Woman charged in fatal beer spat has died
By Kim Bell
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
03/18/2008
Corine Jones and her husband Robert Booker
ST. LOUIS -- Almost overnight, Corine Jones had become the butt of a joke, fodder for the late-night comics. Charged with shooting her husband to death after he brought her a warm beer, Jones was locked up in the City Jail to await trial for his murder.
Jones lingered for months at the jail, her health deteriorating rapidly from the ravages of stomach cancer and dementia. Quietly, without public fanfare, her public defender won her a medical furlough last Christmas. In January, she finally died at a skilled nursing facility in the city, without ever standing trial. She was 67.
"She was severely mentally ill when she came in," said Patrick Schommer, the assistant to the city's commissioner of corrections. "Some people thought it was a funny story, but it was actually very sad."
Her husband of 25 years, Robert Jones, 71, was killed on Dec. 3, 2006. Corine Jones was charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action. According to police, Corine Jones said she shot him because he tried to give her a warm can of Stag beer. It was warm because their one-story home on Terry Avenue had lost power in an ice storm.