his left leg.
Jones, 60, condemned for the 1989 shooting death
of a liquor store owner near Point Blank in San Jacinto County, was
the 3rd inmate to receive lethal injection in Texas in as many
nights.
The total for 2000 topped the previous state
record, set in 1997, by 3 and added to Texas' distinction this year
as the most active state for capital punishment in American history.
Jones' appeals were rejected in October by the
U.S. Supreme Court but the inmate Thursday filed, and later asked to
withdraw, an 11th-hour state court plea seeking DNA testing of
evidence.
He made no clemency request to Gov. George W.
Bush, who had authority to grant him a 1-time 30-day reprieve. Only
once in his nearly 6 years in office has Bush used the power to stop
an execution and that inmate eventually was put to death.
Jones, with nearly a dozen convictions and a
prison record that stretched over more than 40 years, was condemned
for the Nov. 14, 1989 fatal shooting of Allen Hilzendager, 37, at a
rural liquor store about 70 miles north of Houston and not far from
the prison that now houses death row inmates.
Witnesses and evidence showed Jones walked into
the store, asked for a bottle of whiskey and shot Hilzendager while
the store owner's back was turned, then shot the man 2 more times,
including once while the victim's hands were raised.
Then he grabbed $900 from a cash register,
unknowingly missing some $7,000 in cash bags nearby, and jumped into
a pickup truck to join 2 companions. "He did not need to kill,"
Scott Rosekrans, the district attorney in San Jacinto County, said
this week. "It was really kind of senseless."
3 days later, Jones held up a suburban Houston
bank, getting more than $14,000 while his partners again waited
outside. They used the loot for a weekend trip to Las Vegas.
Nearly 3 weeks after that, Jones was arrested in
Fort Myers, Fla., and charged with robbery and bank robbery there. A
single strand of Jones' hair was found at the murder scene and one
of Jones' partners made a plea agreement to testify against him.
Another accomplice led authorities to the Trinity River where the
murder weapon was recovered.
One accomplice, Kerry Dixon Jr., received a 60-year
prison term. The other, Timothy Jordan, got 10 years. "It's my
personal belief that if (Jones) ever was paroled, there's a
likelihood he would kill again and try to fine tune his robberies so
as not to leave any witnesses," said Bill Burnett, who was one of
the prosecutors in the case and now teaches criminal justice at
Angelina College.
Jones, a Harris County native who refused to
speak with reporters in the weeks leading up to his execution, 1st
was convicted of robbery and imprisoned in 1959.
Among his other multiple prison sentences was
time in Kansas for robbery, murder and assault. While locked up
there, he was convicted of killing a fellow inmate by throwing
gasoline on him and setting him on fire.
By 1984, however, he was out on parole despite a
life term, records show. "One of our arguments was ... he had
demonstrated his dangerousness even in the prison environment,"
Burnett said.
