A Louisiana daughter has accused the local sheriff’s office of not adequately investigating her mother’s death after her unclothed body was discovered in the woods by a medium last year.
Teresa Jones, mother of three and grandmother of seven, was reported missing on February 2, 2023.
Her eldest daughter, Ashley Deese, spent hours searching for her 56-year-old mother that day, and the Union Parish Sheriff’s Office and K9 unit spent even more time searching for Jones the next day. She was nowhere to be found.
Three days after she disappeared, Deas and her sister Brittany contacted a medium in Wisconsin. The medium has many followers thanks to his success in searching for missing persons. KNOE reported.
Deas said medium Carolyn Clapper spoke with the sisters on the phone for 45 minutes and gave them step-by-step detailed instructions on where to find their mother.
“There may be logs, but [Jones] He kept showing me this conspicuous log, a very large log in the woods. It wasn’t just a small twig or a stick, it was a log, it was a huge log, you hit this log is basically what she said, when you reach this log, my body There it is. There was water and I could see the stream,” Clapper told KNOE.
The next morning, Deas went into the woods near his mother’s house and found a large log.
“I feel like I was picturing what I heard on the phone last night. It was a landmark, a record. So I immediately felt sick and started shaking and feeling sick and vomiting. ” she said.
Jones was found face down and partially naked in Edmonds Creek. She was wearing only her top and no bottoms or underwear.
Deese called the sheriff, who began an investigation, but did not perform a rape test or file the woman’s fingernails for DNA evidence.
“So there’s a naked woman lying face down dead in a stream. She was wearing only a jacket, no underwear, she was naked. There was no rape kit, there was no nail filing. I’m concerned about that,” Dees said.
Union Parish Sheriff Dusty Gates confirmed in an interview with KNOE that neither test was performed on Jones’ body. He told the agency that he did not know whether his own office requested these tests, although it is possible that his office requested any of them.
The sheriff’s office reportedly told Deese that investigators felt there was no need to perform a rape kit or file fingernails because there were no signs of disturbance in the area where her mother’s body was found. That’s what it means. Investigators believe her body was naked from the waist down because the force of the water tore her buttocks apart.
“This is an assumption or a guess, and it may be a good guess, but still, if there are no clothes, shouldn’t we find the clothes, shouldn’t we prove it? Behind these ideas are There should be science,” Clapper said.
The medical examiner ruled Jones’ death an accident, although he also did not perform any tests. According to autopsy results, she died from drowning and methamphetamine intoxication contributed to her death.
Jones had a large amount of methamphetamine in his system at the time of his death, but his daughter said he had been sober for 20 years due to a cocaine addiction.
“It doesn’t match up and it doesn’t make sense. And if someone can figure it out, I’ll sit and listen,” Deas said.
According to the incident report, Deese told police that his mother had returned to methamphetamine and marijuana and was suffering from mental illness, but was “refusing to take the medication she was supposed to take.”
But Dees said he never said that.
“I also think that as soon as it became known that there were drugs involved, or even a history of drug use, I felt like abstinence didn’t matter. “I feel like I solved the problem in one step,” she said.
She also criticized the sheriff’s office for failing to speak with Mr. Clapper, who has helped provide information to other law enforcement agencies that have helped find missing people in the past. She said Ms. Clapper knew about her mother’s physical condition and the toxicology report before each came to light.
“Even if they don’t believe in psychic powers or are skeptical, they still follow the clues so they know I know too much about the case and couldn’t explain how I “Even though they will question me, they will know the details of the incident that I know, but it is their job to follow up,” the outlet said.
She and Dees repeatedly implored lawmakers to speak with Clapper.
“For months, I tried to contact them for months, and Ashley also tried for months to follow up with them, lending my name and contact information. Months went by, and now it’s been a year. It’s been almost half a year,” Clapper said.
Jones’ case was concluded in August 2023.
However, her daughter does not believe that her death was an accident.
“There is a suspicion of foul play. It hasn’t been proven otherwise. And I’m going to doubt it until proven otherwise,” Deaves said.
