On Thursday May 31, 2018, at 5:20 PM, it was 97° in Phoenix, Arizona. Dr. Steven Pitt, 59, a well-known forensic psychiatrist in Maricopa County, was leaving his office. (I had visited him there about three years ago. His office bespoke his unwavering dedication to his work. He had an elaborate video recording system, showing the interviewee and himself in split-screen view.)
Dr. Pitt had been involved in several highprofile cases in Arizona and beyond. He was associated with Dr. Park Dietz and other forensic specialists in Colorado and Louisiana. He specialized in criminal psychopathology and often assisted law enforcement. He was the go-to forensic psychiatrist for local and national media.
On that typically hot Phoenix evening, Dr. Pitt was found shot to death outside his office. Witnesses had heard an argument just before the sound of gunshots. Police Officer Vincent Lewis postulated that Dr. Pitt and the killer may have known each other.
Friday afternoon, at about 2: 15 PM, two paralegals were shot at their office, the firm of Burt, Feldman and Grenier. Laura Anderson, 49, was found dead with a bullet wound to her chest. Veleria Sharp, 48, shot in the head, managed to run out of the office, cried for help, collapsed, and died at a hospital.
On Saturday morning, just after midnight, police found the body of Dr. Marshall Levine, a life coach, hypnotherapist and counselor. He had been shot in his office.
And about 12:30 AM on Monday, June 29, 2018, in a home in nearby Fountain Hills, police discovered the bodies of a couple. Mary Simmons, 70 and Byron Thomas, 72 had been shot to death.
Six murders, all committed within 5 days, just miles apart. Were they connected?
Yes, tragically, in a bizarre constellation of nightmares when matrimonial cases go bad. Here’s how:
Dwight Lamon Jones, 56, and his wife Connie Jones, M.D., a Scottsdale radiologist, had been married for 21 years. They were together when
Dr. Jones was a resident at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. Dwight had a history of losing one job after another. He had refused mental health care. Dr. Jones later said, “Looking at his eyes, there was nobody there.”
However, in Arizona, and by agreement, Dwight became a stay-at-home dad, while his wife worked.
Dwight regularly abused his wife and son. On May 6, 2009, Jones screamed at his son for poor performance during basketball practice. His son had an asthmatic attack during his father’s tirade. Connie, frequently hit and threatened by her husband, had placed tape recorders throughout their home. They recorded Dwight yelling at his son, “If you get smart with me, I’ll knock your fucking head off.” When his wife tried to intervene, Dwight threatened to kill her, saying, “I’ll take you out to the motherfucking pool and drown you … you’ll be a dead piece of shit.” He heard his wife calling 911 and told her, “Pick the phone up and call the motherfuckers. I’ll show you what’s going to happen, bitch.”
Connie escaped from the house and called 911, but her son stayed with his father. Inside, Dwight continued the verbal abuse of his son, saying both could be killed. He made sexual allegations about Connie. He directed his son to lie to the police that his mother was the child abuser. He told the boy, “She’s a nasty fucking whore … she’s got these cops out here getting ready to kill me … your mom wants me to die … she wants you to die … the fucking whore doesn’t care about you.”
Jones emerged from the house, using the boy as a shield.
After the horrifying incident deescalated, Dwight was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. He was taken for an emergency psychiatric evaluation. Two weeks later he was free. The court granted him two hours a week of supervised visitation.
Dr. Jones and her son moved. She filed for divorce and, received an order of protection which required her husband to give up his guns. Later, Connie told reporters, Dwight repeatedly threatened to kill her, kidnap their son, or kill all three of them. Chillingly, she added, “Dwight could wait for a long time before he would get his revenge.”
During the divorce proceedings, Connie hired Rick Anglin, a retired Phoenix police detective, as her private investigator and de facto bodyguard. Later, they married.
Dr. Jones and her son lived as if they were in a witness protection program. Except they weren’t. They avoided favorite restaurants, their usual grocery stores and even sat in the very last row of movie theaters. Anglin told reporters, “We had three safe houses, countless rental cars. We had attack-trained dogs that we had to bring in and 24-hour security.” He taught her how to use firearms and drive defensively. Still, Dr. Jones lived in constant fear.
Dr. Steven Pitt was appointed by the court to examine Dwight Jones. He was paid $25,000 by Dr. Jones. At the divorce hearing, Dr. Pitt testified that Mr. Jones had a mood and anxiety disorder with features of antisocial, narcissistic and paranoid personality disorders. Judge Gates took notes about Steve’s testimony, writing that the psychiatrist testified, “Mr. Jones poses a high risk to perpetuate violence toward mother and child and/or himself.”
Paulette Selmi, Ph.D., the court appointed clinical psychologist, reported that Dwight needed psychiatric treatment and “is going to continue to unravel … he will become increasingly paranoid, likely psychotic and pose an even greater threat.”
