Lisa Jones-Orock
Police in a small Pennsylvania town respond to an eyewitness report of a murder behind a grocery store and find that the victim is no stranger to law enforcement.
Season 25, Episode 06
Originally aired: April 14, 2019
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Transcript
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It was a childhood crush that waited 20 years to bloom.
She had wanted to be with Jerry since she was 15.
He always told me he loved her.
Until it comes to a sudden, brutal end.
He's been hit in the face repeatedly.
There was a fractured skull.
The investigation exposes a couple's cruelest impulses.
Lisa and Cherry's relationship was always very volatile.
But was it homicidal?
Or had his past finally caught up with him?
He was in trouble when he was younger.
She loved the man.
This was a person that promised to love you for the rest of your life.
He will get killed because of sex or money.
You're mad, you're sad, and just frustrated.
It was a horrible thing.
December 7th, 2014, Elwood City, Pennsylvania.
about 30 miles from Pittsburgh.
At 10.19 p.m., a patrol officer responds to a concerned residence call outside the Elwood City Police Department.
After hours, when the building's not open, there's a call box, you pick it up, and it dials automatically into the 911 center.
The man tells the officer he was out for a walk and just saw a man being beaten with a blunt object behind a grocery store.
He was walking beside and then past these people who were in this back parking lot.
He did not have his cell phone, so he walked to the Elwood police station.
After making the report, the witness heads home to retrieve his cell phone, and the patrol officer makes his way to the grocery store parking lot.
The officer drove down to the parking lot, but didn't see anything.
Now, there are a lot of dumpsters and other things back there that might have obscured the officer's view.
While the officer continues his search of the area, the witness drives back to the grocery store, expecting to find police at the scene and issue a formal statement about what he saw.
But what he discovers is far worse.
He found a man crumpled on the ground, bleeding, obviously seriously injured.
And he called 911, told him what he had found.
He was advised to do chest compressions, CPR on him, while paramedics and the police were dispatched to the scene.
First responders arrive to find the victim, a man in his 50s, near the supermarket loading dock.
When they check for a pulse, they find nothing.
Blood pulled around his head, serious swelling in the area of his right eye.
He was hit over the head severely, lost some blood, and cost him his life.
There was nothing more to be done for him.
As Lieutenant David Kingston and his fellow officers arrive on the scene, they brace themselves.
Finding a body is not something that's in the norm for the police officers.
My first 25 years, I didn't have any homicides.
When Lieutenant Kingston takes a closer look at the victim, he is taken aback.
When I walked up to him, I knew him immediately.
The victim is 57-year-old Jerry O'Rock,
a local barfly and a jack of all trades.
He lived on the outskirts of town.
We dealt with him for years over
minor stuff, alcohol-related or drug-related.
And when we saw the person there and the blood that was there, then we knew something terribly went wrong.
Born on June 5th, 1957 in Elwood City, Gerald O.
Rock Jr., who goes by Jerry, was the oldest of four siblings.
His parents were involved in their community.
He was my first son.
He was a lot of love there, and we got along great.
He had grown up with a family that was active together.
They raced motorcycles, they raced stock cars, they went camping.
Sounded like a nice childhood for him.
Jerry never outgrew his love of racing.
We'd drive out to Williams Grove and out in other areas and go to the races and he just loved them.
When Jerry wasn't speeding around the dirt track, he enjoyed knocking back beers at the local tavern and spending time in nature.
He loved animals.
He loved walking in the woods and being outside.
We used to have fires a lot and, you know, have a couple beers.
He He did an odd job.
He worked as a fervent agent for about 10 years.
He always helped out my dad in the wood business.
He was quite sarcastic,
had a sense of humor.
I thought he was hysterical.
Besides racing, the love of Jerry's life was his longtime girlfriend, Alice.
He had been with Alice forever, probably over 20 years, so that's all I ever knew was him and Alice being together.
By 2009, after all that time together, Jerry and Alice called it quits for reasons only they knew.
Almost immediately, Jerry reconnected with 35-year-old Lisa Jones, 17 years his junior.
