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In March of 1978, the small town of Warren, Rhode Island was sent into a tailspin after a well-known member of their community was shot to death just days after his business burned to the ground. Who would have it out for a man so beloved? The deeper you dig into this unsolved case, the murkier it gets. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is the case of Eamon Jamiel on Dark Down East.
The Jamiel family owned Warren, Rhode Island. Figuratively speaking, but perhaps literally too, many of the 13 children of Albert and Mary Jamiel were business owners in the small town. Morpheus Jamiel was a lawyer there for decades. Hiram founded the Jamiel Insurance Agency, and Bo cleaned rugs and offered tax services all from the same shop.
There was the Jameel-run children's clothing store, a Jameel shoe store, heck, the Jameels even have a park named after them in Warren. The oldest Jameel child, and arguably the most locally famous of them all, is without a doubt Eamon Jameel.
He was considered the unofficial mayor of the town, but his actual occupation was the proud owner and operator of General Supply Company. Though everyone knew the store as the house of a million items. The three-story building at 429 Main Street in Warren was bursting at the seams with absolutely everything.
The diversity of the inventory was impressive. You could buy eggs and a hammer, a boat anchor and a lobster pot, seed for your garden and specialty bread for your supper, even reproduction harpoons and handguns, all within the four walls of the same cluttered shop. And the proprietor was perhaps as eclectic and impressive as the wares he stocked.
Eamon J. Mule, like his siblings, was the son of Lebanese immigrants. He served with the Coast Guard in World War II as a supply shop scrounger before opening the House of a Million Items when he was 28 years old. And he kept it running for over 30 years.
Perhaps part of his entrepreneurial success was his social nature. The guy could spark a conversation with just about anyone. Not even language was a barrier. Eamon was nearly fluent in German, French, Polish, and Portuguese. And he seemed to be a people pleaser, too. If he didn't have what you were looking for, he'd get it fast, and he wasn't opposed to bargaining.
On nice days, he'd set up on the sidewalk and do some good old-fashioned New England dickering. Outside of the store, Eamon was a husband and a father. He and his wife, Marcelle, had four children, all boys.
Sadly, one son, Amon Jr., passed away from leukemia in 1963 at 14 years old. They also had James, who was stationed with the Navy in South Carolina, while the other two, Jonathan and Mark, often worked at the store with Amon. Both Jonathan and Mark primarily lived at home with Amon and Marcel in their massive, historic, colonial house two blocks away from the store, right in the heart of Warren.
The house was another symbol of the family's status in town, but it would soon become a reminder of a bizarre series of events that ended in Warren's unofficial mayor dead and a decades-old mystery that still lingers in town today. It all began on May 3rd, 1977, when the phone rang at the Warren Police Department with a call for Chief James McSully.
According to reporting by Bruce Da Silva for the Hartford Courant, the man on the line introduced himself as Charles Richards from New York. Charles told the chief that he'd been walking down Main Street in Warren and passed in front of the House of a Million Items when he tripped and fell over some stuff displayed out front and chipped his tooth. Charles said he went to complain to Eamon, but instead of an apology, he says he was rudely told to watch where he was going.
The chief was recording the call, as Charles continued on to say that he'd send the chief $100 to prosecute Amon for violating a town ordinance that forbade merchants from putting inventory on the sidewalk. Charles then threatened Chief McSully, saying he had friends in the mob and there'd be consequences, possibly physical harm, and he'd expose the corruption within the Warren Police Department if he didn't comply.
Hanging up the phone, McSully decided to pop over to Amon's shop and ask him about this guy, Charles Richards. But Amon said he had no knowledge of the incident. The complaint was documented, and that was that. However, Bruce DeSilva writes that Chief McSully received a $100 bill in the mail the next day.
Still, it appears the incident wasn't investigated any further. It was just an odd blip on the radar that didn't hold much significance until almost a year later. Around 8:00 PM on the night of March 13th, 1978, more than 100 firefighters were battling a fierce blaze spreading rapidly through the entire building at 428 Main Street. The house of a million items was burning.
Dave McCarthy writes for the Providence Journal that after three and a half hours, firefighters thought they had it all under control until the roof burst open with flames, threatening the other businesses on the block. It was burning so hot that they could hear cans of paint and oil exploding inside.