In late 2009, Connie asked the court to terminate Dwight’s visits with their son, saying her soon-to-be ex-husband was becoming more unstable. She and her son were afraid he would kill them for her $4 million life insurance policy. She told the court he had purchased a machete, sent her a hand-written map of her work routes, covered with drawings of dead bodies, bought books about revenge and one on how to live with oneself after committing murder.
Her request to terminate Mr. Jones’s visitation was denied. The next year, her petition to relocate out of state was also denied. The court stated that such a move would deprive Dwight and his son of their strong connection and “wouldn’t meaningfully improve the quality of life for the mother or the minor child.”
In November of 2010, Maricopa Superior Court Judge Pamela Gates granted the divorce and awarded full custody to Dr. Jones. Judge Gates did cite Dwight’s violent, abusive behavior and untreated mental illness. Nevertheless, she continued Mr. Jones’s supervised visitation and ordered Connie to pay him $6000 a month spousal maintenance.
In 2010, Judge Gates ordered Mr. Jones to have a psychiatric evaluation. Four years later, he hadn’t done so. In court records, Mr. Jones accused Drs. Selmi and Pitt of accepting Connie’s account of their relationship as true because she is a doctor. His attorney wrote, “Father does not have the resources that Mother has spent to manufacture a case against him.”
The years rolled by. Mr. Jones posted YouTube videos accusing the professional evaluators of conspiring against him. His attacks were threatening and personal.
His anger escalated and finally overflowed. On May 31, 2018, he waited for Dr. Pitt to emerge from his office and shot him in the head. Steve died instantly. The next day, he drove to the office of his ex-wife’s attorney, Elizabeth Feldman. She wasn’t in, but he two paralegals, Laura and Veleria, were. He murdered them. Police said the same .22-caliber handgun was used to kill the three victims.
His rage unabated, Dwight traveled to the office of his son’s evaluating mental health professional. She, too, wasn’t there, but Dr. Marshall Levine was. He had rented space in the office suite. He had nothing to do with the case, but Dwight killed him anyway. He used the same gun.
There was no doubt now that all these murders were related. A reward was offered and tips flowed in. Then an important message came from former detective Rick Anglin, Connie’s new husband.
Police began the search for Dwight Jones. On Sunday, he was spotted dumping a bag into a trash can. lt contained a .22-caliber handgun.
But on Monday, they found the bodies of Byron Thomas and Mary Simmons. Detectives learned from a neighbor that the couple and Dwight had met 5 years before and played tennis at local parks.
Why did Mr. Jones kill them? Police believe that over the years, Dwight shared his experiences and escalating rage with Byron. Jones seemed increasingly paranoid. Once the killings began, Byron asked Dwight if he might be involved. For that question, Byron and Mary paid with their lives.
Police traced Dwight to a nearby hotel and banged on his door. No shots were fired, they said, until one was heard inside the room. Dwight Lamon Jones had killed himself.
Police and Phoenix residents sighed in relief. Many had thought a serial killer had been on the loose. In fact, there had been, except his victims were far from random.
But then the blame game began. The courts failed her family, Connie said at a press conference. She insisted Dwight’s visitation should been halted, even though the supervisors had told the court they should continue. She told reporters, “It seems to me that if someone is a danger to the child, why are we putting the rights of the parent over the safety of the child? That doesn’t make any sense to me. The court gave Dwight more chances than he deserved.”
But Connie’s attorney, targeted by Dwight, took a different approach. She said, “I think the blame, so to speak, lies with all of us and our representatives. I certainly understand where all my clients come from, including Connie here. I think under the circumstances however, I think the court system worked pretty well this time.”
In an op-ed piece in The Arizona Republic, the Hon. Janet Burton, presiding judge of the Maricopa County Superior Court, wrote there was nothing the court could have done to prevent Jones’s massacre.
Judge George Foster inherited the matter in 2013. After the killings, he said, “I could see there was tension between the husband and the wife, but it wasn’t on my radar that eight years later he would kill six people.”
William Brotherton, a former Superior Court judge noted the law makes it very hard for a court to permanently sever all parental ties with their children. He said even with a history of violence, a parent has a constitutional right to be in their children’s lives. He told The Arizona Republic, “This has been litigated all the way to the United States Supreme Court. So, the standard for taking away someone’s parenting time completely is quite high.”
And Tom Leavell, a Phoenix matrimonial attorney, told a reporter, “Here’s the thing about family law that makes it dangerous. It’s that you’re taking away people’s kids, you’re taking away their money and you’re saying things about them that nobody else needs to know.”
(Sources for this column came from various news outlets in the Phoenix area. Because this tragedy was repeatedly covered by local and national media, all names are real.)
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