They'd known each other since Lisa was 15.
Jerry would be the guy that got you the beer and the cigarettes when you were underage.
And Jerry would pop in and out of her life from time to time.
And she always said that Jerry was a good friend to her.
As a young girl, Lisa Jones was a firebrand.
Lisa was never one to put up with anything from anybody.
I remember a few times when a teacher would give her a bad time about something, and she would pop back with her opinion.
She just got too wild.
She just didn't
apply herself to school.
She dropped out at 18.
Not long afterwards, Lisa made a confession to her mother.
She came home and she told me that she was pregnant.
And I thought, well, I'm going to have a grandchild.
She was afraid, like any young woman would be.
Lisa's son, Zachary Christopher Jones, was born in 1992.
I was the first one to hold him.
They told her it was a girl and popped out a little boy.
It was a great time for me.
She was lucky because he didn't wake up at night.
He was a good baby.
Zach didn't know his father.
He was raised by his mother and his grandmother.
I think since Zach didn't have a dad in his life that he kind of held his mom very close and he was very protective over her.
While Lisa's mother, Lynn, helped raise Zach, Lisa did her best to keep food on the table.
She was working as a presser and she managed to rent herself a nice place.
Later, she found work as a bartender and waitress.
She was a hard worker and she got good tips.
Her work ethic, I think, was pretty strong.
She just seemed to have a knack to get people to be friendly to her, especially when she was tending bar.
Lisa was a woman who knew what she wanted and how to get it.
That's why when she heard Jerry O'Rock was single again, she didn't waste a second.
She had wanted to be with him, my my Uncle Jerry, since she was 15.
I think she chased after him.
And, you know, he felt good.
A younger woman wants me and things like that.
I got the impression that Lisa didn't feel whole unless she had a man in her life.
And Zach needed a father.
And despite their significant age difference, Lisa and Jerry did have a few things in common.
For starters, they both had a wild streak and had fought addiction issues in the past.
When they got together, she had just gotten out of a sober living house.
She was older, you know, and I think he wanted to settle down.
In May of 2010, just two weeks after they began dating, Lisa and Jerry surprised everyone by tying the knot.
This just came out of the blue.
She asked me to make her a crown like Daisy.
She wanted the forest gump type of a look for her wedding.
I could tell that my Uncle Jerry was happy with her.
He was just a different person.
Lisa said that no matter what happened in her life when she was having problems, Jerry seemed to understand her.
Only time would tell if this was a union destined to last.
She said she loved him and, you know, it made him feel good, and he was happy to get married to her.
Then, not long before Jerry and Lisa's fifth anniversary, came the nightmarish events of December 7th, 2014.
That night, 57-year-old Jerry O'Rock was found beaten to death behind a local supermarket.
As detectives examine the crime scene, they take a closer look at the condition of Jerry's body.
It was a beating death, a significant amount of blood, the implement that was being used to beat him, it was struck so powerfully that it cut his ear through.
While that unknown weapon isn't recovered at the scene, investigators do find other potential clues.
It's within five to ten feet.
A can cozy that had a can of beer in it.
There was spilled beer at the scene.
There was a plastic bag with several other beer cans there.
Nearby, investigators find what could be a crucial piece of evidence.
Bloody wooden splinters.
It's likely that it was part of the murder weapon that broke off during the course of the assault.
Coming up, the lone witness helps investigators piece together Jerry's final moments.
He went home, got his cell phone, and went back down there, which was unusual in itself, but he felt that it was going to escalate into something more than just a argument.
Police in the small town of Elwood City, Pennsylvania are investigating the murder of 57-year-old Gerald O'Rock Jr.
The body was laying in the parking lot loading area of the rear of the store.
While processing the scene, investigators discovered bloody splinters that are believed to be a part of the murder weapon.
They thought at least a portion of the murder weapon broke off in the course of
Jerry O'Rock being beaten with it.
Evidence techs collect the pieces.
while detectives interview the lone witness.
The man says the attack happened while he was taking his evening stroll just a block away.
