For 28 years the mystery of who killed former Columbia resident Betty Thrower Jones at her Starkville home lingered. It left family without closure and a community at unease about a killer in its midst.
But Starkville police now say they’ve solved the case with the help of DNA evidence. They charged Michael Wayne Devaughn, 52, of Rienzi Saturday with capital murder in the Labor Day 1990 killing of Jones, 65, and sexual battery of 81-year Kathryn Crigler, who was a friend of Jones and in the home with her.
Devaughn was in jail in Tishomingo County on meth charges at the time of his arrest for the murder Saturday.
Betty Thrower was a Starkville native, but she and her husband, Tinsley, moved to Columbia in 1961 and raised their children here, according to a story published in the C-P after her death. Betty was active in the Junior Auxiliary, Hilltop Garden Club and Columbia Presbyterian Church in the 1960s and 1970s. The family lived in the Goddard House on Broad Street where the family clinic is now before moving to Ridgewood Drive.
After her husband’s death in 1975, Betty moved in 1977 to Starkville, where both of her children were in college at Mississippi State and where her parents still lived. She remarried, and her second husband also preceded her in death.
She was killed on Sept. 3, 1990, when someone knocked on her door and immediately attacked her and killed her with a knife, according to a statement Sgt. Bill Lott, the lead detective who solved the case, gave during a press conference in Starkville Monday that was broadcast online.
Lott said the suspect then went into a room and raped Crigler, who had an amputated leg. She survived the attack and crawled into the kitchen, calling 911 on a rotary telephone. A rape kit taken the night of the attack at the hospital provided the DNA evidence used to implicate Devaughn, according to Lott. Crigler died several years later.
The detective declined to release details about the motive or why Devaughn was in Starkville, although he said they had that information and that it would come out at trial. He said he didn’t want to bias the jury pool.
“It’s been a long, long journey,” Lott said, growing emotional. “The science has allowed us to get where we are today.”
The suspect is being held on a $10 million bond on the capital murder charge and $1 million bond on the sexual battery charge.
Starkville Police Chief Frank Nichols commended Lott, saying the detective volunteered to look into the case on his own time after Nichols told him they didn’t have enough staff to work on the cold case. Nichols said they had tested more than 60 people for DNA.
He also talked about the legacy of the victims, saying “I haven’t met anybody whose lives they haven’t touched.”
Lott offered thanks for the answered prayers, saying it’s been rewarding to solve the case even though it has brought him a few gray hairs.
“I believe we’re going to see justice served, and it’s well overdue,” he said.
