Drahota couldn’t explain why he’d waited until two years after Chandler’s death to go to the authorities, but he did inquire about the recently posted reward. When Stricker pressed him for details he said his recollections were “foggy” because of his drug use. He did recall that Christy’s admission that he’d stabbed Linda Jensen came during a conversation the two of them had in a garage on Chandler’s property, but according to construction records the garage wasn’t built until long after the confession allegedly took place.
Meanwhile the quest for DNA was going well. “We even had people call and volunteer to give a sample,” says Doolittle. “They were very cooperative, with few exceptions.” One objection came from a car salesman named Kent Jones. He and his family had lived about half a mile from the Jensens in 1992, but they’d since moved to Becker, Minnesota. He was on the cold case team’s list in any case, but their interest was piqued by an incident that occurred during their investigation.
Jones’s wife called 911 to report a domestic, one of several such calls she’d made in the previous few years. When the police arrived they found her seriously injured with a knife wound. She and her husband claimed she’d fallen against an open dishwasher during a tussle, and impaled herself on a protruding blade. The officers were skeptical. They shared their doubts with the cold case team. “We looked at his file,” says Doolittle, “and saw that he’d met Linda Jensen through his work with the Cub Scouts. And about that time, it would have been June 2000, an old girlfriend of Jones’s called to tell us about a phone conversation she’d had with him around the time of the murder.” The woman claimed that Jones got angry and defensive when she mentioned the crime. “In retrospect that all sounds pretty damning,” Doolittle says, “but it really wasn’t much.” It was enough to make Doolittle go to the Jones home personally though, and what happened there aroused his suspicions further. “At first he denied knowing Linda Jensen, but his wife said, ‘No, no, remember when she brought her son here to get enrolled in the Cubs?’ and he admitted she’d been there. Then I asked him for DNA and he got very upset and refused. His wife kept saying, ‘Why don’t you just do it?’ but he wouldn’t.” Doolittle obtained a search warrant that allowed officers to take the sample. It matched, and on July 14, 2000, Jones was arrested for the murder of Linda Jensen.
“It was big day for us,” says Charlie Jensen. “It seemed like maybe we were coming to the end of it.” Jones couldn’t post bail, and as he sat in jail the investigators assembled little tidbits of fact about him that firmed up their belief in his guilt. They learned that Jones often referred to himself both in conversation and in letters as “The Sheik,” a self-conception that was at odds with his squat, doughy appearance. The frequent domestics that he’d been involved in suggested a short fuse. None of that was evidence, but it fit the hypothesis that investigators had always held about the murder. They theorized that Jones had gained entry to the Jensen home on the basis of some ploy, either a feigned interest in the truck that was for sale or something to do with the Cub Scouts. He’d tried to seduce Linda Jensen, she’d rejected his advances, and he’d become enraged and murdered her.
A few weeks after his arrest his cellmate contacted investigators and claimed Jones had told him he’d stabbed Linda Jensen to death. That was evidence. It was of dubious value, but would become one more obstacle for a defense that had little to offer but the claim, backed up by Jones’s wife, that he’d been home when the murder occurred. They tried to shoehorn Charlie Jensen’s early suspicions about Bob Beard and the investigation of Richard Christy into evidence but the judge ruled it out. The mail woman never testified about what she saw the day of the murder. “I think it was someone turning around in our drive,”says Charlie Jensen. “They may have been looking at a truck that I had for sale, but I don’t believe it had anything to do with Linda’s murder.” The worst blow for the defense came when their attempt to rule out the DNA evidence failed, leaving Jones to explain the proverbial smoking gun.
“People think the presence of DNA is the equivalent of a signed confession,” says Christine Funk, a Stillwater attorney who was called upon by Jones’s legal team for her expertise. “It’s not. Sperm in a vagina is evidence of sexual activity, but it can’t tell you the circumstances surrounding the act, or whether it was consensual.” That was the thread on which Jones’s fate hung at trial. He claimed he and Jensen were having an affair, and that they’d had intercourse the day before the murder. He also denied confessing to his cellmate, who’d earlier taken the stand and detailed Jones’s admissions. Later a juror would tell the public defenders that Jones sealed his own fate on the stand. They’d already seen a picture of a smiling, confident-looking and attractive Linda Jensen, taken not long before she was murdered. It made a vivid contrast to Jones, a 5’7”, 260 pound man whose attempts to portray himself as the Don Juan of the northern suburbs seemed ludicrous. It’s hard to know how much credence the jury gave Jones’s cellmate, but they clearly didn’t buy Jones’s story about having an affair with Linda Jensen. After two days of deliberation they found him guilty.
Joe, now 18, came back to Minnesota to stay just before the trial. Lisa, nine, suffered no permanent damage from the trauma of being present when her mother was killed. The two of them live upstairs in a south Minneapolis duplex with Charlie. Linda and Charlie’s son Andy lives downstairs with his two children. “It’s kind of weird without Linda, but we decided to all pull together and be a family,” says Charlie. “You always hear how a conviction gives closure, but you don’t know what a relief it is until it happens. Being able to put a face to the killer and knowing he’s locked up has really helped us put it aside, and go on with our lives. She’ll never be here for us, and we’re always going to miss her, but by God they got him.”
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