He noticed a man and a woman appearing to face each other and speak.
He really couldn't get a good look.
By the way they were reacting to each other.
He felt that it was going to escalate into something more than just an argument.
The witness says it was then that the argument turned violent and the male was knocked to the ground.
Another person with an object that he described as a branch or a log came right up on him and stood over him.
The witness did not have his cell phone.
He walked to the Elwood police station and attempted to advise the police.
After the gentleman left, he went home, got his cell phone, and went back down there, which was
unusual in itself.
And that he actually is the first one to see the individual laying on the ground.
As to the identity of these individuals, unfortunately, the time of the attack does investigators no favors.
It was dark.
There was a lamp, but probably hard to see in the shadows.
He couldn't identify them by race or by age, other than by voices and sizes.
Police widen their search of the scene.
They soon discover there may be more than one witness to this murder.
I see a camera up on the back of the grocery store, and I thought we'd get hold of the store owner and see if we could get the video.
While investigators wait for the owner to arrive at the scene, they begin to focus on a motive.
Had Jerry O'Rock simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time?
Or had he been targeted?
Nothing at the scene suggests a motive for the fatal beating, though police rule out robbery.
He had his wallet with him, so we felt that there was no robbery involved.
Some strong feelings generated that use of force.
People get killed because of sex or money.
And those are the two things I would look to.
I don't want to make it out to be that Elwood City is a drug paradise, but there's the drug pipeline from Detroit into Elwood.
If he owed a drug dealer money, he may have sustained that type of beating.
The drug angle is plausible for Detective Kingston, considering Jerry O'Rock's history.
About 10 years prior, we had arrested him for selling drugs.
He was definitely a recreational marijuana user
ever since I known him.
Jerry would frequent the bars.
So there's three bars within immediate vicinity of the crime scene.
So we figured we'd start there to see if maybe Jerry came from one of the bars.
A canvas of the area yields no new information, and investigators find nothing that specifically points to a drug deal gone wrong.
Certainly not for a recreational pot smoker.
By now, the grocery store owner has arrived, and investigators are eager to get the security footage.
The camera was not functional.
It was just there as a deterrent and was not working.
Obviously, I was disappointed.
As the mystery deepens, the next task is a difficult one, notifying Jerry's next of kin, which includes his wife, 40-year-old Lisa Jones O'Rock.
When police are unable to find a current address for Lisa, their next step is to pay a visit to her mother's house.
It was early Sunday morning, and I peeked out and it was the police and he said that Jerry's dead.
I instantly assumed it was a drug overdose.
I didn't know.
They asked me if Lisa was with me.
I said no.
The mother explained that Lisa was staying with her friend David Cambio.
David Cambio went to high school with her and he's more Lisa's age.
The mother texted Lisa.
that the initial contact between the Pennsylvania State Police and Lisa was arranged.
Investigators set out to meet Lisa in the parking lot of a convenience store near David Cambio's house.
The state police were at that point handling the investigation, so we were just trying to provide where to look for everybody.
Another officer is tasked with notifying Jerry's family, but the O-Rocks have already learned about the murder in the worst possible way.
Can afford news came to the house,
and the first thing they said was, sorry about your son being
killed.
I said, but I never heard nothing.
You're the first person that told me.
I was really in shock then.
The day it happened that he was murdered, someone called me, and then it was all over the news and Facebook.
And I just remember, you know, dropping to the ground, like, oh my God.
After the officer sends the news crews away, he begins the process of interviewing Jerry's bereaved family.
There was nobody that I could ever dream about would kill him.
Nobody.
It shocked me.
Jerry's family strongly refutes the idea that he could have been murdered in a drug deal gone bad.
He was in jail in his younger years, in and out of prison, actually, for selling drugs.
And he did settle down.
He was in trouble when he was younger, but he paid his dues and he wasn't like that anymore.
He didn't do heavy drugs.
When asked about Jerry's relationship with his wife, Lisa, his family has a lot more to say.
Lisa and Jerry's relationship was always very volatile.
