Three Men Found Guilty in Brutal Killing of Red Bank Teacher

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By Philip Sean Curran

FREEHOLD – A Monmouth County jury convicted three men March 12 of killing a Red Bank Middle School teacher inside her apartment in 2009 during a mistaken robbery attempt in Neptune City.

The 12-member panel deliberated March 7 and again March 12 before finding Gregory A. Jean-Baptiste, Jerry J. Spraulding and Ebenezer Byrd guilty. The three men face up to life in prison when sentenced in May. Byrd, 39, and Jean-Baptiste, 30, intend to appeal, their lawyers said, while the lawyer for Spraulding, 41, had no comment.

After leaving the court room of Superior Court Judge Joseph W. Oxley in Freehold, family members of the victim, 33-year-old Jonelle Melton, hugged one another and members of law enforcement in the hallway. Melton’s mother, Gwen Cruse, declined to comment to reporters. But her widower, Michael Melton, said after ward that he felt relief when the verdict was read.

“It’s been 10 long years,” said Melton, who turned 44 March 12. “And today, God gave me the best birthday present I could ever have in my life…a guilty verdict.”

He later thanked the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office, signaling out lead detective Scott Samis for breaking the once cold case.

“It was a long road,” Melton said, “so now my family and I, we can sit down now and star t to heal a little bit.”

“I’m just extremely happy that justice was done and that there can be some closure for the Melton family and for Jonelle’s mom,” said Matthew Bogner, one of two assistant Monmouth County prosecutors who tried the three men.

The verdict concluded a roughly two-month trial into the slaying of Jonelle Melton, found Sept. 14, 2009 beaten, stabbed and shot inside her apartment in the Brighton Arms complex located on West Sylvania Avenue. Michael, who had gone to perform a welfare check on his wife when she did not show up for work, found her body.

Melton’s death had been a cold case until authorities were able to bring murder charges against Byrd and Jean-Baptiste in 2015 and Spraulding in 2016. A Monmouth County grand jury indicted them on murder, burglary and other offenses in 2016. A fourth man, James Fair, was charged in the case as well, but he pleaded guilty.

Byrd, Jean-Baptiste and Spraulding went to the apartment complex intent on burglarizing a drug dealer who had lived there and kept a large amount of money in his freezer, authorities had said.

As it turned out, they went to Jonelle Melton’s apartment by mistake.

She was asleep in her bedroom when the men broke in and ripped her out of her bed. It was later determined she had her jaw broken in two places and was stabbed and shot twice, including once in the back of the head.

Bogner said the Melton homicide was not the oldest cold case at his office.

“But this was one of the most brutal cases that was unsolved at the time period that we were working on it, just given the situation (of an) innocent victim (and) horrific injuries,” he said. “Every homicide’s a tragedy. But this is especially awful.”

There were no witnesses to what happened inside the apartment, with the prosecutor’s office cobbling together a case with circumstantial evidence. The prosecution’s chief witness was Elizabeth Pinto, one of Byrd’s girlfriends, who drove Byrd, Jean-Baptiste and Spraulding to the apartment complex that night.

Reaching a plea deal calling for her to get probation, she cooperated with authorities and testified at the trial.

Paul Zager, Byrd’s lawyer, said Byrd would appeal his conviction and said there are “substantial grounds for appeal.”

“I would imagine that the jury erred on the side of caution, but I don’t think the evidence supported the verdict,” Mark A. Bailey, the attorney for Jean-Baptiste, said. “So there’s a lot of appealable issues in this particular case.”

He declined to elaborate on what he thought some of those issues were.

Robert Ward, Spraulding’s lawyer, left the courtroom declining to comment.

Spraulding is due to be sentenced May 16, followed by Jean-Baptiste May 23 and Byrd May 30.

After the verdict in the main trial, the jury briefly deliberated and found Byrd and Spraulding guilty of second-degree weapons possession offenses.