Home Invader Gets 18 Years
In 1997 SoRo Case

The second of three men involved in a 1997 home invasion and theft of $25,000 cash from a Royalton couple was sentenced in Windsor District Court last week.

Stewart Jones, 52, and a distant relative by marriage to the couple, Catherine and Warren Williams, was sentenced to 18 to 22 years in prison for two charges of unlawful restraint and one charge of burglary.

With good behavior, Jones could be released in 12 years.

The sentence meted out to him was significantly longer than the one given last year to Jones’ accomplice, Daniel Daigle. Police are still searching for a third person, who allegedly drove the getaway car, following the 1997 burglary.

In last week’s sentencing hearing, Windsor County State’s Atty. Robert Sand argued that Jones deserved a harsher sentence, because he had organized the robbery, knowing that the Williamses kept a large quantity of cash in their home.

In his comments before Judge Robert Bent, Jones apologized to the Williams and said he had a number of personal problems at the time of the theft: "I lost my mind and I lost my heart."

Court records indicate that Jones and Daigle, wearing masks, forced their way into the Williamses’ home. First they bound Catherine Williams with duct tape and then, in a scuffle that climaxed with a gun being fired into a wall, subdued and bound her husband. The men ransacked the house, located a stash of cash, and sped away in a car.

The case broke two years ago, eight years after the crime, when one of Daigle’s relatives found some of the Williams’ personal items among Daigle’s possessions that were stored in a New Hampshire home.

Daigle was subsequently charged, and last year, he was sentenced to four years in prison, after pleading no contest to a kidnapping charge. He also agreed to cooperate with police, who were at that time searching for Jones.

In March of this year, Jones, who had been hitchhiking in South Carolina, was taken into custody by police there, who learned there was a warrant for his arrest.