In fact, what had seemingly brought these two people together, sobriety and clean living, had been short-lived.
And they did a lot of drinking, I know that.
So that led to the problem.
They separated initially after about two weeks of marriage.
However, they were back together off and on after that.
It was a very tumultuous relationship.
He always told me he loved her.
He wanted to get along, but it was just impossible.
Jerry's family says after four and a half years of marital drama, he and Lisa decided to split.
He was trying to get a divorce from her.
She filed all the papers and everything.
And when it came down to get Jerry to sign the papers, he wouldn't sign them.
He would say he was done, but then sure enough, he would always go back.
She'd always call him, and he'd go back every time.
Coming up, the investigation takes a turn when a new person of interest surfaces.
There's a concern whether there was a romantic relationship.
We couldn't rule him out as being involved in it because she was at the house.
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Just hours into the investigation of Jerry O'Rock Jr.'s murder, detectives in Elwood City are getting a clearer picture of Jerry's relationship with his estranged wife, Lisa Jones O'Rock.
Family members say it's one that had become increasingly volatile.
When there were really bad fights and stuff, she would come to me, knowing that if Jerry showed up, I would call the police.
According to family and friends, alcohol abuse only fueled the couple's problems.
It had gotten so bad between Lisa and Jerry that they had filed protection from abuse orders against each other on several occasions.
A lot of those PFAs get dropped after the preliminary stage because the parties make up or get back together.
Friends and family say the most dramatic event occurred nine months earlier when Lisa was staying at a friend's house.
These friends also knew Jerry.
And
Jerry showed up not knowing Lisa was there.
Because of a protection order, Jerry was not allowed to be around Lisa.
Jerry allegedly refused to leave.
The fight started and it just escalated.
Jerry wouldn't let up and Lisa was probably getting her licks in too.
She got a box cutter.
He wasn't doing what she wanted him to do, so she attempted to castrate him.
State police investigators find the story made the local papers, but in the end, charges filed against both of them didn't go anywhere.
Officers would start the investigation, but either Jerry or Lisa or both of them would fail to appear at the time of the hearing.
So the charges were dismissed because neither of them wished to pursue them.
Still, it raises some red flags about Lisa.
Had she and Jerry been working to mend their relationship in recent weeks?
Or was Lisa on the warpath?
At around 3 a.m., investigators speak with Lisa in the parking lot of a local convenience store, not far from her friend David Cambio's home.
When he first told her that Jerry had been killed, she seemed to be emotional.
When he told her that it appeared that he had been beaten to death, she indicated that no one should die like that,
but that if anyone deserved it, it was him.
Detectives ask Lisa about the alleged box cutter incident.
According to Lisa, her estranged husband was both abusive and a liar.
She claims he made up the incident after she called police that night for violating the protective order.
She told me she was out on the sidewalk, sitting on the curb, talking to the 911 operator, and Jerry was in the house chopping up his pants with the box cutter.
So when the police got there, he said, she tried to castrate me, thinking that the police was going to throw her in jail for assault.
Lisa describes another incident where Jerry terrorized her mother and son with a prank phone call.
It was very, very early in the morning, and I was still in bed.
I picked it up, and it's Jerry, and it's this wicked, wicked lap.
I killed her.
I killed Lisa.
And then he hung up.
And I'm like, oh my God.
I jump out of bed and I went to Zach's room and he was awake.
He was doing something on the computer.
And I said, that was Jerry.
He said he killed your mother.
Do I believe it?
And he jumped out of bed and he said, call the police.
And we did.
We're all in the living room.
And Lisa shows up, very much alive and all beat up.
They were toxic for each other.
They would get physical with each other, not just one on the other, but it would happen both ways.
She was accused of attempting to cut off his penis with a boxcar, and he was accused of calling her parents and telling them that she was dead.
Those two incidents kind of moved the weirdness needle for me.
But is their volatile relationship enough to suspect Lisa is behind the murder?
She said she didn't have anything to do with it.
She indicated that she had been at the Cambio residence really all day.
