INDEPTH: HOLLY JONES
An interview with the parents of Holly Jones
Reporter: Heather Hiscox, from The National, December 19 and Canada Now, December 19-23, 2003
Holly's parents |
To lose a child to a violent death is an unimaginable horror, but it's a horror Maria Jones and George Stonehouse are living through. Last May, their daughter Holly Jones disappeared from her Toronto neighbourhood. She would never return. Theirs is a heartbreak that will never really heal. The agony of losing a child is enough to break any parent.
In their first full-length interview, Holly's parents spoke with Heather Hiscox in December, 2003. This is an edited and abridged transcript of the original interview with Heather's introduction.
HEATHER HISCOX:
It was early in the evening, May 12th, the day after Mother's Day. A grinning, spirited 10-year-old girl told her parents she was going to walk a friend home. It was just a matter of blocks, and Holly Jones knew the route well. She took it to school every day. But that night she never returned, and as the hours ticked by, worry turned to fear, then panic for her parents.
The real agony began just hours later after two bags washed up at Ward's Island on the Toronto waterfront. Inside were Holly's remains. She had been sexually assaulted, murdered, dismembered. What followed was one of the largest manhunts in Toronto history. Six weeks after the murder, police made an arrest.
JULIAN FANTINO (TORONTO POLICE CHIEF):
After 40 days of relentless, traditional, methodical police work, members of the task force arrested Michael Briere.
HEATHER HISCOX:
That was a good day for George and Maria, but there have been precious few of those since Holly's death. For Maria, peace comes in this backyard shrine, Holly's garden where she sat day after day amid stone angels and flowers now dormant. And when it got too cold to sit with them, she brought them in with her.
MARIA JONES (HOLLY JONES'S MOTHER):
Everything has been given to us by other people, donated to us: angels, fountain, plants, flowers. They cannot survive outside in the back yard throughout the whole winter so, we thought what better to do than bring them in. I absolutely love it in here. I've got my fountain, all the angels and I continue to be closer to Holly, day after day, with this.
HEATHER HISCOX:
What did this room and this house look like at this time of the year last year?
MARIA JONES:
I don't know if I can go there. Of course, Christmas was a very special time of year for our whole family, and our children were very, very happy, which made us happy just to see that we can do that for them. We would as a family have the biggest tree that we could fit in our room. It would go right to the ceiling. Children would take turns every year to put the angel on top of the tree. I think Holly did it last year.
GEORGE STONEHOUSE (HOLLY JONES'S FATHER):
Holly did the front yard Christmas tree and the living room Christmas tree.
HEATHER HISCOX:
What was Holly like at Christmas?
GEORGE STONEHOUSE:
She was a 10-year-old. She loved Christmas. She was the first one awake. The living room was a mess by the time we were finished. It was beautiful.
MARIA JONES:
But we've decided that we're not celebrating Christmas this year, and we have all of Holly's angels in place of Christmas decorations.
HEATHER HISCOX:
Do you remember what she gave you, or made for you last Christmas?
GEORGE STONEHOUSE:
I don’t want to remember those right now.
Maria and Holly |
MARIA JONES:
We saved everything, though. I remember what she gave me for Mother’s Day.
HEATHER HISCOX:
What was that?
MARIA JONES:
I remember very clearly what she gave me for Mother’s Day. Because, we went to my mum’s for Mother’s Day. She had asked a girlfriend of mine to hold my Mother’s Day present, who had joined us at my mother’s house but she had left early and forgot to take the Mother’s Day gift out.
The next day, which was Monday, our friend had dropped off the gift and it was very beautifully wrapped with a beautiful card. But I wouldn't open it because she was at school. So then after school that day she came home with her friend. And I thought well, I don't want to open it with her friend here, I’d rather do it in a more of a private moment. So I’ll wait until her friend goes home. So when she walked her friend home, it was on our kitchen counter, waiting so that when she gets back we’ll open the gift. And I never did get to open the gift.
HEATHER HISCOX:
And have you opened the gift since?
MARIA JONES:
Yes, I’ve opened the gift, I’ve got a keychain that says Happy Mother’s Day on one side and on the other side it says I Love You. But the most precious thing is the little card she made me. And the card was beautiful. How much she loved me, she just kept repeating it, I love you, I love you, I love you. And don’t let that fade away. I love you so much. Roses are red, violets are blue, but most of all, I love you.
HEATHER HISCOX:
What is your favourite image of Holly?
MARIA JONES:
I have to say the one that sticks in my head is her coming home from school. There has never been a day that she's come home from school in any kind of sad or mad emotion. She's always so happy, happy, happy, happy.
