The Associated Press State & Local Wire

October 24, 1998, Saturday, PM cycle

Psychiatrist sentenced to 53 years in prison for killing his wife

SECTION: State and Regional

LENGTH: 428 words

DATELINE: NORFOLK, Va.

A psychiatrist convicted of bludgeoning and suffocating his estranged wife has been sentenced to 53 years in prison for her death.
The jury that Thursday convicted Tobin Jones of first-degree murder in the death of Megan Jones took just over two hours Friday to reach a sentencing recommendation.
“Is there any good that can come out of this sad, horrible, senseless tragedy?” Jones asked Circuit Judge John C. Morrison Jr. prior to his sentencing. Jones then offered to be a subject for research into mental illness. He did not apologized to Mrs. Jones’ family.
Morrison then followed the jury’s recommended sentence. Jones could have been sentenced to life in prison. Defense attorney James O. Broccoletti said he would appeal the conviction and sentence.
Prosecutor Phil Evans had drawn a stark contrast between Tobin Jones, the successful psychiatrist, and the man who killed his wife.
“Tobin Jones had a lot of success in his life. He had a career. He had responsibilities. He was not destitute. He was not scratching to get by. But none of that was there when he killed his wife, just anger and brutality,” Evans told the jury. “… There’s no more personal betrayal than to kill someone in their own bedroom, someone whose ring you still wear.”
Jones, 38, was arrested May 18, 1996, when police found the decomposing body of his wife wrapped in sheets, a rug and a quilt and locked in a bedroom of a home the couple once shared.
Mrs. Jones, 43, was hit at least three times on the top of her head with a blunt object early on the morning of May 12, prosecutors said. Police began searching for her after being alerted by her family, who became concerned when she didn’t call her mother on Mother’s Day.
No murder weapon was ever found. The defense said prosecutors where never able to establish when or how the slaying occurred or a clear motive.
Prosecutors countered that circumstantial evidence and common sense pointed to only one possible suspect, Tobin Jones.
Tobin Jones has a history of mental illness dating back to 1986, and was expected to plead innocent by reason of insanity. Instead, he denied the killing and pleaded innocent.
An expert witness hired by the defense, forensic psychologist Evan Nelson, testified during the sentencing phase that Jones suffers from bi-polar illness and said symptoms he exhibited around the time of the killing were consistent with the manic phase of the disorder.
“You now know something you suspected throughout this trial,” Broccoletti told the jury in asking for compassion. “Tobin is ill.”