It wasn't safe to enter, so instead, firefighters cut holes on the exterior and sent their hoses in to flood the basement where it appeared the blaze originated, hoping to drown out the leaping flames. Warren residents stood in awe of the scene from across the street. When the fire was finally extinguished, smoldering ash and piles of soot-covered inventory was all that was left.
Eamon had spent a full day at the store working with his sons, Jonathan and Mark. He told the Providence Journal nothing was out of place or suspicious when he locked up the store around 6:00 PM. Somehow, not two hours later, the structure was fully engulfed. Fire officials surveyed the remnants in search of the cause, but this was a hardware store. It was filled with flammable materials that burned hot and fast.
Eamon considered what to do next with the store that was both a local landmark and his livelihood. The building was insured, but the policy wouldn't cover anywhere near the value of what was lost. He solemnly stated that he wasn't sure he would rebuild.
But in the following days, Eamon's entrepreneurial spirit emerged like a phoenix from the charred rubble, and soon he was back in a modified form of business. It turned out that some of his stock was actually salvageable, as long as you didn't mind the distinctive aroma of smoke.
He pulled what he could out to the sidewalk and invited customers down to a literal fire sale. Days later, he started making plans to reopen in a building across the street. The fire was still under investigation six days later, on Sunday, March 19th, 1978, when Eamon and a few hired helpers lugged boxes of stuff from the old location to the new one.
Bruce DeSilva writes for the Hartford Courant that around 1.30 that afternoon, Eamon took a break from the heavy lifting and went to grab a couple of bowls of chowder at the annual Clam Boil down the street. He socialized a bit after his meal before heading back to the new store to wrap up for the day. Eamon was home by 4.30 that afternoon and timed to get ready for the evening festivities. It was his wife Marcel's 58th birthday.
Their son Mark was with friends in Connecticut for the weekend, but Eamon and Jonathan would be taking Marcel out to dinner in Providence for the occasion. They made a reservation at Sheraton Islander's Neptune restaurant for 7 p.m. It was just over a 20-minute drive from Warren without traffic, but they planned to leave on the earlier side around 6 p.m.
Jonathan Jamiel would later say that sometime in the hour and a half before they were supposed to leave for Providence, his father got a phone call. He wasn't sure exactly who was on the other end of the line, but Jonathan said it was a man. After a roughly five-minute conversation, Eamon hung up and told his wife and son that he couldn't go to dinner with them anymore. He handed them 20 bucks and said to go on without him. He'd try to meet up with them later on.
As reported by the Providence Journal, Jonathan said Marcel walked out the front door of the house around 5.30 p.m. to go for a brief walk around the neighborhood as she was known to do, just to get a little fresh air before dinner. And then shortly before 6 p.m., Jonathan left the house through the back door and met his mother out front with the car.
When they arrived at the restaurant, Marcel and Jonathan changed their reservation from three people to two, ordered a seafood dinner, and then headed home sometime between 8 and 8:20 p.m. Eamon never did end up joining them. According to Jonathan, the house was dark when they got home. By about 9 o'clock, he and his mother flicked on the television in the living room, not paying any mind to the fact that Eamon didn't seem to be there.
It was a big house, over 5,000 square feet according to today's real estate records. Maybe he was in the other wing? Or perhaps he wasn't even home. He was known to visit his mother on Sundays. After 10 minutes or so, Marcel made her way upstairs to the bedroom to get changed. That's when she noticed that the second floor bathroom light was on and the shower was running.
I don't know what made Marcel open the bathroom door that night, or if she tried calling out for Eamon first and got no response. But when she did go into the bathroom, the sight before her brought screams that could be heard across the house. She yelled for Jonathan to call the police.
Jonathan did not go upstairs to see the cause of his mother's screams. Instead, he picked up the phone as she asked him to do and placed the 911 call at 9:11 p.m. I've tried to obtain a full transcript for the call, or better yet, the audio itself because I know it exists. I've actually heard a clip of it in a news report by WPRI, but Warren PD says it doesn't appear to be in their case file anymore.
