Aphrodite Jones

Aphrodite Jones

Aphrodite Jones promo for True Crime with Aphrodite Jones
Born Aphrodite Jones
November 27, 1959[1]
Nationality American

Aphrodite Jones (born November 27, 1959) is an award-winning American reporter and author who writes about killers. Her knack for detail allows her to dissect bizarre murder cases and bring readers into the heart of darkness. Now, the author has taken her career to TV as the executive producer and TV host of the ID series, True Crime with Aphrodite Jones, which airs on Investigation Discovery Jones is now filming her fifth season, uncovering secrets about riveting cases across America. Before landing the hosting position with Discovery Channel's crime network, Jones hosted a show called The Justice Hunters for USA Network, and was a crime reporter for FOX News, covering the trials of Scott Peterson, Michael Jackson, and Dennis Rader (aka the BTK Killer) for The O'Reilly Factor and Geraldo At Large.

For the past two decades, Jones has been featured on national news shows talking about the criminal accusations against Robert Blake, OJ Simpson, Michael Jackson, Ariel Castro, NFL Star Aaron Hernandez, self-proclaimed neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman, and convicted pedophile Jerry Sandusky, among others. Jones has also been featured as a crime expert on NBC's The Today Show, Dateline NBC, CBS This Morning, Piers Morgan Tonight, Inside Edition, Nancy Grace, Shepard Smith Reporting, The Forensic Files, The New Detectives and Entertainment Tonight, and continues to provide expert commentary for MSNBC, CNN, HLN, and E!.

True Crime with Aphrodite Jones airs worldwide on Investigation Discovery, where Jones shatters past the 'news byte' coverage of horrific crimes to provide riveting analysis on some of the most bizarre cases in recent history, including O.J. Simpson, JonBenet Ramsey, Anna Nicole Smith, Michael Jackson, and the West Memphis Three. Prior to creating and producing True Crime, Jones hosted another crime series, The Justice Hunters for USA Network. She began her career as a national columnist for United Features Syndicate.

Early life

Jones was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Captain Ashton Blair Jones, Jr., and Maria Kalloumenous, who lived on the Great Lakes Naval Base. Jones' father served as a communications and tactical officer during World War II, served in the Korean War and later was the Director of the Navy Material Laboratory in Brooklyn, New York, where he met and married Maria. The couple had two girls, Aphrodite and Janet. Ashton received the title of Rear Admiral when he retired from the Navy. Jones' father suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and her mother lived with a serious heart condition. Her father died while she and her sister were young. When Jones was 17 years old her mother passed away.

Career and education

After graduating at the top of her class from UCLA in 1979, Jones completed a three-year stint as a columnist for United Media, where she chronicled the evolution of cable television in her national column, "Cable View". During that time, Jones interviewed the executives and TV personalities helping to launch and sustain such channels as MTV, VH1, HBO, Cinemax, CNN, TBS, Showtime, DISNEY, and the Playboy Channel. Jones describes that time as "the biggest party on Earth, because each cable channel was trying to outdo each other by pandering to journalists."

Jones eventually grew tired of what she called "the TV party life", and decided to leave United Media to complete a master of arts degree at Long Island University in 1987, and then went on to pursue a Ph.D. from New York University. During her years at NYU, Jones completed her Ph.D. coursework, as well as the written and oral exams, but was unable to satisfy her dissertation director(s) and thus gave up. For her work in the Ph.D. program, Jones was awarded a Master of Philosophy degree from NYU in 1991.

While writing her dissertation, Jones took a job as an assistant professor in the English Department at what was then known as Cumberland College (now the University of the Cumberlands) in Williamsburg, Kentucky.[2] It was the spring of 1989 when Jones landed herself a second job as a radio news director at a local radio station, and soon afterward she found herself reporting about an FBI agent who had killed his informant. She knew Cumberland was "near the end of nowhere" but could not fathom that national news organizations would fail to report on "the first FBI agent in history to go to prison for killing someone."

When Jones wrote her first book, The FBI Killer, it was quickly turned into an ABC movie-of-the-week, Betrayed by Love, starring Patricia Arquette and Steven Weber. Not long afterward, Jones landed the exclusive rights to a teen crime drama she chronicled in her book Cruel Sacrifice, which hit the New York Times list at #4 and stayed there for over three months. Overnight, Jones was considered a "veteran" crime writer, and her third book, All She Wanted, was optioned as a major motion picture by Diane Keaton, with Drew Barrymore attached. The original film was never made, but Jones' book was later transformed into the Oscar-winning film Boys Don't Cry which launched the career of then-unknown Hilary Swank.

Through the 1990's Jones appeared frequently on the talk show circuit as a crime except, appearing on Montel Williams, Maury Povich, Sally Jesse Raphael, Geraldo, and Leeza. She also went on to write five more best-selling books, among them, A Perfect Husband, which was made in to the Lifetime movie The Staircase Murders, starring Treat Williams.

In the summer of 2008, Jones was given her big break at the Discovery Network in Silver Spring, Maryland, when then head of ID, Clark Bunting, bought a thirteen-episode series starring Jones, to be delivered in 2009. The series aired in 2010, under the title True Crime with Aphrodite Jones, and was greeted to critical and public acclaim. Among her achievements during that series taping: an exclusive interview with OJ Simpson's manager, a face-to-face meeting with OJ Simpson outside the Las Vegas courtroom where he was last tried, and an exclusive interview with Phil Spector's longtime assistant and exclusive footage of Mr. Spector "ranting like a lunatic" in his Alhambra castle.

Over the years, Jones has been quoted in publications including The New York Times, the New York Post, the New York Daily News, and USA Today.

True Crime with Aphrodite Jones

True Crime with Aphrodite Jones is currently taping its fifth season for Investigation Discovery. Each episode follows Jones as she conducts her own investigations into some of the most headline-making crime stories of our time. From never-before-seen footage of JonBenét Ramsey to an exclusive interview with a confidant of Anna Nicole Smith, Jones reveals new details about crimes people thought they knew. In True Crime, Jones reveals the "story behind the story" to offer viewers a truth "beyond news sound-bytes."

Personal life

Jones has been married once, in 2010, to a man she wants to remain anonymous. "I always preferred my career to marriage,” she was quoted as saying, “but sometimes, when you meet Mr. Right, your world can turn upside down and you shift your priorities.”

Jones currently resides in Florida.

Books

Most notably, Aphrodite's book All She Wanted was transformed into the Academy Award-winning film, 'Boys Don't Cry'. Her other books include The FBI Killer, which was subsequently made into the ABC movie, Betrayed by Love, as well as A Perfect Husband, the story of Michael Peterson that was the basis for the Lifetime movie, The Staircase Murders. Jones has also authored Cruel Sacrifice, Della's Web, The Embrace: A True Vampire Story, Red Zone: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of the San Francisco Dog Mauling, and her latest work, Michael Jackson Conspiracy, which examines the media's role in the court of public opinion, using evidence and exhibits from the highly charged molestation trial against Michael Jackson.[3]

References

  1. ↑ http://press.discovery.com/media/ugc/documents/2010/02/02/True_Crime_-_Jones_Bio.pdf
  2. ↑ "Officials Denounce Book on FBI Slaying", Lexington Herald-Leader, October 2, 1992
  3. ↑ http://press.discovery.com/us/id/talent/jones-aphrodite/
  4. ↑ Seiler, Andy (1999) "Many crying foul over Brandon movie", USA Today, October 28, 1999, p. 3D

External links