Arkansas captures convicted murderer who escaped prison detail

By Steve Barnes

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (Reuters) – A convicted murderer who escaped three days ago from an Arkansas prison work detail was captured on Thursday, corrections officials said.

Lloyd Jones, who is serving a life sentence for the killing of a 16-year-girl, was taken into custody in a farm field near the East Arkansas Regional Unit in Lee County, the facility near the Mississippi River where he had been imprisoned.

Jones, 40, pleaded guilty in 2012 to raping and killing the Arkansas teenager he had met through an internet website and burying her remains in a barrel on her family’s rural homestead in western Arkansas, near the Oklahoma border.

Jones’ capture “is a testament to the dedication of the ADC (Arkansas Department of Corrections) staff and our law enforcement partners involved in this search,” Wendy Kelley, the Arkansas prison director, said in a statement.

It is unclear how Jones managed to disappear on Monday from a construction project to which he and several other inmates were assigned.Prison officials said at least one armed guard was overseeing the detail.

Jones was allowed to work outside prison walls because of a clean disciplinary record, officials said.

(Reporting by Steve Barnes; Editing by Peter Cooney)