But I was able to piece together from that news report and a number of other newspaper articles that in that 911 call, Jonathan asked for police to quote, kindly, end quote, send a patrol car to 33 Miller Street. But he doesn't say why. When police arrive, they find Eamon slumped over in the tub. The shower door was partially open, but it was pierced with at least one small bullet hole.
Amon had been shot multiple times. The atmosphere on Miller Street that night was chaotic. Amon's son Mark arrived back from Connecticut a little before midnight. He left as soon as he got the call from his brother and mother. And while police were processing the bathroom upstairs, the house was filling up with even more Jamiel family members downstairs. Interviews began right there on the scene.
Marcel and Jonathan gave brief statements about the events of their evening. The plans for Marcel's birthday, the phone call that caused Eamon to stay home, dinner in Providence, coming home to a dark and quiet house, and then the discovery in the upstairs shower. Jonathan said they left by 6 and were home around 9, so investigators earmarked that as the killer's window of opportunity.
And what Marcel told police initially narrowed the window down further. She said that she turned off the water before police got there, but it was still running steaming hot when she found Eamon. The water tank at the house could only run hot for about 45 minutes, so if his time of death was between 6 and 9 when Marcel and Jonathan were gone, police thought Eamon was likely shot closer to 9 o'clock, before the hot water ran out.
Marcel added that she noticed the back door in the kitchen was slightly ajar when they got home, but there were no signs of forced entry or a struggle anywhere in the house. Police believed Eamon was ambushed as he stood vulnerable under the running water.
It didn't take long for news of the murder to reach across town. For the second time in a week, Eamon was at the center of an unexplainable tragedy in Warren. First, the fire, and now this. Police were considering the possibility that the fire and murder were connected, but they couldn't have anticipated the can of worms they were about to open as they started digging deeper into the life of Eamon Jamiel.
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Eamon's family held a private service on March 23rd. Marcel then had him cremated, and his ashes were spread in the Warren River. Six days later, police took to that same waterway in search of the gun that killed him. The medical examiner found that Eamon had been shot 11 times. At least five of those shots were in his head and face, while the others hit his shoulder, chest, and back.
Analysis of the bullets determined that they were fired from a .32 caliber gun, later identified as a revolver. It meant Amon's killer had to stop and reload the gun before continuing. Investigators called it overkill, a crime of intense passion.
The Providence Journal reports that investigators learned in the days following that the same type of gun, a .32 caliber Harrington Richardson revolver, was missing from the inventory at Amon's store. However, police either couldn't or wouldn't confirm if the missing gun was in fact the murder weapon. They tried dragging the river near the Jamiel house at the end of Miller Street, but the rushing current and murky waters made it difficult to find anything.
The search was fruitless. With the investigation ongoing, police weren't saying much. But a team of reporters from the Providence Journal Bulletin were conducting an investigation of their own. Staff writers Bruce Da Silva, Gene Edwards, Berkley Hudson, Bob Mello, Randall Richard, and Wayne Wooster all contributed to an in-depth report in April of 1978 that gives a look into an active homicide case that we might not otherwise get.
Witnesses shared details with the writers of the Providence Journal that raised the question of motive in Amon's death. For a well-liked business owner and married family man with no apparent enemies, could it have been about money?
He was perceived to be a wealthy guy, but he also seemed to be a little bit funny about his money. Eamon dealt mostly in cash, but rather than deposit it somewhere or even put it in the safe at the store, he had a number of secret cash piles around the building. He called them hidey holes, where he stashed away stacks and stacks of bills. We're talking thousands of dollars worth.
Eamon's brother, Beau, said that about three months earlier in January the same year, Eamon noticed that cash was disappearing from those hidey holes, almost $4,200 worth. He confided in Beau about it, but waited a few weeks before reporting it to police. Eamon was very conscious of his status in Warren, and he didn't want the small-town rumor mill to scoop up the story and run with it.
Meanwhile, around the same time the money disappeared from Eamon's secret stash, his son Jonathan was driving through town in a flashy new car. Though it sounds like he gave police a short version of events on the night of his father's murder, investigators said 20-year-old Jonathan Jamiel had stopped cooperating and refused to give a formal interview for more than two weeks.
