Was Natalie Jones murdered? Mother suspects foul play as 27-year-old's body found 3 months after going missing
HEARD COUNTY, GEORGIA: Investigators have found no foul play so far in the death of a woman who went missing for three months. However, her mother isn't buying the preliminary investogations and believes her daughter may have been abducted. Elaine Gordon learned Tuesday night that the body of her daughter Natalie Jones, 27, had been found after she went missing three months ago. “I lost it, I really did," she told Channel 2. “I started screaming. I started hitting the mattress. I put a hole in the wall.”
Jones reportedly disappeared in July after attending a party in Alabama, later texting her friend saying she had made it home. However, she never did. Her body was found in a car Tuesday by a landowner who was clearing brush in a wooded area on Roosterville Road in Heard County, Franklin, Georgia.
Deputies later confirmed the car was registered in the name of Natalie, who disappeared from Heard County in July. The 27-year-old mother of two sons was last seen just after midnight July 5 leaving a party at a friend’s lake house in Jackson’s Gap, Alabama. Investigators do not believe there was an accident and say the car was driven to the location where it was found, the Heard County Sheriff’s Office said Wednesday.
“We found no reason for us to believe it was foul play,” Sheriff Ross Henry said, something that Jones's mother doesn't agree with.
Gordon says her daughter was embroiled in a custody battle and had received threats from other parties involved. She believes Jones was abducted and doesn't believe the car wasn't found when search parties had scoured the same area earlier. “I know we had 10 cars out and every one of them passed that spot where her car was found,” Gordon noted. The embattled mother said that if someone is responsible for her daughter's death, she wants them to pay. “There’s some evil people in this world today. A lot of demons that don’t care," she added.
Some neighbors reportedly agreed they hadn't seen the car there earlier, while others speculated if it was planted there. Sheriff Henry, however, brushed aside those statements as “90% fabricated.” “Everything that has been said, 90% is just stuff they have fabricated. The car has been there, probably from the day she went missing," the Sheriff told CBS 19. "There was speculation that the guy that was doing the clearing, said the car was not there yesterday morning and then he got back home yesterday evening the car was there, that’s not true at all."
“The car was clearly there. The vegetation that had grown up around the car. You can tell that weeds had grown through the wheels and the bumper, it’s clearly been there a long time," he explained.
According to Heard, the remains found inside the vehicle were “consistent with being there since July," the month Jones disappeared. “Whoever fabricated that the car was not there has made a lot of trouble,” Henry added, per The Newnan Times-Herald. “There were bushes grown up through the tires, through the bumper. The car has clearly been there for a long period of time.”
That said, the case is currently being looked at by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Meanwhile, the body has been sent for an autopsy and positive identification.
A GoFundMe campaign has been set up to assist the family in this time of need.