Multiple K-9 teams joined the relentless search for a missing Atlanta private school coach on Lake Oconee, which entered its seventh day Friday.
The Georgia Department of Natural Resources said its K-9 team was “searching in the woods and along the shoreline” for any clues as the quest intensified to find Gary Jones, a track and field coach at the Westminster Schools and the brother of former University of Georgia and NFL star Sean Jones.
A cadaver dog also accompanied the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office on the water, using its keen sense of smell as searchers made several passes in different areas to see if the animal could pick up any scent, authorities said.
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Sheriff Howard Sills called the operation a “death investigation” after the body of the coach’s boating partner and fiancé, Spelman College instructor Joycelyn Nicole Wilson, was found Sunday. Their empty boat was discovered Saturday evening on the popular east Georgia lake as the small vessel circled near the Wallace Dam.
As Friday wore on, more than a half-dozen boats cruised the lake in the area near where Wilson’s body was located. The cadaver dog was repeatedly taken to a location of interest within a few hundred yards of where the couple’s boat was found.
Sheriff’s deputies and DNR officers fanned out across a vast stretch of open water northwest of the dam Friday. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter and photographer observed the water search from a resident’s dock.
Volunteers once again joined the effort. A group of women who identified themselves as “Westminster moms” was at the lake, along with school alumni and some of Jones' former students.
Anggie Pope, 53, took a break from the search to speak with the AJC. She said she’d known Jones since college when he tutored her while she was a student at Georgia Tech.
Pope said she spoke with Jones on Saturday morning, just hours before he and Wilson were last seen. She said she wished Jones a happy birthday; he turned 50 that day.
Pope said Jones enjoyed being on the water and had owned the boat that was recovered for at least a couple of years.
“He was out here doing what he loved to do, which was be on the lake,” Pope said.
Pope confirmed earlier reports that Jones and Wilson were engaged. She told the AJC that they were set to be married March 14, also known as Pi Day.
In a social media post earlier this year, Wilson referenced her shared love of math with Jones.
“As we enter 2025, I want to reflect on how beautifully life unfolds and brings things full circle,” Wilson posted on New Year’s Day. “From being math majors together at (Clark Atlanta University) in ’93 to our friendship unexpectedly blossoming into something more 30 years later when the timing was finally perfect! Sometimes the best equations take time to solve.”
After nearly a week of searching, the circumstances around the couple’s disappearance and Wilson’s death remain murky.
“This is no longer a simple drowning. This is a death investigation,” Sills told the AJC on Thursday. He did not elaborate.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
The GBI Crime Lab is handling Wilson’s autopsy; her cause of death has yet to be officially determined.
Sills said Thursday that officials had recently recovered a pair of shoes that family members of Jones identified as belonging to the coach. They were found floating in the water near some rocks on the shoreline in the general vicinity of where both Wilson’s body and the boat were located, the sheriff said.
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Previously, Sills said he and his investigators had obtained video of the couple launching the boat, a Sun Dolphin Pro 120, some 9 miles away by water from where it was found. That video was captured roughly two hours before some pontoon boaters spotted the vessel.
Credit: Joe Kovac Jr.
Credit: Joe Kovac Jr.
The video shows them putting the boat into the water at the Fish Tale Marina at a ramp along Ga. 44, just across the Lick Creek branch of the lake and The Lodge on Lake Oconee, where the couple had been staying, Sills said.
The sheriff said Wilson then drove their truck back to the hotel, and Jones drove the boat across the water and picked her up there, where witnesses were said to have seen them ride away together.
Credit: Putnam County Sheriff's Office
Credit: Putnam County Sheriff's Office
From there, it’s not clear if investigators have any other clues about what transpired on the water before the empty boat was spotted.
After retrieving Jones’ shoes from a DNR boat, Sills acknowledged that “the complexion of the case has changed somewhat.”
“There are many other factors at work that I can’t really elaborate on at this time,” the sheriff said.
— Please return to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for updates.
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