However, Jonathan told the Providence Journal that was a lie, though his lawyer had advised him not to bother with police any further, because the investigation had started to turn its attention to Eamon's own family members. Police scrutinized Jonathan's behavior in the months leading up to the murder, and they found that he'd recently made some big purchases.
On January 28th, 1978, Jonathan walked into a car dealership and plunked down $8,800 in cash for a one-owner 1977 black Lincoln Continental. The car was actually priced at $89.50, though, so Jonathan returned a few days later with the remaining $150 plus $500 for registration fees and other costs. He'd also opened a savings account in the previous few months.
depositing $4,001 upon opening, and then on March 20th, the day after the murder, he deposited another $1,200. Other than working at the store with Eamon here and there, reports say Jonathan was an unemployed college student at the time. So where the heck was he getting all that cash? Jonathan had an explanation. His money came from ABBA.
Now, ABBA was a pop music group out of Sweden who had global commercial success in the late 70s and 80s, but that's not the ABBA Jonathan is talking about. In a recorded interview with the Providence Journal Bulletin two days after the murder, Jonathan explained that ABBA was the leader of a religious movement based out of Texas, though Jonathan said they had followers all over the place.
The so-called movement was rooted in King James' version of the New and Old Testaments, and every member of the movement had the potential to become saints. They believed in nonviolence and the golden rule, do unto others, etc., etc., and their mission was to feed, clothe, and house the poor and hungry. The mission was going to be made possible by Abba's business endeavor called TLN.
Jonathan described TLN as a multinational import-export corporation that dealt in vertical and horizontal commodities. Side note: this is giving Art Vandeley, if you know, you know. Anyway, Jonathan was apparently part of TLN's expansion in Bristol County, Rhode Island. Except when he tried to get the nonprofit organization incorporated, all three attempts were denied.
The Providence Journal uncovered filing documents for Jonathan's organization, which would be called the Lord's Nook, a.k.a. TLN. And the applications were riddled with technical mistakes and seemingly fake names of members who were apparently all saints, and a bizarre explanation of the purpose of the nonprofit. I'll read you just a section of it.
And it just goes on from there.
No need to hit the back 30 button to try and understand what I just read you because I've tried myself and after dozens of attempts, I can see why officials weren't able to approve the application. It's a word salad, no dressing. Not to mention, there was no record of a notary with the name that was stamped on the paperwork and the whole thing seemed like a fabrication, so his attempts to make TLN official were axed.
Still, Jonathan had business cards that identified himself as the coordinator for the Lord's Nook, and the vanity plate on his Lincoln read "TLN." Even his mother reportedly said that's how he made his money.
And Jonathan didn't seem to care how it sounded or how suspicious it looked that his large purchases and deposits were made during the same months his father noticed money disappearing from his hidey holes. He knew police were scrutinizing him, but he had his own theory of what happened to his father. And it put the blame right back on the very people who were supposed to be solving the crime.
In the same recorded interview with the Providence Journal Bulletin, Jonathan claimed that his father had been threatened over the course of a year leading up to the fire and his murder.
There was that threat from the guy who allegedly chipped his tooth while tripping over things outside Eamon's shop. Police knew about that one already. But according to further conversations with Jonathan, as well as Mark and Marcel, sometime in the year before the fire, Eamon received an envelope in the mail containing only a book of matches. The family said they took it as a threat of arson. And wouldn't you know it, his store burned down months later.
Bruce De Silva reports in the Hartford Courant that other unnamed family members claimed Amon had been visited by two men from Massachusetts who wanted him to buy stolen weapons, but Amon refused and was threatened over it. And then there was a story about supposed agents of a foreign government trying to get Amon to do something that quote "wasn't above board," end quote. According to Jonathan, it all pointed to a much larger conspiracy than anyone could possibly imagine.
He claimed that Amon's "house of a million items" was actually a front for a crime ring. Jonathan said his father had been laundering money for the Warren Police Department's investments in undisclosed illegal activity since 1970, but was trying to get out of it and had been threatened as a result.
