Derek Jones

All right.

So my name is Derek Jones.

I'm the father of the oldest and the youngest victims in the case.

Well, hopefully soon.

OK, so you're trying for a while.

We met through Facebook, actually.

I want to say it was towards the end of 2016.

I live around the Fort Worth area.

At the time, I didn't.

I lived over in Archer City, which was a good hour and a half from Fort Worth, roughly, I think.

I mean, nothing stood out that was like alarming or anything like that.

You know, I was like, hey, this is you know, I was enjoying the conversation.

It's hard because I look back at it now and I have a different perception.

I looked I was in a dark place back then.

And so I don't think that helped with my conversation.

judgment very well but i i mean back then i looked at it as i didn't see anything alarming and you know this nice girl that had her stuff together and like i said i was a single guy so i was like hey why not and then did she eventually suggest that you meet up in person and how did that piece of things develop

We both were like talking back and forth about meeting up in person.

And then finally, I was able to have a free weekend when she had a free weekend.

And so then we finally just made plans to meet up.

And I said it was about three months after we started chatting that we finally met up.