HEATHER HISCOX:
What is your picture, or how do you choose to imagine where she is now?
GEORGE STONEHOUSE:
She's everywhere. She's the birds in the morning when I come out on the deck. She is our cat sometimes. She's everywhere. You know, you have to try to grasp whatever you can, obviously. You don't have her physically anymore, but you can imagine where she could be, if she is truly an angel, she could be anywhere, correct? I don't know. That's my feelings and that's what I grab hold of and that's all I can hang on to.
HEATHER HISCOX:
Has there been a moment in the last seven months when you have been happy?
MARIA JONES:
When we have been happy? We've had our on-the-outside happiness, but we have never had a complete happiness. There's never been a moment where we were completely happy and I don't expect we ever will be. There's always going to be that absence, that emptiness inside of us that will never be filled.
GEORGE STONEHOUSE:
No.
MARIA JONES:
There's nobody or nothing that can ever fill that emptiness that we have.
GEORGE STONEHOUSE:
It's like a broken heart and it's never going to heal. It's truly broken, truly. It hurts physically.
HEATHER HISCOX:
What are the times when it hurts more, Maria?
MARIA JONES:
When we're alone. I think about the time 3:30, 4 o'clock, when she should be coming home from school. I think about the time at 6:30 when she was supposed to meet me that day.
George and Holly |
GEORGE STONEHOUSE:
Yes, 3:30, quarter to 4, I don't look out front because I see the rest of the kids if I do, and that's brutal.
HEATHER HISCOX:
What happens when you do?
GEORGE STONEHOUSE:
I can't look at other kids. I look away. It's just an automatic reaction. I just can't do it. I took some kids to an amusement park in Montreal, and I was in line, and I thought, oh my God, this little girl ahead of me had the same hair as Holly, same – and I just – I just – you know, what are you supposed to think? What are you supposed to do? You study the face, you're looking at faces everywhere. So I don't think I'll be going back to an amusement park. I know that doesn't work, and I love kids. I just love to be – I used to love to be around kids.
HEATHER HISCOX:
Maria, you said at a ceremony that honoured Holly back in June, you said something to the crowd at that time that I wrote down: "I always wondered how I'm going to wake up in the morning and get through the day." And I'm wondering how you have managed to do that since.
MARIA JONES:
Well, you have to get up, you have to. It's worse lying there. The more I lie there, the more I'm going to cry. The more I think about what happened to Holly, the harder it is. As soon as I get out of bed and I get my mind a little busy, move a bit, then it's easier to deal with.
HEATHER HISCOX:
What helps? We haven't heard you talk so much, George, in the past seven months, so I don't know what has helped you the most.
GEORGE STONEHOUSE:
Getting out of bed. If I stay in bed, the visuals are just brutal. Because of what we truly know. So you have to get out of bed. There are many nights that I will wake up at 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning, and I don't go back to bed because I know I will lie there and think and think too much. So you've got to get out of bed. You've got to go and just do something. Go in your backyard and light a fire, take your mind off things. You have to stay busy.
MARIA JONES:
You know, I've had this question asked to me over and over and over, how do you function? How do you function? And I just really want the people to know that if this didn't happen to me, if it happened to someone else, I would be asking the same question because I have asked that question in past tragedies. I would look at the parents on TV and I would say to myself and to my family, I couldn't even imagine. If anything like that ever happened to one of my kids, I would never function. I wouldn't get up in the morning, I wouldn't be able to be a mother. I wouldn't function at all. I would actually have to be put away. I really truly believed if anything like that happened to one of my kids, that I would be hospitalized. I would not be able to function at all during the day.
GEORGE STONEHOUSE:
You have to go on. We have other children. If we just curled up and didn't get out of bed, they would do the same. You have to do it for them, if anybody, and for each other.
HEATHER HISCOX:
Can we spend a little bit of time talking about May the 12th and 13th because the first time we saw you on the morning of May 13th, you appeared with police before television cameras, and you spoke directly to the person you thought had taken Holly and asked them not to hurt her and asked them to bring her home safely.
MARIA JONES:
Right.
HEATHER HISCOX:
At that point, in your hearts, what did you think had happened to her?
MARIA JONES:
I didn't know, but...
GEORGE STONEHOUSE:
What are you supposed to think? You know, who would possibly take a child and for what reason?
