A look back: Vineland police try to solve 'Lost Boy' case: Where is Billy Jones?
The following story was originally published December 17, 2011. Today marks the 58th anniversary of Billy Jones' disappearance.
VINELAND - Forty-nine years ago today, William "Billy" Jones was bundled up in a blue snowsuit and playing in his family's Taylor Avenue front yard, just off Chestnut Avenue.
The 3-year-old had a fresh haircut and new puppy.
His mother, Evelyn Jones, watched Billy and his younger sister from the kitchen window while making lunch.
In the instant she was distracted, Billy was gone.
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It's a case that has puzzled police and haunted Billy's sister, Jill Jones, who remained in the yard that day and was found holding a plastic poinsettia.
The 2-year-old told her mom Billy gave her the flower and "the boogeyman took Billy," according to police reports.
Now a third generation of Vineland police investigators is focused on shifting the case's status from cold to closed. For the first time in decades, Jones, 51, feels hopeful about the investigation, willing to trust Detective Kristian Kirchner, who wasn't even born when Billy went missing.
Trust isn't given easily.
Over the years, Jones said, people posing as reporters or falsely claiming to be novelists have taken advantage of her family, exploiting the case's notoriety.
The family has had to change its phone number every few years.
"People call and say terrible things," Jones said during an interview with The Daily Journal at her home Friday morning.
Kirchner, along with his police colleagues Officer Bob DeMarchi and Lt. Matt Finley, reopened the case in 2009. They have the binder of the original reports the case's first responders pounded out on typewriters.
The disappearance of Billy Jones is the longest unsolved case of a missing child under 5 years old in the state, according to Vineland police detectives.
"You can see the impact it has on her. I think it has had a domino effect on generations of her family," Kirchner said. "As a police department, we owe it to them to get some kind of answers, if not, make our best effort."
As soon as Billy went missing, family and friends frantically searched the neighborhood. After more than an hour, a neighbor alerted police.
More than 500 people, some from as far away as Philadelphia, conducted a grand-scale search of land, water and air. Searchers included divers, bloodhounds and the New Jersey National Guard.
They dragged the river while pilots searched from above, noting great search conditions with the trees bare on a day so clear they could see the sandy bottom of the Maurice River, according to reports in the Vineland Times Journal.
Any Vineland High School student who wanted to help with the search was given the day off school. Mayor Henry "Bub" Garton issued a radio appeal. A reward fund was established for information in the case.
Police chased down each tip. Billy wandered in the woods. A flower vendor selling in the neighborhood snatched him.
Investigators dug up the grounds of the Palace of Depression, an abandoned Mill Road automobile dump transformed into a 1930s tourist attraction by the eclectic George Daynor, and went through the cars in a nearby junkyard, now the former U-Pull-It site on West Landis Avenue.
After three days with no evidence found, the search effort was suspended.
Eventually, the reward money was donated to the Tiny Tim Fund.
Both Billy's parents died.
Jones, who now lives in Franklin, said it is up to her to keep looking for Billy. She has never given up hope her brother is alive.
"I know he is," Jones said. "I've never felt like he's been dead."
Previous investigators consulted a psychic. When she was in her 20s, Jones agreed to be hypnotized to try to unlock memories of that day.
"It was a great feeling," Jones said, of being able to slip back in time. "I got to feel (Billy) again, he was holding my hand."
Today, Jones said, she will try not to dwell on Billy's disappearance. On her brother's March 5 birthday, she heads back to the Palace of Depression site, sensing it is somehow connected to the case. The palace is now being restored in an effort led by Kirchner's father, Kevin Kirchner.
Billy's disappearance is not classified as an abduction, Detective Kirchner said, leaving investigators to consider all possibilities. They are re-interviewing everyone they can, from original witnesses to retired officers to anyone who lived in the neighborhood.
"We're hoping they will help us find something," Finley said.
In addition to old-fashioned legwork, they are tapping new law enforcement resources.
In 2009, the case, filed away under "Lost Boy," was given an official case number and entered in the National Crime Information Center. Detectives forwarded DNA samples from the Jones family to the New Jersey State Police and the University of North Texas DNA laboratory.
They're also getting some help from the FBI behavioral science unit as well as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, who provided police with an age progression rendering of how Jones could look today.
Jones doesn't see her brother in that drawing, thinking he might have looked more like their father, William E. Jones.
Twice in her life, Jones believes, she may have crossed paths with Billy, recalling encounters with a man sharing her brother's striking blue eyes.
But both times, he was driving by while she was in a car.
"I wanted to get out the car and talk to him. People think you're nuts, so I didn't do it. He wouldn't know I'm his sister," she said. "I wanted to look at his arm."
She wanted to check for a vaccination scar, resembling a giraffe, like Billy's.
Jones does acknowledge the possibility Billy won't be found alive.
She is reminded of that when the police department number flashes on her Caller ID.
"My heart will stop for a second and I think, 'This is it,'" she said.
Closure now would be welcome.
If anyone has information about Billy's whereabouts, Jones urged, "Tell somebody."
She is not out for vengeance should a suspect be found.
"I wouldn't even want him locked up," she said. "That doesn't even faze me anymore, it's been too many years. Just tell Billy who the hell he is."
When Jones dreams of Billy, she said, he is still 3 years old.
"I have feeling and I dream it. I can't explain it. It's a brick wall," with her brother on the other side, she said. "I don't know how to knock out the pieces of the brick.
"It's his job, he knows how to do it," Jones said, nodding toward Detective Kirchner. "If I could do it, I would have done it a long time ago."
She stops and reflects.
"I just hope who ever took him treated him decent."
About Billy Jones:
At the time of his disappearance on Dec. 17, 1962, Billy Jones was a white, 3-year-old boy with, blondish/brown hair and blue eyes.
He was about 3 feet 6 inches tall and weighed 35 pounds.
He had a vaccination scar shaped like a giraffe on the back of his left arm, between his shoulder and elbow.
He did not have very good verbal skills.
He loved dogs.
He was last seen wearing a light blue/gray snowsuit with a navy blue collar with silver button and a matching hat. He wore tan high-top crepe soled shoes with yellow laces.
HOW TO HELP
Anyone with information about this case is urged to contact Detective Lt. Matt Finley at (856) 691-4111, ext. 4157 or confidentially email him at mfinley@vinelandcity.org.