Fairfield police make arrest in teen's murder of 13-year-old Genelle Conway-Allen.

Associated Press – 7 mins ago

FAIRFIELD, Calif. (AP) — Police said Friday they have arrested a barber in the death of a 13-year-old girl whose naked body was found last week in a Northern California park.

Anthony Lamar Jones, 32, of Fairfield was taken into custody after police had him under round-the-clock surveillance as the main suspect in Genelle Renee Conway-Allen's slaying. During a news conference to announce the arrest, police said they believe Jones, who was identified early in the investigation as a suspect, acted alone in the killing.

They did not say how the girl died, citing an ongoing investigation.

"We have evidence linking Jones to this homicide, and we believe at this time that there are no other suspects named in this case," Fairfield Police Sgt. Rebecca Belk told reporters.

Jones worked at a barber shop less than two miles from his home. Police had the shop blocked off with crime-scene tape Friday afternoon.

The seventh-grade girl was reported missing Jan. 31 by her guardian at a foster home in nearby Suisun City. The teen was last seen at a bus stop after taking a bus from her middle school. A video camera caught an image of her talking on a cellphone wearing a pink Hello Kitty backpack.

A passer-by found the girl's body the next morning in Allan Witt Park.

The teen's foster family said in a statement read by Belk that they were overwhelmed with emotion after learning about the arrest.

"Finally, with tears in our hearts, we can now begin to say goodbye to sweet Genelle," the statement read. "Genelle, we love you so much. We always will. May you find peace forever. We will always, always love you."

A vigil for the teen was scheduled for Friday night.

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OMG another one! This is all getting to be just too much and too sad! Poor little girl!

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

FAIRFIELD -- The man accused of raping and killing a 13-year-old girl and dumping her body in a park in Fairfield made his first court appearance Wednesday while his family and friends of the victim looked on.

Anthony Lamar Jones, 32, sat in a black-and-white-striped jail jumpsuit, hands shackled to his waist, throughout the five-minute hearing in Solano County Superior Court in Fairfield. He leaned forward, quietly saying only, "Yes sir," or, "No," to routine questions from the judge.

The Fairfield resident was scheduled to enter a plea, but his lawyer, county Public Defender Lesli Caldwell, was granted a one-week postponement of the arraignment. She said she needed to review more than 1,000 pages of investigative documents in the case.

Jones faces charges of murder, rape, kidnapping to commit rape and lewd acts on a child. He would face the death penalty if convicted of all counts, but prosecutors have not decided whether to seek capital punishment.

The girl Jones is accused of kidnapping and killing, Genelle Conway-Allen of Suisun City, was last seen Jan. 31 after getting off the bus from Green Valley Middle School in Fairfield, where she was a seventh-grader. Her body, stripped of clothing, was found the next day in a city park.

"Genelle had goals - she wanted to go to school and make something of herself," said her friend Quintara Ganther, 25, who stared at Jones throughout the hearing. "What I remember most about her is her wonderful smile."

Genelle lived with a foster family because her parents had a range of troubles, relatives said. One cousin described the girl as "very playful and very happy" despite her challenges, and said she liked to sing and write poems.

"She was just a sweet, sweet, nice little girl," said the cousin, Vanessa Breaux of Oakley.

Court files show that Jones has no convictions in Solano County, but he did have a stormy marriage. A few days before Genelle disappeared, Divina Jones obtained a restraining order against her husband, saying he was so violent and disturbed that she feared for her life.

She described one clash in December in which he threatened to burn down her house, pushed her several times and violently dragged her off her bed.

"He threw an object at me and it missed and broke the bedroom window," she wrote in her Jan. 28 restraining order filing.

She also wrote that on Jan. 25, Anthony Jones picked her up for lunch and then, while parked in front of the barber shop where he worked, he told her he had a knife and a gun, "and I don't want to die alone." She said she begged him, crying, to take her home but he refused.

She escaped by running into a grocery store, she said.

"I was definitely afraid of him," she wrote. "I believed that if I brought him back to the house, he would kill me and then kill himself."

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February 21, 2013 5:25 PM

FAIRFIELD (CBS SF) – Several dozen people gathered at a cemetery overlooking the Carquinez Strait in Benicia Thursday to remember the 13-year-old Suisun City girl who was found raped and murdered in a Fairfield park earlier this month.

Under a cloudless blue sky, mourners stood around a white casket adorned with flowers and draped with a poster-size picture of Genelle Conway-Allen. Genelle’s body was discovered by a passerby in a parking lot at Allan Witt Park around 6:45 a.m. on Feb. 1.

The man accused of killing her, 32-year-old Anthony Lemar Jones, pleaded not guilty to a murder charge in a Fairfield courtroom Thursday morning.

“I know we would all rather be anywhere else but here today,” Pastor Jerry Pollard of Gateway Church in Benicia said at the start of the 1 p.m. service.

“It’s a horrific, horrible thing that happened to Genelle,” he said.

Some of Genelle’s friends and classmates from Green Valley Middle School in Fairfield wore white T-shirts bearing a picture of the teen, who was in foster care at the time of her death.

Many who spoke at the service described Genelle as a girl with a bright smile who loved to write songs and poetry.

“When I first met Genelle, she came up and introduced herself to me. Ever since then, we clicked,” one girl recalled tearfully, clutching a tissue. “We’ll miss her.”

Greg Hubbs, the principal of Green Valley Middle School, remembered Genelle as energetic and outgoing.

The day before her murder, she visited his office and told him “she was doing better in school,” he recalled.

When she was reported missing and later found murdered, the school provided grief counselors for students and gave them time to write about their feelings, he said.

On top of missing their classmate, Hubbs said, some students have expressed a sense that “this could happen to me, too.”

“You have to say, ‘Be careful—your parents want you to be safe and there’s a reason,’” Hubbs said.

A week after Genelle’s body was discovered, police announced they had arrested Jones, a Fairfield resident.

Police say they identified Jones as a suspect early on in the investigation and put him under round-the-clock surveillance before arresting him at a home in Fairfield the morning of Feb. 8. He is being held in Solano County Jail without bail.

Jones pleaded not guilty in Solano County Superior Court this morning to murder with special circumstances that the murder was committed during a rape and a kidnapping.

The special-circumstance allegations make him eligible for the death penalty if convicted.

Among those in court this morning was Eric May, the homeless man who discovered Genelle’s body.

“I really want to see that Genelle gets justice,” he said.

After the hearing, he showed reporters a silver bracelet he was wearing on which he had gotten Genelle’s name engraved.

“I’m really shaken by this,” he said, as he appeared to tremble.

He said he did not plan to attend Genelle’s memorial because he feared he would be overwhelmed by it.

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