Love is a Killer

"Who gives a flying rat's ass about Montel Williams or the newspaper or the media or anybody like that? Because no one's gonna remember anything six months from today. I just want to get out of this circus," Jones says. "Because this circus is the most godawful thing that the media can do to a family."

Bill answers the phone and quickly hangs up. "What was that all about?" Linda asks. "Same old shit? Did the movie lady show up? I don't want anything to do with those people," she says.

Yet despite her feigned lack of interest, Linda Jones has, in fact, become a willing friend of the media. She and her family have appeared on Extra!, Hard Copy, and Inside Edition, and flew to New York to appear on In Person with Maureen O'Boyle. Although there are rumored to be three book contracts so far on the Mansfield murder story, Jones says her book will be the definitive piece--though by press time for this article, she hadn't found a publisher.

On a warm October evening, a few dozen friends and family members gather at Rose Park in Mansfield for a candlelight vigil that Linda Jones has organized in honor of Adrianne. She hopes to lay to rest her nine months of anguish over the murder of her daughter, whom she says brought so much light to the lives of others.

The mourners hold white candles in Styrofoam cups and hug one another and cry. A few friends step up to the microphone and speak about how much they miss their friend, through sobs and apologies for the tears. Linda Jones urges the crowd to participate in an upcoming walk for victims of crime, and asks that they sign their names to fabric squares that would someday be stitched into a victims' quilt.

A tall woman with a red dress and permed hair who never knew Adrianne has trouble with the portable sound system, and starts singing a song twice--a song supposedly written by a friend of Adrianne's, whom she didn't know, either. Then a creepy tape-recorded victims' rights song plays, sung by what sounds like a small, dying child, and the cascade of tears throughout the small crowd continues to flow.

As they carry on, a man standing alone at the back of the crowd weeps silently. Wearing a bright-yellow baseball cap with the letter "M" for Mansfield on the front, and a navy-blue Mansfield High School jersey in memory of the girl who loved to run and play soccer, he rocks back on the heels of his worn work boots and wipes tears from his eyes.

Meanwhile, every night, the lights still shine in his daughter's bedroom, and the window remains nailed shut.