Dave Cambio and Lisa were friends from as long as I can remember, from when they were in school.
They were always good friends, and they would party once in a while.
Lisa claims she and David had spent the afternoon watching a Steelers game and she stayed all night.
That would have been between three and four,
sometime after the end of the Steeler game.
They just lounged around the house until it was bedtime.
But she indicated that she did not leave the residence and there were no visitors that came there.
The lone witness had told investigators that he saw a man and a woman at the scene of the crime, which raises the question, had Jerry O'Rock's slaying been a crime of passion perpetrated by his estranged wife and a secret lover?
There's a concern whether there was a romantic relationship.
After all, Jerry and Lisa's doomed love affair had also blossomed after a long time friendship.
The state police were trying to decide who were the players in this.
Would it have been Lisa and Cambio?
We couldn't rule him out as being involved in it because she was at the house.
While police continue to question Lisa, another team of investigators converge on David Cambio's house.
We wanted to split him up to make sure that we could get two stories.
He was straightforward but cautious with them.
and by that I mean they wanted his cell phone number.
He didn't want to give it up initially.
When asked about his relationship with Lisa O'Rock, David's emphatic.
Mr.
Cambio and Lisa both denied that there was a romantic relationship.
So far, Lisa's alibi seems to be holding up.
Cambio said that they watched the football game.
But David isn't done talking.
He fell asleep shortly after the game.
and when he awoke at about 7 or 8 p.m.,
she was not there.
She said that they were at the house the whole night and Dave Cambio immediately discounted that whole statement.
He said that she had left.
She called him shortly after 10 p.m.
and asked him to pick her up at Pizza Joe's.
He did pick her up and she was standing there.
He was somewhat vague about it, but he did say that he believed Zach was with her.
Zach is Lisa's 22-year-old son.
And there's another detail about David Cambio's story that catches the investigators' attention.
Pizza Joe's becomes significant to us because that's a very short distance from the grocery store.
Approximately a thousand feet away from it.
Coming up, while detectives continue to sort through what is fact or fiction, they receive a tip that changes everything.
In that Facebook exchange, it wasn't something that I took a liking to, but he deserved it, and no one will ever tell me different.
Less than 24 hours after the murder of 57-year-old Jerry Lee O'Rock Jr., investigators have learned all about the victim's roller coaster relationship with his estranged wife, 40-year-old Lisa Jones O'Rock.
Now, whether he realizes it or not, Lisa O'Rock's friend, David Cambio, has given police an unexpected revelation.
She said she hadn't left the house.
And then Cambio immediately said that she wasn't there the whole night so that kind of blew that alibi theory.
The officer relays that information to his colleagues who are still interviewing Lisa.
The troopers talked to each other via cell phone to see where the discrepancies were in the story so they could be confronted about those discrepancies.
When she was confronted with Cambio's statements, she revised that and it almost became a new interview, because there were new facts being discussed.
Once you can get past the initial line, then you can start getting to the facts.
She then gave them a second story as to what happened, which was more in keeping with the story that Cambio had told the officers about the sequence of events.
For the first time, Lisa admits that she had left David Cambio's house on the night night of December 7th and that she met up with her son, Zachary Jones, at a local convenience store.
They spoke for a few moments and then they both walked away in different directions.
She indicated that she stopped in a small community park.
She stayed there perhaps an hour.
She drank from a pop bottle which she had put vodka in as she sat in that park.
Lisa says by then it was about 10.30 p.m., So she called David Cambio to come pick her up at the pizza parlor.
Detectives ask why she hadn't been truthful with them earlier.
She responds by saying, well, she had lied, but she was afraid to admit to that because she was the wife and she didn't want anyone to think she's the one who had killed him.
Investigators don't let her off the hook that easily.
They ask Lisa to accompany them to the state police barracks for a more conventional interview.
They began this second more formal interview by reviewing what was said.
Lisa remains adamant that she did not kill her husband.
While she's being interviewed, a phone call to the barracks changes everything.
