Missing woman had met with Salt Lake detectives
Jones, 50, met with Salt Lake domestic violence detectives Wednesday, concerned about threats made by her ex-boyfriend, said Salt Lake police detective Robert Eldard. Jones agreed to another meeting the next day, but never returned to the station, police said.
Jeff Jones, Deborah's son, believes his mother may have been taken against her will by her former live-in boyfriend, Michael Jerome Doyel. Jeff Jones said after his mother and Doyel broke up about two weeks ago, Doyel made several threatening phone calls. Some of the threats were violent in nature.
Police issued an endangered person alert Sunday for Jones. She was last seen Wednesday and was last heard from on Friday, when she phoned "a friend," Eldard said.
Monday, however, police said they weren't ready to jump to the conclusion a crime had been committed. Eldard declined to call 47-year-old Doyel a "person of interest" in the case. There was no evidence to suggest Jones didn't just leave on her own, he said.
Still, the detective said police were interested in talking to him.
While Eldard told a group of reporters gathered in front of Jones' house, near 2800 S. Glenmare (1575 East), Monday that investigators were unsure if a crime had taken place, several of the department's main detectives were inside. A Deseret News reporter was invited by Jeff Jones to speak to him in the back yard, but a short time later he was told by a sergeant to leave. The sergeant called the area a "crime scene."
By Monday afternoon, yellow crime tape was surrounding the Jones house. Eldard said that was because Doyel had lived with Jones for six months before moving out and detectives wanted to take precautions and get a search warrant before continuing the investigation in the house. Police executed that search warrant Monday evening, but did not find anything to further the investigation, Eldard said.
He cited the Jeremy Hauck case in Bountiful. Hauck is accused of killing his mother and stuffing her body in a freezer. The defense, however, argued in court that police conducted the search of Hauck's home illegally.
Although he wasn't ready to say there was criminal activity, Eldard said Jones' disappearance was considered suspicious because it was not like her to take off without telling anyone.
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