after paige vanished, police arrested lester ralph jones for her murder. but did they know the whole story now? oh, no, they certainly did not. they didn t know where or how paige was killed. it would have been nice to have that additional piece of evidence or additional puzzle piece to put into the jigsaw. reporter: help you tell the story, too. exactly. reporter: even telling the story is an important thing for a prosecutor to do. it s really the entire thing. i don t have to prove motive, for example, but i usually try to anyway because the jury wants to know, why did this person do this. reporter: tell us the story, what happened in your view? i think lester jones was obsessed with paige and she had not enjoyed her time with him and was putting him off. and i think that triggered something and that s why he got the tracfone and something went wrong.
your cars ready. both of them, obviously, are down here at the sheriff s office right now.th so are you with elaine right now? no. i m sorry? i don t think so. mr. jones, i m not following you. you asked me where i would bury a body. i m sorry. you asked me where i should bury a body. which came out of nowhere, which surprised us. because nobody had asked him where he buried the body? nobody had asked him about where he buried the body. we were calling him about his vehicle. and the day before, we never talked about burying the body. reporter: very, very strange. and most certainly interesting when they found out why jones seemed so out of it, he d just taken an overdose of sleeping pills, after leaving, for his wife, what appeared to be a hi suicide note. my dearest love, he wrote. i ve prayed all night and this morning. i ve asked for his forgiveness!
unimagined traits emerge. and sometimes a nightmarish story like the one lisa nance told us about lester ralph jones. i caught him, you know, watching me and stuff, you know? what do you mean? like, watching me where i was going and stuff like that. reporter: he tapped her phone, she said. he hid secret recording devices. like, if i d talked to any of my friends or anything like that and i didn t tell him, you know, he would already know that i had talked to whoever. reporter: it just wasn t working for lisa. she ended it. better sooner than later, she thought. and she moved on. but of course, it wasn t over. and one morning, as she was driving her new boyfriend to work, a car drew up beside her car, it was him, jones. he got up beside me and hit my car, which knocked me over into a ditch and then he pulled up and backed up really hard and rammed my car, and it caused the
hauled away. when it passed me i just it just left me with this horrible feeling.whi reporter: as she drove away something across the road caught her eye. it was a sign for bob scott rvs. lester jones had told me that he worked for bob scott rv.to and when i drove around, i saw car in the parking lot that was the same one that was in the driveway when i walked up to lester jones house. and i thought, oh, my god. reporter: right away carol went to the sheriff s office, told them all she knew about lester ralph jones. how much credence did you give that story, or did you? j we gave it a lot of credencee reporter: in fact, a week after paige disappeared, they brought jones in for questioning mr. jones, i appreciate you coming down, okay? sure. reporter: jones was once chief of a rural fire fowe. department, which is where his story gets strange. i know rob.
my mom said she asked him what was he doing. and he said, looking for your daughter. reporter: lester ralph jones was convicted of assault and kidnapping and served three years. but now he was out and remarried and the by the fall of 2007, a pile of circumstantial evidence connected him to paige birgfeld s disappearance. why didn t you just go arrest him? our job is to gather the facts and then present it to the district attorney s office and they make that determination. you wanna add cause he had to fight that battle constantly for years. oh, i think you hit it hit it right on. reporter: meaning they were ready to pick up jones, but d.a. hautzinger was not. why didn t you decide to pull the pin on lester ralph jones? i didn t have a body. and that was the defining absolutely, that was really i mean, there are lots of no body cases that go to trial. not a lot of no body cases where the victim has a double life and has been lying to her family and friends