Welfare check calls to police provide new details in Upper Marlboro woman's murder

UPPER MARLBORO, Md. - There are new details about the investigation into the murder of an Upper Marlboro woman inside her own home. Amanda Jones was found dead Tuesday morning and police have charged her ex-boyfriend, Mitchell Cole, with murder.

But the complicated case has raised questions about the police response to calls made in the hours before her body was found.

FOX 5 has obtained three of those calls.

The timeline of events are convoluted and have left some questions regarding the response made by police. Could something more have been done?

There was a call put in to police roughly at the same time investigators believe Jones was murdered Monday night.

Police checked her house then and checked again the next morning. But by the time someone made it inside the house, it was simply too late.

Amid horrified screams and cries, Jones' daughter was recorded on a 911 call she made during the gruesome discovery Tuesday morning.

"She's lying here on the ground," Myisha Golway said on the call. "She's got exercise equipment and blood everywhere."

This call gives a better look at what could have been used to kill Jones.

"She called me six times last night," Golway said on the recording. "My daughter had the phone. I didn't realize it."

And there were other people who were also worried for Jones hours before Golway found her mother's body

"I was talking to my friend on the telephone and she was getting out of the car going up to her house, and then she started howling and screaming and stuff, then her phone went dead," said an acquaintance of Jones on another call.

He called Prince George's County police's non-emergency line at 9:34 p.m. Monday from Baltimore.

In charging documents, police say Jones arrived at her Upper Marlboro home at 9:13 p.m. that same night - 21 minutes before her friend's call to police.

"She was screaming to the top of her voice," said that caller. "It sounds like she was fighting somebody. They must have been in the house when they got in there."

The caller gave dispatch clear signals he believed the attack happened inside the home.

Prince George's County police say they had understood the screams came from outside the house and still have not provided clear protocol on procedure during a welfare check.

In another call to police on Tuesday morning, that same friend told them, "Last night I called and had police dispatched."

The call was placed three hours before Jones body was discovered. It was also the morning after police had cleared the first call for a welfare check.

"I'm seeing the officers went out, nothing was found and there was no light in the house and the house was secured," said the dispatcher.

The caller asked for a second welfare check and told dispatch Jones' garage door is usually unlocked and can be manually lifted.

But that second call was also cleared.

Police say Cole confessed to killing Jones and to breaking into the home roughly 45 minutes before she arrived at her house.

Police also say Jones was killed 25 minutes before the first call for a welfare check Monday night, which means she would have been dead four minutes before she even showed up the home.