Worker installing headstone at Rose Hill Cemetery in Idaho Falls for a baby who was killed in 1965. See the installation and dedication in the video above. | Rett Nelson, EastIdahoNews.com
IDAHO FALLS – A small group of people gathered in the northeast corner of Rose Hill Cemetery in Idaho Falls on Wednesday afternoon to pay their respects to a baby 60 years after her death.
Charlene Goetz spearheaded the effort to raise funds for a new headstone for her sister, Ellen May Jones, who was murdered in 1965.
“Today marks the 60th anniversary of (her death),” Goetz said during a graveside service and dedication of the new headstone. “It’s a beautiful day of closure, a day that Ellen deserved when she was laid to rest. She should’ve been given a beautiful ceremony, and she wasn’t.”
Ellen was just 5 months old when her mother, Pansy Jones, and her boyfriend, Leo Daniels, buried her about 100 feet off the road near Palisades Reservoir after she had been beaten to death.
Authorities reportedly found her body just before noon on August 7, 1965. Her body was “covered with wood debris and limbs,” and her foot was hanging out.
EastIdahoNews.com highlighted what happened in a story last summer. The couple had gotten a job working at an apple orchard in Idaho Falls. On Aug. 4, they crossed the border into Wyoming, where law enforcement determined the baby had been killed.
Sheriff’s account of the case
Lester Hopkins, who passed away in 2023 at age 92, was serving as Bonneville County Sheriff at the time. In his written account of the case, Hopkins says an autopsy of Ellen’s body revealed her stomach was empty at the time of death, and there was severe trauma to the body.
“I figured (Daniels) beat the child to death over a period of weeks or months,” Hopkins’ personal account says. “The baby cried all the time because it was hurting, and its stomach was empty because it could not eat.”
When Hopkins questioned Jones, she initially said the baby died from pneumonia, but eventually admitted Daniels had been beating her.
“The final blow to the baby was when Daniels took it by the feet and swung its head against the car fender,” Hopkins wrote.
Daniels and Jones both went to prison, but Jones only served a three year sentence. There were other factors surrounding her involvement in the baby’s death.
“It seemed to me that Pansy Jones was an immature young woman of below-average intelligence who was easily dominated by a man. I knew less about Daniels, but I was sure he was easily emotionally upset and a hot head,” Hopkins’ written history says.
Hopkins indicated he didn’t believe Jones wanted to kill her baby and was sympathetic to her loss.
Ellen‘s body was buried in the Rose Hill Cemetery in Idaho Falls, and Hopkins frequently visited her gravesite.
Hopkins resigned as sheriff several years after this incident, but the case haunted him for the rest of his life. Family members say he brought it up at least once a year until his passing.
Goetz was born five years after Ellen’s death and didn’t know about her murder until she was 8 years old. She reached out to EastIdahoNews.com last summer to shed more light on the case. For most of her life, Goetz said most of what she’d been told about it wasn’t accurate.
During a visit to Ellen’s gravesite last summer, she met Hopkins’ daughter, Shelley Ramey, who remembers visiting the grave with her dad over the years.
Goetz has spent the last year raising funds to replace Ellen’s old, dilapidated headstone. On Wednesday, Ramey was among those at the cemetery to see its installation and dedication.
“I’m really proud of my dad for what he did at the time,” Ramey tells EastIdahoNews.com. “Ellen May needed family, and now she has it, and that’s what this stone represents.”
During her remarks to the group, Goetz thanked Ramey for her efforts and all those who contributed to make it happen.
“Shelley is here representing the family who oversaw my sister’s grave all these years,” Goetz said. “I want to thank all the people who came together and put every single dollar together to come up with a down payment and make this possible.”
Following Wednesday’s dedication ceremony, Goetz told EastIdahoNews.com it feels “amazing” to see the new headstone become a reality.
“I feel blessed,” Goetz says. “I didn’t realize how big and how beautiful it was going to turn out when I ordered it. She’s being honored in the way she should’ve been in the beginning.”
‘There’s closure here for me’
Goetz recounted her own troubled upbringing with her mom, which we covered in a previous story. A search for a brother who was born while her mom was in prison continues.
Over the last year, she’s discovered and met up with others who are Pansy’s offspring. On Wednesday, Goetz said an initial happy introduction to two sisters in Colorado last fall recently ended in a falling out.
“It started out really good, and now, for political reasons, none of them want anything to do with me,” Goetz says. “That was really hard for me to accept.”
Months later, Goetz is doing much better. She was all smiles during Wednesday’s gathering, despite the tumultuous year. She says the source of her positive state of mind today has a lot to do with the reason she started this project for Ellen in the first place.
“My purpose is to have her shine. Look at all the people who know her now and her story,” Goetz says.
As a victim of abuse and domestic violence, Goetz’s next goal is to be an advocate for children in similar situations. She wants to help create laws that better protect children and is working on a book about her experience.
It’s gratifying to her to know that her sister’s short life is not forgotten.
“I’m just so grateful we are able to do this. We are here honoring Ellen … and I feel like there’s closure here for me,” says Goetz.
WATCH HIGHLIGHTS OF THE HEADSTONE INSTALLATION AND DEDICATION IN THE VIDEO ABOVE.
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