Suspect in Aspiring L.B. Model's Murder Is Arrested a Generation Later

The 25-year-old murder case of an aspiring Long Beach model was never a who-dunnit for detectives. But they finally got their suspect behind bars with new technology applied to the old case, it was announced Thursday.

Joanne Marie Jones seemed to vanish from Long Beach on April 29, 1985, after spending the weekend at her boyfriend's home a few blocks outside Belmont Heights, the L.A. Sheriff's Department said.  Jones, 23, left her boyfriend's home at 5:30 a.m. that day to drive to her job in West Covina, but she never arrived. Her 1978 Chevy Camaro had been parked at the corner of Ocean Avenue and Cherry Street but was gone.

Some days later, Long Beach police officers saw it on the road, and pulled over its driver, a white male named Stafford Joel Spicer, 33. Police did not elaborate on what other connection, if any, there allegedly was between Spicer and Jones.

A little over a month later, on June 8, 1985, hikers came upon Jones' body on a dirt roadway in a remote area of Azusa Canyon, east of Highway 39 on East Fork Road, in Azusa. The L.A. Coroner's Office concluded that she had been stabbed to death.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department handled the case from there, although it was not immediately clear where the murder was thought to have actually occurred. Long Beach launched the case, and the victim was found in the Sheriff's jurisdiction.

"Given what was known at the time that her body was found, and what was known about Spicer driving her car, there was insufficient evidence to pursue murder charges against Spicer in a court of law," the Sheriff's Dept. noted in a press statement Wednesday.

According to Capt. Mike Parker of the Sheriff's Headquarters Bureau, Sheriff’s Homicide Cold Case Detective Steve Davis re-opened the case in 2009. He uncovered additional evidence (DNA) that could be biologically examined with equipment not available in 1985, then investigated the case further. When presented to the L.A. County District Attorney's Office, it found sufficient evidence for homicide charges to finally be filed.

On an arrest warrant charging him with murder, Spicer, now 59 and jobless in Las Vegas, was taken into custody Tuesday, the Sheriff's Dept. said.

Spicer was apprehended at about 5 p.m. Tuesday at his home in the 3000 block of Cabana Avenue by Las Vegas police and L.A.'s Cold Case homicide investigators. Spicer remains in the Las Vegas Detention Center, awaiting extradition to California from Nevada.

Anyone with knowledge of the case can contact Detective Steve Davis at 323-890-5500 or do so anonymously by calling “LA Crime Stoppers” at 800-222-TIPS (8477), texting the letters TIPLA plus your tip to CRIMES (274637), or using the website http://lacrimestoppers.org