Jonathan went on to accuse Warren Police Chief Samuel Correa and Chief James McSully of being wrapped up in the crime ring and directly involved with the fire and murder. When the paper reached out to Mark to see what he knew about the alleged crime ring and money laundering, not only did Mark back Jonathan up, he doubled down on his brother's story and said he had documents that would expose the whole operation and everyone involved.
Unfortunately, Mark couldn't furnish those documents at the time. He said he'd given them to family and friends, and if anything happened to himself or Jonathan or their mother, those family and friends were instructed to give the documents to the media.
As you can imagine, Jonathan and Mark's accusations were incendiary. Warren police denied everything and even filed a libel lawsuit against the brothers days after the story ran in the paper.
It was beginning to get very noisy in Warren. The stories of international religious leaders and alleged crime rings and accusations of corruption were swirling around town as the investigation into both the fire and murder continued. And in the fall of 1978, it seemed charges were imminent.
On September 25th, 1978, six months after his murder, a grand jury was set to hear evidence in the shooting death of Eamon Jamiel. The Attorney General's office would only say that they were seeking an indictment of a single male suspect and wouldn't comment on the evidence they had on this suspect. But law enforcement weren't as tight-lipped.
Apparently, that threat received by Chief McSully in 1977 from the guy who said he chipped his tooth, voice prints from the recording of that phone call were compared to voice prints recorded from the suspect, and they matched. The caller's voice was positively identified as the voice of the suspect in Amon's murder.
Other evidence they intended to present to the grand jury included call records from the night of the murder. Jonathan had told police that his father received a phone call from someone that caused him to stay home that night, and up until this point we weren't even sure if that call actually happened. But records showed there was an incoming call at the house, and the precise time of that call
And the records also showed the time of an outgoing call to the restaurant in Providence to make the reservation for Marcel's birthday dinner. However, officials wouldn't share the specific timestamps or explain the significance of the call times. The evidence that the grand jury would hear also included statements made to police by the suspect, but officials didn't disclose the content of those statements either.
It was a promising development in the unsolved homicide of Eamon Jamiel. But September 25th rolled around and for whatever reason, the grand jury never heard the case and no indictments were handed down. Six months after that, the one-year anniversary of Eamon's murder came and went without an arrest, but not without some interesting developments.
On June 26, 1979, Amon's brothers, Joseph and Morfis, appeared before the city council and asked them to petition the Attorney General's office to have a grand jury investigate Amon's murder. After hearing the brothers out, the city council voted in favor of the request. That same night, an alarming call came into the Warren Police Station.
According to reporting in the Providence Journal, at 8.36 p.m. that night, Jonathan Jamiel called the police department and said a murder had just taken place at 14 Washington Street. It was Eamon's brother Joseph's address. When police arrived at the scene, they realized it was a hoax and soon arrested Jonathan Jamiel on charges of making a false complaint.
When police attempted to bring Jonathan for an immediate arraignment in the courtroom at City Hall, he refused until the judge came to see him, and then Jonathan ripped up the complaint in front of the judge. The judge ordered Jonathan to be sent to the Institute of Mental Health where he'd remain under observation and evaluation pending trial. He was later found competent to stand trial, but had to continue outpatient treatment.
I'm unable to discern if Jonathan ever actually went to trial on those false complaint charges or if he was convicted. But amidst the trouble Jonathan was getting himself into, police were still working on Eamon's case and intended to present it to a grand jury in October of 1979, for real this time. Again, it seemed like charges might be imminent and Eamon's family and everyone else in Warren was waiting to hear the name of a suspect revealed. But that didn't happen.
Although the grand jury did hear testimony from 23 witnesses over the course of four days, they were unable to hand down an indictment.
As quoted by Tracy Breton for the Providence Journal, the report said, "Based on the facts presented, the grand jury has concluded that such evidence does not support sufficient proof to bring an indictment against any individual or individuals." But the grand jurors also said that if police could collect more evidence, the case could be presented once again to another grand jury.
After that, there would be no updates about Amon's case for over five years. In 1983, Amon's estate was settled and his wife and three sons split nearly $600,000 in assets, with half going to Marcel and the rest divided amongst Mark, Jonathan, and James.
After the failure to secure an indictment in 1979, Eamon Jamiel's case went ice cold until 1985, when the new Warren police chief announced that they'd reopened the investigation and uncovered critical new evidence.
