Kathy Jones Exhumation. Credit: MNPD
Last week, cold case detectives from the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department attended the exhumation of 1969 homicide victim Nora Kathylene “Kathy” Jones.
A forensic review by the Medical Examiner’s Office, using technology not available in the 1960s, will be conducted in an effort to further the investigation.
Kathy was 12 years old when she was found deceased in an empty lot.
Case background
At approximately 7:45 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 29th, 1969, Nora Kathylene “Kathy” Jones left her house to walk to the Roller Drome skating rink. She was supposed to call her mother, Nora Jones, for a ride when she was ready to come home. When Nora hadn’t heard from Kathy by 11:00 p.m., she began to worry and went to the skating rink looking for her. When she realized it had closed at 10:00 p.m., she went home and called the police.
On December 1, a Youth Aid Officer was assigned to the missing person case and members of the Civil Defense Office were brought in to aid in the search efforts. It was members of this Civil Defense Unit that discovered Kathy’s body around noon on Tuesday, December 2in the tall grass of an empty lot. Kathy had been raped and stabbed, and ultimately died from suffocation caused by one of her socks that had been put in her mouth as part of a gag. It was estimated that she had been dead for approximately 24 hours.
Republished courtesy of Metropolitan Nashville Police Department