Jones now had to deal with the unpleasant reality that the source of his troubles was Massicotte, who, while not a close friend, was someone heâd known for years. Laterâafter Williams was arrestedâshe apologized profusely, Jones says. âShe says to me, âLarry, Iâm so sorry. I didnât really want to phone the police and tell them it was you.â â
So why
did
Massicotte make that fateful call? She says today it was a combination of confusion and being urged by a friend to pick up the phone and give the police Jonesâs name. The friend was one Jonas Kelly, a man related to Jones through marriage and who didnât much like him. âI was told by Jonas Kelly what to do.He told me to phone my detective and tell them that I recognized the voice,â she says. âWhen I phoned them to tell them I thought I recognized the personâs voice, I didnât even want to say who it was, I was so scared. But then they came right out and asked me. The detective suggested to me it wasnât Larry, it was his son Greg. And I said, âNo, Larry.â And he said, âOh, Laurie, do you think you could come down to the station right away and give us a statement.â â
So she did. Police picked up Larry Jones the same day. There was no other evidence against him.
Jones now believes that Massicotte was unstable and therefore easily influenced by Jonas Kelly. As for Massicotte, she was not reluctant to speak out about her ordeal. After Williams was arrested, she gave several interviews to the media in which she excoriated the OPP for not having issued a warning after the first attack.
Most remarkable, however, was her willingness to forgive her attacker. âIâm not in the judgment department, but Iâm in the forgiveness department, and I feel everybody has a God-given right to forgive,â she says. âHe let me live. It was like he didnât want to kill me. I always look at the good in people. I canât speak for any of the others, I can only forgive him for what he did to me, and now he has to live the rest of his life [in a prison cell]. I despise him, but I can forgive him, because of the simple fact that he let me live, and thatâs what I wanted most. And I have to be able to forgive to move on.â
News that Jones had been picked up and questioned at length about the twin attacks spread swiftly through Tweed. And it reached Williams too. Jones knows that, because even though it never occurred to him at the time that the colonel might bethe real predator, he was anxious to learn how widely word of his troubles with police had spread. So, through a mutual friend, he asked a civilian Trenton air base staffer who knew Williams well whether the colonel had by any chance mentioned that Jonesâhis next-door neighborâwas a prime suspect in the unsolved attacks. The subject had indeed come up, and Williamsâs response was curiously casual, Jones recounts. He seemed to have heard something about Jones being detained and questioned but appeared entirely unperturbed. âGet out of town. Larry Jones wouldnât do something like that,â was how Williamsâs response was relayed back to Jones.
Jones chatted briefly to Williams several times after that, talking about nothing very much, and the matter was never raised. âHe could have asked me what was going on, but he didnât,â Jones says. âHe carried on like nothing had happened.â
In hindsight, two other incidentsâone before Jones was taken in for questioning and one afterâtook on a distinctly sinister bent in Jonesâs mind.
Few visitors ever came to the Williams home, and Jones remembers the day in July 2009 when his neighbor took over as base commander. The commander had laid on a big party on his back lawn. Tables were set up, the grass was newly mowed, a portable toilet was rented. âI thought he was expecting a hundred