Jeffrey Aaron interviewed Christopher Darnell Jones Junior at length, spending a total of 16 hours learning about him. He concluded Jones suffered from major depression, substance abuse and – above all – trauma related stressor disorder. Both of his parents had abused him as a child, his mother reportedly telling him once that she hated him and would kill him if she could. She would often lock him out of the house, forcing him to sleep at a laundromat or at the home of a coach.
In high school he played football. It was, Aaron said, a life-changing thing that gave him a place to belong. He had always felt that he didn’t measure up, but in football he excelled.
His mother often threatened to withhold permission for him to play, so before his senior year he left her home in Richmond and went to live with his grandmother in Petersburg…