The mother of five children killed by their father stunned a courtroom by asking the jury to spare her ex-husband’s life.
Amber Kyzer told a court in South Carolina that Tim Jones Jr “did not show my children mercy by any means, but my kids loved him”.
Jones, 37, was last week convicted of murdering the siblings, aged one to eight, at his home near Lexington in August 2014.
Jurors are deciding if he will get the death penalty or life in prison. Ms Kyzer said: “As a mother, if I could personally rip his face off I would. That’s the mom in me. That’s the mama bear.”
But she said despite sometimes hoping the legal system would “fry” her ex-husband, she would not choose to sentence him to death.
Jones went into a rage the day he murdered the children when he found six-year-old Nathan playing with a plug socket in their home, the court heard.
He killed the boy and then strangled Elaine, one, Gabriel, two, Elias, seven, and Mera, eight. He wrapped the bodies in plastic, put them in his car and drove around for nine days before leaving the remains in rural Alabama.
He was arrested in Mississippi when a police officer recognised “the smell of death” coming from the car.