MARIA JONES:
I knew it was bad. I knew something was bad. I knew it was bad the day before when she went missing, but for her to be gone all night, I knew something very, very bad, so I was just so hoping that whoever took her... would not kill her, even if they just threw her on the street, at least she was alive so that we could get her back. That was our biggest fear, that we're going to find out... Anyways, when we did find out what happened to Holly, it was worse than I even thought.
HEATHER HISCOX:
And when the police came to that door again to tell you that they had arrested someone in the case, what was your reaction?
MARIA JONES:
We got a phone call.
HEATHER HISCOX:
You got a phone call?
MARIA JONES:
We didn't know on the phone call, but we knew they were coming over and something was up because the phone call was at 6 in the morning.
GEORGE STONEHOUSE:
It was a huge relief because everybody in my eyes was guilty. I didn't know who. How could you know? How could you possibly think that from that corner to this corner that could have happened? Everybody was guilty, and that was very difficult because it lasted a long time, a number of weeks.
HEATHER HISCOX:
How do you think the police handled your case?
MARIA JONES:
Excellent.
GEORGE STONEHOUSE:
Amazing. They pulled out all the stops.
MARIA JONES:
They're true professionals, they are, and they put more than just their job into it. They put their heart and soul into their job.
GEORGE STONEHOUSE:
Yeah.
MARIA JONES:
They put their own time.
GEORGE STONEHOUSE:
You just hit something there because there’s a woman up the street, Pat Hood. Pat Hood has decided she’s representing my family. And Holly’s Law. I don’t support it. I have my own version. And I told her this. Is this Holly’s cause or her cause? I really don’t know. But she needs to step back, and stop talking, using Holly. Holly’s ours. Not hers. She’s our child. And what I want is what I want. It's not what she wants. I don’t understand it. She won’t listen to us. She won’t back down. She criticizes us. I don't get it.
HEATHER HISCOX:
George, what is the Holly’s Law that you want put forward?
GEORGE STONEHOUSE:
If a convicted pedophile has to be DNA’d under what we’re proposing, he’ll think twice about doing it again. Because he knows they have all the information they need from him. I think that would certainly stop -- even if it’s just for one child -- stop them from doing it again. DNA’s been taken, you’re a marked man. And you put yourself there. Nobody else.
HEATHER HISCOX:
Have you been back to Ward’s Island?
GEORGE STONEHOUSE:
No. They’ve been here though. They’ve given us the flag.
MARIA JONES:
The island flag.
HEATHER HISCOX:
The people who live on the island?
GEORGE STONEHOUSE:
Yes.
HEATHER HISCOX:
Ward’s Island, for people who don’t necessarily know, is where Holly’s remains were found. And it was a place that was special to you as a family.
GEORGE STONEHOUSE:
We used to go to Centre Island every summer. We would take Holly for her birthday and possibly for just a day out. And we would start at Centre Island, we would start there, going across on the boat and then we would gradually make it to Centreville and then we would spend the entire day there. But then instead of just going back to the boat, we would go for the long walk along the boardwalk.
HEATHER HISCOX:
And that’s exactly where her remains were found.
GEORGE STONEHOUSE:
Uh hum. I will go there one day.
MARIA JONES:
I don’t know.
GEORGE STONEHOUSE:
I will. Sure.
HEATHER HISCOX:
What will you do there, do you think?
GEORGE STONEHOUSE:
Just spend a nice peaceful moment. And say thank you to Holly because she knew where she was going. She knew she needed to be found in order for this person to be caught. She knew she needed to be found in order to give closure to our lives. Our messed up, screwed up lives right today now. Because if she’d sank, we’d never know what happened to her. So that’s important for me to go there and spend some time. And I might go there every year. I don’t know. It’s a little too soon. And hopefully I can talk Maria into going with me.
HEATHER HISCOX:
What should we learn from what happened to your daughter?
MARIA JONES:
Many people have said this to me, that they’ve taken their relationship with their child for granted. Now they make a point of the ‘I love you’s.’ The kissing and the hugging. And the goodnights.
GEORGE STONEHOUSE:
Keep an eye on your kids. Keep a better eye on your children. I didn’t. Hopefully then people will, now, spend just a little bit more time watching, wondering what their children are doing, you know. People take a lot of things for granted, unfortunately. I did.
MARIA JONES:
Something like this to me is one in a million, to have something like this living in your area, nobody would ever know. I think 99.9 percent of the time, your area is pretty safe for your child, at 6:30 in the evening, nice and light outside, to be coming home from just down the street from where you live. It should be safe.
