Melted chocolate mint ice cream on the counter was the first sign that something was wrong.
Tony Haro arrived home on a cool October evening in 1988 and found a note from his wife, Lois Anne Haro, saying she would be in Pasadena around 7 p.m. the next day to buy gifts for the birth of a friend’s baby. Had left for the plaza. The note instructed her husband not to put the ice cream back in the fridge; She was just about to get back to making ice cream pie.
But the tub had completely melted. it was 9 o’clock at night
Then the nightmare began.
Undated handout photo of Lois Anne Haro, who was kidnapped, raped and murdered in 1988.
(Courtesy of Tony Haro)
The melted ice cream was the first in a flood of painful memories that came to Tony’s mind recently as he sat in the front row of the courtroom gallery for the Los Angeles Superior Court retrial of Ronald Anthony Jones, among those There was one who was convicted. Kidnapping, raping and murdering his wife about 36 years ago.
Jones and his co-conspirator, Marvin Trone, kidnapped Lois from the mall, then drove her around Pasadena, repeatedly sexually assaulted her in his car before driving her to a secluded area near the freeway and hitting her in the head. He was shot once and killed.
According to trial testimony, Jones was arrested the next day after being seen driving Lois’s car. Prosecutors said a bullet of the same caliber as Lois was found in his jacket pocket and that he had gunpowder on his hands. Lois had credit cards, pocketbooks and wallets at her house. His semen was found on his clothes at the scene.
Undated handout image of Tony and Lois Anne Haro.
(Courtesy of Tony Haro)
For more than three decades, Jones sat in prison for the crimes. He challenged his sentence in state courts, but his appeal was rejected. But in 2021, his murder conviction was overturned by a federal judge who found that the 1991 trial was “incurably tainted by race-based discrimination” due to the prosecution’s exclusion of black jurors.
The prosecution was able to get rid of 12 jurors without explanation. It used four of them to rule out the only eligible black jurors.
Jones’ lawsuit came as race relations in Los Angeles were reaching boiling point. Jones and his co-conspirators were black, and their victim, Lois, was white. Jones’ trial began just weeks after the video of the Rodney King beating was released. One of the black jurors pulled from the pool by the prosecution even said that he had a stepson who was in the car with King before his beating.
Thirty years after his conviction, Jones’ case was reopened. But even his current defense attorney acknowledged that Jones was not innocent.
Jones, now 54, does not deny much of what he has been accused of. He admits to participating in the kidnapping, rape and murder of Haro.
“Mr. Jones takes responsibility for every terrible, inhumane thing he did as a foolish 19-year-old in 1988,” Jones’ attorney Ilya Alexeyev said in his closing arguments to jurors Thursday.
But what he doesn’t admit is pulling the trigger.
That small but crucial detail was at the center of a two-week trial that led to his conviction and death sentence in 1991. Jones disputed that he was the triggerman that night, and denied that he intended to kill Haro during the kidnapping.
“They don’t really have a case. They have no evidence that Mr. Jones was the person who murdered Ms. Haro,” Alexeyev told jurors.
Jones was asking the jury to find that he was not the triggerman – one of the special circumstances charges brought against him. If the jury agrees, his sentence could be reduced from the death penalty to 25 years to life in prison.
“It is a rarely seen, but sometimes highly persuasive tactic for the defendant to admit almost all blame,” said Josh Ritter, a defense attorney in Los Angeles who is not involved in the case. Are. “The hope is that pleading guilty will add some credibility among jurors, and they will essentially believe the defense theory that even though he admits to criminal guilt, it’s not as much as the prosecution is alleging. “
Ritter noted that the difference Jones’ attorneys were trying to make for the jury could have resulted in a significantly different sentence. If Jones is not convicted under special circumstances for being the triggerman, he may be eligible for parole. If special circumstances are found true, he could get life without parole.
“From a defensive point of view, they are playing with house money to an extent. He has served so much time. He’s just looking for a chance to see the outside of prison one day,” Ritter said.
Prosecutors said they had evidence that Jones was the shooter.
Initially, Jones denied being the shooter and claimed he was holding the gun for his partner, the real shooter, Trone. He also said that the gunpowder found on his hands could have been from a BB gun.
But in a later interview with police, Jones said he was the gunman, prosecutors said. His attorney told jurors during closing arguments that the admission was a lie.
“Mr. Jones was simply telling them what they wanted to hear,” Alexeyev said. “The prosecution did not rule out Trone as the killer.”
Jurors began deliberations on Thursday, and on Monday, they returned with a verdict: guilty of first-degree murder with four special circumstances, including the aggravation of the principal being armed with a gun. But it could not agree on whether he was the one who shot Lois Haro, unlike his first trial, when he was found to be the shooter and sentenced to death. Prosecutors announced that instead, he would face a mandatory sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
this is it Tron received the same punishment in 1992 After being found guilty of murder, robbery and sexual assault under special circumstances.
“Finally Lois Haro and her family got justice. This verdict is an important step toward closing a case that has taken a toll on their loved ones and the hearts of our community for more than three decades,” said Atty George Gascón.
For his part, Tony Haro just wanted to go home.
Tony Haro, whose wife Lois Anne Haro was murdered after being kidnapped from a Pasadena mall in 1988.
(Ringo Chiu/For The Times)
He lives in Grants Pass, Ore., where he works as a therapist, focusing on trauma and grief. He and Lois did not have children together, and Haro has now remarried and has two adult daughters.
“Lois’s murder turned my life upside down. The trials of Jones and Trone in the 1990s were extremely harrowing. It was devastating. It was difficult to work,” he said as he waited for the verdict.
Jones’ retrial was different, but it still exposed all his old pain.
“I know that trauma lives in your body; My body just remembers everything. So when I’m there and the rest of the family is there, we all get excited. It’s just a recap of what happened,” he said.
When the jury found Jones guilty of first-degree murder, Jones’ family members visited him in court and apologized for the loss of Lois and having to endure another trial, Haro said.
“I’m very relieved,” he said, “and hope I never have to go through this again in my lifetime.”
