SCOOBA — On Monday, October 25, 2021, Sterling Emanuel Jones started what seemed to be just another day when he kissed his wife goodbye at their home in Center Point, Alabama, told her he’d see her soon, and walked out the door.
But that was the last time she ever saw him.
Jones, 67, left that morning with a man he barely knew. His sons told reporters that the man was someone Jones had met recently during trips to the Birmingham Race Course Casino and to a casino across the state line in Mississippi. The two were headed west that day, bound for the Golden Moon Casino and Resort near Philadelphia.
It was the kind of day trip Jones had made before, so there was no reason to think this one would be any different.
His family knew something was wrong before the day was out.
“Dad always come home, he always answers the phone,” his son Noah Jones told CBS 42. “If he doesn’t answer at first, he’s going to give you a call right back.”
But the calls that Monday went unanswered, and Sterling Jones, a man his sons describe as steady and dependable to a fault, did not come back when he said he would.
“He’s never had any type of record to just disappear, go ghost on anyone,” Noah said.
The alarm grew louder the next day. The man Sterling had left home with was back in Birmingham, and Sterling was not with him.
Somewhere along that route into Mississippi, the two men stopped at a Chevron station in Scooba. A surveillance camera inside the store caught Sterling on video, just shopping for snacks like any ordinary day.
It is the last confirmed image of Sterling Jones anywhere.
His family later obtained that footage themselves and turned it over to reporters, desperate for someone to recognize something. In the end, that grainy frame from a rural gas station is where the trail of Sterling Jones goes cold.
The Jefferson County, Alabama Sheriff’s Department has classified the case as a suspicious missing-person investigation, and their concern has only deepened with time.
“We are concerned for the safety of 67-year-old Sterling Emanuel Jones,” Deputy Chief David Agee said at the time.
Investigators located and processed the vehicle the two men had traveled in, which was a green 2011 Infiniti QX50 SUV wearing an Alabama personalized plate reading SIRNARD. What they recovered from that vehicle led them to a hard conclusion: the evidence suggests Sterling Jones is likely deceased.
The motive, investigators believe, was money. Sterling was carrying a large amount of cash for the casino the day he disappeared and they believe that’s why he never came home.
But the problem lies in finding where Jones is now. More than 150 miles separate Center Point, Alabama, from the country roads around Scooba.
This is where authorities say the Mississippi side of this case comes in.
Investigators say the thing that may finally break this case is the possibility that someone remembers that green Infiniti QX50.
It was on back roads and in gas stations in the small towns along the Alabama-Mississippi line in the days around October 25, 2021, and authorities believe somebody had to have seen it.
“We would like to find this vehicle,” Deputy Chief Agee said. “It possibly could lead us to a chain of events that show other things.”
Sterling’s sons have asked ever since for that help from the public.
“If you saw something or you know something,” his son Sterling Huntley said, “say something.”
The Jones family doesn’t want their father remembered as a case number.
“He’s not just a lost person, he’s not just a lost older person,” Sterling Huntley told reporters. “He’s an impact to the community.”
“He was the type of person who would go out of his way to help someone else,” said his son Mathew Jones.
Sterling Emanuel Jones is a Black man, 67 years old at the time of his disappearance, standing six feet tall and weighing between 160 and 161 pounds, with gray hair and brown eyes.
He was last seen wearing gray pants, a dark blue shirt, and a white Titleist hat.
The vehicle of interest in his case was a green 2011 Infiniti QX50 SUV bearing an Alabama personalized plate that read SIRNARD.
Anyone with information is urged to contact the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department at (205) 325-1250 or Crimestoppers at (205) 254-7777.
