The woman charged with murdering a city marshal during an eviction dispute changed her mind at the last minute yesterday after planning to tell a grand jury that Erskine Bryce’s death was an accident and that she really tried to save him.
“She was too shaky. She couldn’t do it,” said Joanna Jones’ attorney, Jeffrey Schwartz – who had said earlier in the day that Jones would testify.
Jones, 53, charged with second-degree murder, was set to claim that police “ripped up” three previous confessions in which she insisted she was the victim in a bitter struggle that ended in Bryce’s death. “They kept telling her, ‘That’s not good enough,'” Schwartz said.
Meanwhile, friends gathered at St. Gabriel’s Episcopal Church in Brooklyn last night to pay their last respects to Bryce, 66.
The marshal’s police-officer son, Eaton Bryce, said it was incredibly touching to climb the pulpit “to see everyone standing all the way back – to see what he meant to them.”
He said he had to choke back tears twice, but was comforted “knowing that after all the bad that occurred, he is now with friends that have moved on.”
Erskine Bryce will be buried today at Brooklyn’s Evergreen Cemetery.
The marshal died of head wounds and burns Aug. 21 after the struggle with Jones.
Schwartz said Jones knew Bryce only as the uncle of her landlord, Virginia Smith, and that he never identified himself as a marshal.
In a statement to police, Jones said Erskine Bryce tumbled down stairs during their struggle. She claimed that when she descended, he grabbed her foot and reached for a 9mm gun.
She said she grabbed the gun and then beat him with an aluminum stick, before dousing him with paint thinner and setting him on fire, according to police.
But yesterday, Jones had planned to testify the liquid was pooled at the bottom of the steps when Bryce fell in it. She was going to say that after a struggle with Bryce, in which he pulled his gun, she grabbed it, put it aside, and beat him.
Schwartz said Jones now claims she bent down in the dark vestibule and lit a lighter to see, accidentally sparking the fire.
“She had the gun in her hand,” he said. “If she wanted to kill him, she could have shot him.”
When the fire started, Jones now says she ran to her apartment for buckets of water to douse Bryce’s burning body.
Jones had previously spent 18 months in prison for shooting a boy, 14, for bullying her son.