Florida woman visits boyfriend and finds serial predator, what she saw made her to turn her partner in to the cops

Lucas Sander Jones, a 19-year-old from Indialantic, Florida, faces a first-degree murder charge after police allege he killed and dismembered a man, stuffed his remains into bags and left them in a desolate field. This new charge comes after his girlfriend recanted her initial statement to police, providing what she called the “true timeline of events.”

On Friday, March 20, when Jones’s girlfriend drove to his home, she found an unsettling scene: black spray paint smeared across a hallway wall, blood on the floor and in the tile grout, and even blood stains on her boyfriend’s jeans. Per People Magazine, and according to her statement in the amended affidavit filed on April 1, Jones allegedly told her, “I killed somebody and cut him up.”

Jones’s girlfriend later told detectives that he murdered 28-year-old Colie Lee Daniel. She claimed Jones used a baseball bat for the killing and then a cleaver, a saw, and a knife to dismember Daniel’s body. Jones reportedly targeted Daniel “because he was a sex offender.” The affidavit indicates that Jones had even printed out a list of nearby sex offenders before the alleged murder, though his girlfriend didn’t know how he met Daniel.

“I killed somebody and cut him up”

Daniel was indeed a registered sex offender, convicted in 2018 of lewd or lascivious battery with a victim between 12 and 15 years of age. When Daniel didn’t come home on March 20, his parents used iPad’s “Find My iPhone” feature to track him to Jones’s address. However, Jones allegedly told them Daniel was inside but wouldn’t come to the door. 

Daniel’s parents refused to leave, so Jones actually called the police, but wouldn’t let them inside either. Officers returned to Jones’s home on Saturday, March 21, but found no sign of Daniel.

After the police left that day, Jones allegedly loaded two plastic totes and a suitcase into his girlfriend’s car. The two then drove to a desolate stretch of road in Palm Bay known as the “Compound,” where they reportedly left the totes and suitcases in different locations.

Daniel’s partial remains were eventually found on March 28, when police were called to the “Compound” regarding an abandoned suitcase surrounded by vultures. Inside the suitcase, officers also found an Amazon package addressed to Jones. Jones was initially charged with tampering with evidence, abuse of a dead human body, and improper disposal of human remains, and then released after posting a $7,500 bond on March 29.

The “true timeline of events” came to light on March 30. Jones’s girlfriend had initially told police that she saw Daniel lying on Jones’s bed on March 20, with Jones trying to wake him. She claimed that when she returned, Daniel was gone, with Jones telling her he left through the back door. However, she later met with detectives and recanted this entire statement.

In her second statement, she told detectives that when she returned home on March 20, Jones had warned her not to say anything to the police. She clarified that she never saw Daniel at all, because he had already been killed and dismembered. Beyond confessing that Jones admitted to the killing, she also provided details about evidence law enforcement hadn’t yet uncovered, including how Jones allegedly saved some of Daniel’s blood to put on microscope slides. 

On Wednesday, April 1, Jones was arrested again, this time on the more serious charge of first-degree murder. However, he isn’t the first person to kill a sexual predator. A man like California hunted one down for fun, echoing Jones. However, one father did so to protect his daughter.