They had had a call at the barracks from a young woman who represented that she had been a friend of Zach's from school, a former girlfriend.
She had contacted Zach via Facebook when she saw that there had been a death reported in Elwood City.
She said that she had been speaking to Zach Jones by Facebook Messenger and that he had told her that he was involved in that killing.
He confessed to her what had happened, what he did, and she called the police station.
The trooper delivers the woman's message to the investigator interviewing Lisa.
There was a lot of very careful questioning by the investigators and then he
offered to her that
they knew from Zach that he admitted to do the striking and she said no.
She denied that Zach would have said such a thing.
She didn't believe it unless she heard it from Zach's mouth himself.
Investigators ask the caller to email the Facebook confession so they can show it to Lisa.
They reviewed it with her so that she could see what Zach had put on.
And in those Facebook posts, he indicates that he had killed Jerry O'Rock that night and the trouble he was having coping with what had happened.
And Zach indicated in that Facebook exchange, it wasn't something that I took a liking to, but he deserved it, and no one will ever tell me different.
After reviewing those posts, Lisa really didn't offer much further explanation, merely stated, I did it.
I did it.
Zach didn't do it.
She pretty much confesses that she was involved in the killing.
But investigators suspect that's only part of the story.
And they question: could Lisa be lying to protect Zach?
She denied at first that he was even there, then revised that he was there, but he took no part in it.
The witness to the murder had told police that he saw a man and a woman at the scene.
At first, investigators suspected Lisa Jones O'Rock and her close friend, David Cambio.
With this new information, they revise that theory.
Dave Cambio is ruled out as a suspect.
After Lisa is placed under arrest, investigators shift their focus to her son, Zach Jones, who's unaware that police have a copy of his confession.
While troopers race to find Zach, Lisa gives her account of the murder to detectives.
According to Lisa, Jerry only got more possessive as their separation dragged on.
Things just
continually got worse, I believe, in the relationship.
Lisa says it didn't matter what she told Jerry, he kept coming back.
Jerry was always known as a hothead.
She went to so much effort to stay away from me.
Lisa claims that when she didn't respond to Jerry's repeated calls or texts, he zeroed in on her son, Zach.
There had been a text sent from O-Rock to Zach.
Lisa indicated that the text was threatening to Zach.
There was nothing that I recall in any of the texts that posed a direct threat, other than, I'm not going to stop.
I need to talk to Lisa.
She's my spouse.
Lisa says, after their history of abuse, Jerry's actions hit a nerve.
She did not want him involving her son.
Jerry just put Zachary in the middle of it.
And it was a horrible thing for Zach.
She read it and she snapped.
Coming up, Lisa admits she lost control, but did she really?
What kind of mother would ask their son to do something like that?
On December 8th, 2014, Lisa Jones O'Rock told Pennsylvania state police that after years of abuse and fear for her son's well-being, she knew she had to put a a stop to her estranged husband's behavior.
She snapped and she had enough and she couldn't take any more.
She told Mr.
O'Rock that she wanted to talk and maybe work things out, and he was anxious to do that.
Lisa admits that was all just a ruse to get Jerry to meet her.
I believe that was her plan, to lure him to this area and rough him up a little bit.
That night, Lisa met Jerry behind La Casano's grocery store.
She brought her son Zachary along for protection and a hidden weapon.
Lisa had carried a board or a portion of a board from furniture to the scene.
She had carried it under her jacket so it would be less noticeable.
When they all came together behind La Casano's, an argument started.
Lisa says it was that makeshift weapon that ended Jerry's life.
He met her behind the store and they beat him to death.
Lisa tries not to implicate Zach in the attack.
She was trying to take the
blame for most of it.
By now, investigators have brought Zach to the barracks for questioning.
Zach indicated that Lisa had carried a boar to the scene.
However, when they got to the scene and confronted Jerry, Zach indicated that she had actually passed it to him.
That puts this board into the hands of Zach.
Investigators know why Lisa harbored animosity towards Jerry, but why would Zach?
First and foremost was his mother's relationship with Jerry O'Rock.
