By Hannah Winston
The Palm Beach Post
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — As Palm Beach County Sheriff’s deputies approached an area of unincorporated Palm Beach Gardens where someone reported a sexual battery, Joel Jones flagged them down. Before they could even get his name, he began shouting at them:
“I assaulted her,” he yelled. “Take me to jail!”
According to the arrest report, the woman said she saw Jones call 911 on himself as she got away.
Jones, 47, faces charges of sexual battery, false imprisonment and aggravated assault with deadly weapon. Jones remains in the Palm Beach County jail without bail, according to the sheriff’s booking blotter website.
On Tuesday evening, a woman who thought she answered a Craigslist ad for a cleaning job went to meet a man who offered her a position, according to an arrest report. Jones told the woman to first meet him at a gas station near the doctor’s office building she would be cleaning and that she would follow him in her car.
When they got to the building on at 21300 Alternative AIA, Jones led her inside and showed her the rooms he told her she’d be cleaning. She told investigators once they got to the last room, Jones started making a pass at her sexually. She tried to leave the room, but he grabbed her arm and removed her pants, according to the report.
The woman told investigators she tried to fight him off, but he pulled out a silver “flip style knife” and put it against her neck. According to the report, he got the woman on to the floor and raped her. When he let her go, she told deputies she saw him call 911.
When deputies arrived, Jones told them he assaulted the woman. When deputies placed him in handcuffs, they said he cried and told them he should be taken to prison. He said he “tricked” the woman into meeting him and “brutally raped” her. He insisted the investigators note the whole crime was premeditated.
According to the Florida Department of Corrections, Jones was convicted for sexual battery and burglary in 1991 and served more than two years in prison, though his sentence was six years.
He also served almost eight years in prison for second-degree murder, though his sentence was 12 years, according to department of corrections records.