That particular day, I was doing up her buttons, the buttons of her sweater, she insisted that she wanted to walk this little girl home. I was a little bothered by it. I was definitely very uncomfortable about it, and I thought when she gets back, I'm going to have a little talk with her not to make any arrangements to walk any kids home. But she never did come back, so it was too late.
HEATHER HISCOX:
It's just that no one would ever, from watching or observing or knowing what happened, would ever hold loving parents responsible for something like that. That must help.
GEORGE STONEHOUSE:
No one was ever supposed to do this either, right?
HEATHER HISCOX:
Is it a bit easier now, seven months down the line?
MARIA JONES:
No, absolutely not. It's not easier in any way. I think I was extremely numb. I'm not anymore. I feel more now. It's become harder. I think more. I'm seeing more horror in my head.
GEORGE STONEHOUSE:
Life sucks still.
MARIA JONES:
I'm feeling it more.
GEORGE STONEHOUSE:
And it will tomorrow.
MARIA JONES:
I feel the absence. Now that it's cold outside, I'm inside all the time. I feel the emptiness and absence in this home. I mean, I'm looking forward to the spring, the summer where I can go back outside again. No, it's not easier at all, seven months later. As a matter of fact, I have a fear of what is it going to be like in three months? Am I just going to get worse?
HEATHER HISCOX:
So how do you make sense, George, then of where life goes from now?
GEORGE STONEHOUSE:
You don't. You can fly off and say it sucks. Words cannot describe the pain that you deal with moment to moment. You wake up, you feel the pain. You go to sleep, you pray that you're very tired because if you're not, you're going to get back up. Simple as that.
MARIA JONES:
You can't lie there. You can't just lie in bed. Your mind starts to go on you.
HEATHER HISCOX:
Where does it go?
MARIA JONES:
It goes somewhere that I can't talk about.
HEATHER HISCOX:
What do you miss most about Holly?
GEORGE STONEHOUSE:
Holly. Comfort, hugs, lying on the couch, watching TV, everything. I miss so much about her. That's not a simple question, not a simple answer. I miss her. I miss her so much.
MARIA JONES:
Holding my hand while I was driving.
GEORGE STONEHOUSE:
Looking at her.
MARIA JONES:
I remember thinking, my God, her hand's growing, big hands when we held hands. We were friends, her and I. We did so many things. I'll tell you something Holly and I said to each other in secret was that she was my best friend and I was her best friend, but we promised that we're going to keep that a secret because we don't want any of our real best friends to know about it. But we'll always have that with each other. So I miss my best friend.
HEATHER HISCOX:
Thank you so much.
GEORGE STONEHOUSE:
Thank you.
^TOP
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A MESSAGE FROM
HOLLY'S PARENTS: |
During their interview George and Maria expressed thanks to many people:
From the Toronto police:
Det. Ken Taylor
Det. Mark Saunders
Staff Inspector Bruce Smollet
PC Deborah Vittie
Staff Inspector Gary Ellis
Det. Sgt. Al Comeau
PC Mary Vruna
Chief Julian Fantino
Their employers and colleagues at Air Canada and the City of Toronto, their lawyer, Tim Danson and their webmaster, Al Logan. Maria Jones added,
"And I don't want to forget about anybody and everybody that has taken the time to write a card or a letter and mailed it. Or gone out of their way to come to my home, to drop something off. Or even if they couldn't leave the house, but they watched the news, kept up with the story, and shed a tear for us. I even want to thank them. Anybody that's done anything out of their heart for us, I think should be thanked. And I'd like to mention that I've also been blessed with truly, truly good friends, friends that I've had for over 30 years. And most of them are from high school. They're still my good friends to this day, but they've truly proven their friendship to me, with what happened. The whole lot of them dropped everything they were doing, and all they cared about was our family. They'd do anything for us. And they've given me 101 per cent support throughout this whole thing."
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| RELATED: |
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| CBC STORIES: |
Charge laid in Holly Jones killing (June 20, 2003)
DNA samples invade privacy, critics say (May 23, 2003)
Toronto says goodbye to Holly Jones (May 20, 2003)
Hotline gets 1,650 tips about Holly Jones (May 19, 2003)
DNA setback in search for girl's killer (May 17, 2003)
Killer will be caught, chief promises Holly's parents (May 16, 2003)
Two men 'of interest' sought in Holly's murder (May 16, 2003)
National sex offender registry in the works (May 15, 2003)
Killer of 10-year-old 'must be nervous': police (May 14, 2003
Holly's killer a 'monster' say police (May 14, 2003)
Missing Toronto girl found dead (May 13, 2003)
Ontario police issue 'Amber alert' in search for missing girl (May 13, 2003)
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