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child in that distress, it's pretty devastating. >> dwight was arrested. and connie filed for divorce. often, that means the end of something. instead, it was just the beginning of the worst chapter in connie's relationship with dwight jones. coming up -- connie reaches out for help. >> i had people full-time on the school where the son goes. if connie went to work, there was somebody with her while she was working. but would even that be enough to protect her from dwight? >> he told me that he would wait until my defenses were down and then he would get me. >> when "dateline" continues.
welcome back. officials believed dwight jones had claimed two new victims. his occasional tennis partner and boyfriend had been gunned down in their suburban home. investigators were confident they had tied dwight to a total of six murders over a four-day ram page. this cases was hurtling toward the end with more twists to come. here's the conclusion of "unraveled." they followed him to an extended hotel where he had been living for nine years. they carefully and quietly started to evacuate the surrounding rooms and the rest
hard thing to come to grips with. >> reporter: six people gone, three of whom apparently had nothing at all to do with dwight jones. just in the wrong place, at the wrong time. like the paralegals, laura anderson and veleria sharp, both in their late 40s, both wives and mothers. neither had worked on the jones case. >> i've heard people say -- they mean well -- that god needed oorthsd another angel. i think that's a bunch of mularkey. if god needed another angel, i'm sure he could get one. he didn't need to come and take veleria, and take a mother, and take a wife to get one. >> and the therapist, marshal levine. >> if you'd been in your office and not marshall levine, i kinda doubt you'd be sitting here talking to me today. >> i -- i'm sure that's true. >> what's that like? >> that's hard to think about. i don't really know how to think about that, to be honest. >> reporter: the grief is still raw for natalie collins. >> you gonna change the way you live? >> i hope not. i don't think steve would want that. he was not about hiding in the shadows. i am not going to let him have died for nothing, and i will find a way to make him proud. >> reporter: no one can say for
ex-husband in court, but she and rick remained hyper-vigilant, especially about her son. >> you don't get to just say, let's go to the movies. you've got to scan the parking lot. >> in early june, when rick saw the news about the shootings of steve pitt and the two paralegals at elizabeth feldman's law firm. he came to an undeniable conclusion. >> i was certain who it was. it's dwight jones. >> his first thought was he had to find connie. >> i immediately start to text her to call me, start calling her phone, i'm getting no response. >> then rick heard about the murder in therapist karen kolbe's office. and he became more concerned. after a tense hour, connie called back. she was okay. rick's next call was to phoenix police. >> explained to him who i thought was responsible, what his vehicle description was, where he was at, and how the three crime scenes were linked. >> it was just the tip the cops needed. now they had to find dwight
they believed that sometime before he'd been placed under surveillance, dwight had contacted the residents of this home in fountain hills. they sent a maricopa county sheriff's deputy to check on them. >> they used a ladder. they got to see through an upstairs window and they immediately recognized that there was a gentleman inside that appeared to have been shot. they forced entry, and upon doing so, found another victim, a woman, who had also been shot, and both were deceased. >> my guts just absolutely dropped when i heard this news. >> scott wightman was the tennis coach of one of the victims, mary simmons. >> she competed like nobody else. everybody wanted to play with mary. >> and one of her occasional playing partners was dwight jones. police believe, that for reasons yet unknown, dwight murdered mary and her boyfriend, bryon thomas, in their home. remember that .22 police observed dwight tossing? police later learned it belonged to the fountain hills couple.
now, thanks to a tip from rick anglin, they were getting closer. >> i'm convinced that we're dealing with dwight jones at this point. >> rick recognized that all the crime scenes related back to dwight and connie's divorce and custody battles from nearly a decade earlier. plus, forensic analysis had already told police all four victims had probably been killed with the same weapon. and there was a critical piece of evidence that might link the weapon to dwight. that bit of dna on a shell casing recovered from the scene of steve pitt's murder. dna tests can take weeks or months. that was time police didn't have. >> we had some family members of mr. jones that were in northern arizona. with the help of the phoenix police department air unit we flew a detective up there. >> at the same time, other investigators were on the hunt for dwight. >> we had a vehicle description for mr. jones. it was a 2001 gold mercedes e320.
inside was a gun. >> however, that gun was a 22-caliber -- not a 40. >> that gun was not a match for any of the four homicides? >> it was not. >> meaning that if it's dwight jones, he still has that gun with him? >> right. and meaning they don't necessarily have enough yet to link dwight jones to these four murders. >> but there was still the dna. a detective who flew late sunday night to get dna samples from dwight's family now rushed those swabs back to the lab and -- >> within about four hours, we had a positive hit on mr. jones. >> we at "dateline" cover a lot of murders, some of which take years to solve. this case was not one of those. less than 84 hours after this homicidal rampage began, investigators were confident they had id'd their killer. >> we knew who was our suspect and murderer. >> at the same time the dna was being analyzed, detectives were retracing dwight's steps.
sure exactly what set off dwight jones. after the bloodshed was over, some videos surfaced that jones had posted before the murders. >> hello, youtube, welcome to my channel. >> reporter: in them, dwight raged against his wife and the professionals who worked on the custody case. >> you've ruled i have a psychiatric problem based on some piece of -- that she hired? >> reporter: the videos underscored some troubling questions. dwight jones was obviously disturbed, so why wasn't he stopped? did the legal system fail everyone? could six murders have been prevented? >> i do feel very strongly that the court system did not protect me. >> reporter: connie jones says her ex-husband was violent for years, but that courts ignored one red flag after another. >> my life wasn't valued. my son's life wasn't valued enough to stop him, which inadvertently harmed other
22 years married to a mentally ill and abusive husband. she was about to learn her personal ordeal might have led to a crisis for a whole city. >> i'll take you out to this [ bleep ] pool and drown you. >> back in 2009 after that frightening standoff with police at their home in scottsdale, arizona, dwight jones was arrested on multiple charges, but ultimately pleaded guilty to a single count of misdemeanor disorderly conduct. he was prohibited from owning a firearm during his probation, just 12 months. >> it's minimal. it's like being a disturbance in your neighborhood. it's not holding your child hostage for an hour. >> dwight was also committed to a mental institution for evaluation. connie remembers the report on dwight said he was not an imminent threat. >> but the psychiatrist that evaluated him called me and told me that he was dangerous. and that i should get a bodyguard.
undercover. later he became a private investigator. and when he heard about steve pitt's murder, his experience told him -- >> it had to be related to his work. >> anglin knew pitt worked on criminal cases, so the universe of suspects was vast. then he heard about the murders of the two paralegals in scottsdale. and suddenly, that universe shrank. >> once they announced on the news that it was elizabeth feldman's office, i was certain who it was. >> you knew? >> i knew. >> knew exactly how steve pitt and the feldman law firm were connected and who was behind the murders. rick knew because, years earlier, he'd taken on the case of a scottsdale doctor named connie jones. >> yes. i had my own terrorist, my own personal terrorist. >> connie was on summer break from college in 1984 when she started dating a young soldier named dwight jones.