There was a long, palpable silence after Judge Jeff Addison asked David Louis Jones, 25, how he wished to plead to the offense of continuous sexual abuse of a child under 14.
The quiet was broken by the court reporter who said, "I didn't hear anything."
"Guilty," Jones said.
Jones went on to utter the word "guilty" twice more as Addison formally questioned Jones about his plea to counts of sexual assault of a child.
District Attorney Jerry Rochelle, Assistant District Attorney Randle Smolarz and Assistant Public Defender Deborah Moore told Addison that all laws and rules concerning the exchange of and access to evidence had been followed. Rochelle submitted for the record a packet of the state's evidence against Jones, including a DVD of Jones' interview with law enforcement during which he confessed to molesting children.
Jones was first interviewed by an investigator with Nash police Feb. 23, 2020, according to a probable cause affidavit. Asked if he had inappropriately touched a 1-year-old girl born in May 2018, Jones allegedly wrote the word, "Yes," on a piece of paper.
Jones confessed to molesting the baby, to whom he is related, on repeated occasions when left alone with her from the time of the girl's birth. And in a phone interview the following month, Jones admitted to having sexual encounters for about a year with a 14-year-old girl multiple times over a months-long period beginning in the fall of 2019 and ending in January 2020.
"Jones stated that he knew what he was doing was wrong but couldn't comprehend how something that felt so good was wrong," the affidavit states.
Investigators found nude photos of the girl on Jones' phone as well as an audio file that demonstrated illegal sexual contact with the girl. Additionally, Jones confessed to having one inappropriate sexual encounter with a different teen girl in 2014 when he was 19 or 20 and she was 15.
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