Zach described for us that early on, they seemed to have a good relationship, but then both of them began to drink, and when that happened, it was volatile.
Zach tells investigators that he accompanied his mother to meet Jerry at the grocery store that night.
Zach says as the two were arguing, he snuck up on Jerry from behind.
Zach talks about using that to beat him,
as well as to kick him and punch him once he was down on the ground.
He said that he dropped the board and she hit him.
Zach's reasoning was that Jerry was violent towards his mother and had beat her up too many times.
Both Lisa and Zachary claim they never meant to kill Jerry.
They just wanted to teach him a lesson.
The situation escalated, one thing led to another, and before you know it, it turned into a homicide.
Anyone would understand that a son would want to protect his mother, and even though they didn't want to kill the perpetrator, they may certainly want to apply a beating.
Following their confessions, Zach and his mother, Lisa, are charged with Jerry O'Rock's death.
The autopsy report indicates that there was a fractured skull in the area of one of the ears.
So we know that there was tremendous force that was placed there.
They both went there with the intent to beat him with that implement.
Who hit first or who hit last?
Not as significant.
News of the arrests soon reaches the community.
We're not used to that kind of behavior in our city.
When something like this happens, the whole community is
in an uproar.
While Lisa's family and supporters stand by her, her, Jerry O'Rock's family doesn't buy Lisa and her son's version of events.
We just wanted to hurt him.
Why didn't he
get in a fist fight with him?
Why would he walk up behind him and hit him over the head?
To me, that's wanting to kill him.
As for Zachary Jones's part, they believe Jerry would still be alive if it weren't for his mother's manipulative actions.
Jerry was trying to get a divorce, but she wouldn't stay away from him.
She didn't want him anymore.
She just would not leave him alone.
Still, as the case marches closer to trial, authorities can't dispel the potential impact the couple's long history of domestic abuse might have on jurors.
You could
see why a jury may look at that and say that there was a reason for what happened and it just got taken too far.
In the end, authorities decide to offer Lisa and her son a plea deal, which they accept.
Lisa was sentenced to a period of incarceration of not less than four and a half years nor more than nine years on the charge of voluntary manslaughter.
When the sentencing came about, she told the judge, through tears, that it's her fault her husband's gone and she'll live with that for the rest of her life.
Zachary, who was not a direct victim of physical violence at the hands of Jerry O'Rock, receives a somewhat harsher sentence.
Zachary was sentenced to a period of incarceration of not less than six nor more than 12 years on the charge of voluntary manslaughter.
I don't think I've ever been pleased with the outcome of a homicide prosecution.
You're dealing with the death of a person in this situation a very brutal death.
She ruined three lives,
three families.
My daughter lost a brother, and she still broke up about it.
My younger son, he lost a brother.
I lost a son.
I'd like to end it with a message to anybody in an abusive relationship, especially if they're children.
It's not going to get better.
Leave.
Run and hide if you have to.
You're worth it.
Lisa Jones O'Rock was released from prison on November 25th, 2020.
Zachary Jones is currently incarcerated at Albion State Correctional Facility.
His prison sentence will be followed by a period of four years probation.
Abuse is never okay.
If you or someone you love is in an abusive relationship, there is help available.
Call the domestic violence hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE.
For more information on Snapped, go to oxygen.com.
It's all a light-hearted nightmare on our podcast, Morbid.
We're your hosts.
I'm Alina Urquhart, and I'm Ash Kelly.
And our show is part true crime, part spooky, and part comedy.
The stories we cover are well researched.
Of the 880 men who survived the attack, around 400 would eventually find their way to one another and merge into one larger group.
With a touch of humor.
Shout out to her.
Shout out to all my therapists out there.
There's been like eight of them.
A dash of sarcasm and just garnished a bit with a little bit of cursing.
That motherfucker is not real.
And if you're a weirdo like us and love to cozy up to a creepy tale of the paranormal, or you love to hop in the way back machine and dissect the details of some of history's most notorious crimes, you should tune in to our podcast, Morbid.
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