Tamara Jones, known to family as Tammy, was 55 when her body was found in an abandoned house near Mack and Mount Elliot on Detroit’s east side in the spring of 2019. Her family reported she had been out of contact for about a week after Memorial Day weekend before police confirmed the remains were hers. Medical examiners could not determine a precise cause of death because of the condition of the remains.

Investigators soon linked her death to a pattern of killings in Detroit. Police arrested 34-year-old Deangelo Martin in June 2019, two days after Jones’s body was found, initially in connection with an assault and stabbing of a 26-year-old survivor. Jones’s daughter later identified Martin as a former high school classmate of hers. Survivor testimony and DNA evidence connected Martin to Jones’s death and to the deaths of three other women, Annetta Nelson, Nancy Harrison, and Trevesene Ellis.

In September 2022 Martin pleaded guilty to four counts of second-degree murder and admitted sexual assaults of two other women; in October 2022 a judge sentenced him to 45 to 70 years for the murders. If anyone knew Tamara, her movements around Memorial Day weekend, or has information about vacant properties on Detroit’s east side, please come forward.