Jones
A 46-year-old man who spent nearly 25 years in prison for murdering a 14-year-old girl at her Scott County home in January 1996 has been charged with confining a person without their consent.
Jeremy Nathan Jones of Lexington was arrested on a preliminary charge of criminal confinement by Crothersville police Saturday morning. He was booked into the Jackson County Jail in Brownstown at 7:01 a.m. Saturday and is being held without bond.
According to a news release from Crothersville Police Department Assistant Chief Jonathon Tabor, Jones’ arrest occurred during an investigation into a report from two juvenile females that a man had attempted to kidnap them early Saturday morning.
The females initially approached Crothersville Officer Mark Reynolds at about 2 a.m. Saturday and told him a man in an olive green Dodge Challenger had stopped them in the area of Armstrong Street and Marshall Drive.
The girls said the man had asked both of them to get into his car, Tabor said.
While talking with the man, the females decided if one of them did not get into the vehicle, the man would cause them physical harm, Tabor said.
One of the two females ultimately got into the vehicle with the male and then decided she wanted out and told the man, Tabor said.
The man, however, would not stop the vehicle, but the female was able to jump out of the vehicle while it was still moving and get away, Tabor said.
During the investigation, Reynolds was able to obtain a license plate number for the vehicle and requested assistance from the Scott County Sheriff’s Department to locate it, Tabor said.
The vehicle was then located at a residence in Scott County, and Jones was identified as a suspect.
After being questioned, Jones was arrested by Reynolds, who was assisted by officers with the Jackson County and Scott County sheriff’s departments. The incident remains under investigation, Tabor said.
On April 15, 1997, Jones was sentenced in Scott Circuit Court to 60 years in prison after being convicted of the murder of Lena Tennille Righthouse of Lexington.
Righthouse was found stabbed to death by her sister on the afternoon of Jan. 15, 1996, in the home they shared with their parents. The parents and sisters had all gone to work in the morning, police said at the time.
Investigators, who believed Righthouse had been murdered while getting ready for school, found a knife they believed her killer used. An autopsy later revealed she had been stabbed 16 times.
Jones, who had lived across the street from the Righthouses for several years, was arrested and charged with murder on Jan. 17, 1996.
Jones became a suspect in Righthouse’s murder after he went to Scott Memorial Hospital in Scottsburg on Jan. 15, 1996, with multiple lacerations to his body and was sent to a Louisville, Kentucky, hospital. He was arrested on a fugitive warrant two days later at University Hospital and then released to the Jefferson County Jail in Louisville pending an extradition hearing.
He spent nearly 25 years in prison before being released Jan. 17, 2022.