Harold Jones (11 January 1906 – 2 January 1971) was a British child murderer who killed two preadolescent girls in Monmouthshire, Wales, in 1921, when he was aged 15.
Jones was acquitted of the murder of his first victim, eight-year-old Freda Burnell, at Monmouthshire Assizes on 21 June 1921. Seventeen days later, he murdered an 11-year-old neighbour named Florence Little. Jones pleaded guilty to Little's murder and also confessed to having murdered Burnell at his second trial.
Owing to his being under 16 at the time he committed the murders, Jones escaped execution for his crimes; instead being sentenced to be detained at His Majesty's pleasure on 1 November 1921. He was released from prison in 1941, later marrying and fathering a child. Jones died of bone cancer in 1971 at the age of 64.
Early life
Harold Jones was born in the Welsh colliery town of Abertillery, Monmouthshire, in January 1906, the eldest of four children born into a poor family. His father, Phillip, worked as a coal miner and his mother was a housewife. Jones and his siblings attended a local council school where he was regarded as a popular and exemplary pupil, showing a particular flair for sports, and holding aspirations to become a professional boxer. He is also known to have spent much of his free time reading and to have occasionally played the organ at local church services.
Jones left school at age 14 to obtain employment—largely as a means of supplementing his family's income. He found employment at a local oil and seed merchant named Mortimer's Stores. Here, he was known to be a punctual and trustworthy employee who was both capable of managing the shop without help, and popular with customers.
Murders
Freda Burnell
On the afternoon of 5 February 1921, Freda Elsie Maud Burnell, aged eight, was reported missing by her parents. She had last been seen by her father, Frederick, at approximately 9 o'clock that morning, having been sent on an errand from her home at 9 Earl Street to purchase poultry spice and grit from Mortimer's Stores in nearby Somerset Street to feed the family livestock, with her father promising her a penny upon her return.
When Burnell had not returned home after an hour, her frantic parents began making inquiries, including at the store Freda had been sent to visit. The 15-year-old assistant at this store, Harold Jones, confirmed to Burnell's father (and later the police) that the child had visited the store at approximately 9:05 a.m. and that he had served her a bag of poultry spice, adding that she had also asked for a bag of poultry grit but he had informed her the store only had loose poultry grit. Burnell, he claimed, had left the store to ask her father whether loose poultry grit would suffice, and he had not seen her since. By 3:00 p.m., the Burnell family had informed police Freda was missing, and an exhaustive search for the child was launched.
The following morning, Burnell's body was found by a collier concealed in a sack in an alleyway just 300 yards from Mortimer's Stores. Her cause of death was certified as being a combination of blunt trauma to her head and strangulation evident via a cord still tied around her neck, with the time of death having been between 9:30 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. on the date of her disappearance. In addition, Burnell had been gagged, her elbows had been bound behind her back, and her ankles were knotted together. An attempt had also been made to rape the child. Traces of corn chaff were also found upon and around Burnell's body, and inside the sack in which she was discovered.
Investigators noted that a chicken run in the shed belonging to Jones's employers located just a few hundred yards from where Burnell's body had been discovered had corn chaff extensively scattered upon the ground, and a handkerchief known to have been in her possession at the time of her disappearance was also found on the ground in the shed. In addition, an axe handle determined to have caused the blunt trauma to the child's head was discovered concealed beneath some sacking inside the shed. Aside from his employers, Jones was the only individual in possession of a key to the shed, and investigators established a clear time frame of between 9:15 and 9:40 a.m. when no witnesses had physically seen him inside the store.