Angela Jones, 35, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the murder of a woman she described as her best friend in St. Paul, Minnesota, in June 2021. She also was sentenced for aiding in another murder of a woman she believed was an informant and soliciting a prostitute for her husband. (Minnesota Department of Corrections)
A Minnesota woman will spend the next 25 years behind bars for a slew of crimes including shooting her best friend to death, setting up another murder, and soliciting her friend from jail to have sex with her husband, according to court records.
Angela Renee Jones, 35, was sentenced Friday in the Seventh Judicial Court in St. Cloud and pleading guilty in June to second-degree murder and aiding an offender-accomplice after the fact, court records show.
On June 2, 2021, St. Cloud police officers responded to an apartment after a report of a possible death. When they arrived, they found a woman, later identified as Janesa Leshay Harris, 28, dead inside suffering from a gunshot wound. Harris lived in the apartment where she was killed. Prosecutors say a fight ensued because Harris told Jones she didn't want Jones in her life anymore. That's when Jones shot Harris in the mouth, according to prosecutors.
The next day, police were called after a woman was found shot to death on the side of the road about seven miles away from the first murder scene. Police at the time said there were "noted similarities" between the two homicides.
Police identified the second victim as 25-year-old Keisa Marie Lange of Litchfield, who suffered from a gunshot wound to the head. According to a criminal complaint, detectives learned Jones, another woman and two men later identified as DeAntae Davis and Kenneth Carter picked up Lange in a white Ford Fusion around 7 a.m. on June 3, 2021. Jones told an inmate at the Stearns County Jail in a phone call later recovered by detectives that she drove to a cul-de-sac at the end of a long dirt road. Jones said on the call that Davis shot Lange in the car and she told the men to "Get the b—- out of the car," cops wrote in the complaint. Carter fired his gun at Lange after she was taken out of the car, the complaint said.
The defendants then drove to a home where they cleaned the car with bleach, destroyed phones and burned their clothes.
The Fusion was found at Jones' house the next day. Investigators found blood in the back seat, the complaint said. Police also found evidence that Lange may have been killed because the defendants believed she was an informant for law enforcement. Detectives recovered a note in the garbage referencing a woman who worked for the feds. In the call from the jail, Jones said one of the males in the car 'got the message' the inmate sent, according to the complaint.
Jones was arrested about a week after the second murder, though she was already in jail on unrelated child abuse charges. Carter and Davis were also soon arrested. Davis was convicted of first-degree murder in June and was sentenced to life in prison while Carter was acquitted. Jones pleaded guilty to aiding an offender-accomplice after the fact in exchange for the murder charges being dropped and was sentenced to a little over 12 years in prison for Lange's death.
A Stearns County grand jury indicted Jones of first-degree murder in Harris' death in December 2021. She told detectives in an interview that Harris was her best friend, and denied any involvement in her killing. As part of her entering an Alford plea to second-degree murder, prosecutors dropped the first-degree murder charge and recommended a 25-year sentence. Both convictions will be served concurrently.
Investigators opened a separate investigation in March 2023 after they discovered she offered an ex-inmate at the jail $300 to have sex with her husband. In several phone calls and text messages, Jones told the woman about her husband's sexual desires and set up a date for them to have sex, a criminal complaint said. Jones pleaded guilty to a prostitution charge and was sentenced to about 10 years in prison, which will also be served concurrently with the other two convictions.