Police Chief Emilio Scalante Jr. of Warren PD, Detective Sergeant Eli Barquette, and the Deputy State Fire Marshal Henry Serbst reopened the Eamon J. Mule homicide and arson case in late 1984. According to Scott McKay and Bob Mello's reporting in the Providence Journal Bulletin, after four months of reexamining evidence, tracking down witnesses, and employing quote-unquote new police techniques, they said they had a major breakthrough.
Though Chief Squalante wouldn't divulge what the breakthrough was, he hinted that they might be able to bring the case before a grand jury again. Sure enough, his hints held true, though it wouldn't be until over a year later in September of 1986.
Now, grand jury proceedings are secret. All documents and filings are supposed to be under seal, so it's rare, or rather impossible, to get a glimpse into what evidence was presented and any testimony heard by the jurors. However, a reporter for the Providence Journal got his hands on a subpoena that was somehow unsealed, and it held the biggest bombshell the case had seen in the last eight and a half years.
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An interstate subpoena filed by the Attorney General's Office on Friday, September 26, 1986, identified Jonathan Jamiel as a suspect in his father's murder.
Wayne Wooster reported on the contents of the subpoena for the Providence Journal, writing that the AG sought records of Jonathan's financial transactions from January 1st, 1976 through December 31st, 1980, as well as bank records for the Lord's Nook, if they existed.
The document also included details about the money stolen from Eamon's secret stashes in the months before the murder, as well as Jonathan's cash transactions for the car and large deposits in his bank accounts in the months prior to the murder and the days immediately following.
The subpoena even included testimony from a friend of Jonathan's named Susan, who said Jonathan went to Boston's fanciest restaurants and wore expensive clothing, gold jewelry, a diamond necklace and watch, and he told her once that he would be coming into a lot of money in the near future. But the document, and all of the info in it, should have been sealed.
So an investigation was launched into the apparent leak and in the meantime, the grand jury proceedings were postponed. Jonathan's lawyer accused Attorney General Arlene Violet of leaking the information to the press for her own political purposes. But the investigation ultimately found that the release of the document was more likely a miscommunication.
Catherine Gregg reported for the Providence Journal that, essentially, there were two files and one was ordered to be sealed, but the other order to seal the duplicate second file didn't get to the clerk's office, and so it was released to the reporter when he asked for it. But regardless of how the information got out, it was damaging to the case. The release of a document like that possibly endangered Donathan's life.
Jonathan's lawyer said his client had been through hell and was being tried in the court of public opinion. He said the Jamil sons and widow now lived in fear. Amidst the controversy, it seemed everyone had lost the plot. The grand jury session concluded without an indictment. Jonathan Jamil might have been suspected of killing his own father, but the evidence apparently wasn't enough to make any charges against him official.
At the same time the grand jury document fiasco was going on in 1986, the two insurance companies that had insured Amon's store were fighting in court over who would pay the claims resulting from the fire. Bruce De Silva reports for the Hartford Courant that the companies decided to sue Amon's heirs and his estate to try to get out of paying anything.
So, as part of the suit, the insurance companies had to do an investigation of their own into the arson and detail their findings in discovery before a trial. That insurance investigation alleged that, quote, one or more of the heirs of Eamon A. Jamiel was involved in the incendiary fire, end quote.
According to a pre-trial memorandum obtained by Bruce Da Silva for the Hartford Courant, Jonathan deposited $1,400 in small bills into his savings account the morning after the fire. And a witness said they watched as Jonathan tore up the deposit slip and threw it away along with a key into a trash can at the bank. The insurance companies learned through police that the key he threw away was for the cash register at Eamon's store.
The memorandum also discloses results of a polygraph test from Mark J. Neal that showed he may have lied about not knowing who killed his father. It also states in no uncertain terms that the person who claimed to chip his tooth in front of Amon's store was actually Jonathan, using a fake name.
But despite the circumstantial evidence, officials could never identify who started the fire at Amon's store, and neither could the insurance companies. The suit against Amon's heirs was ultimately settled out of court, with the companies paying $50,000, only about half of the total policies. With the insurance suit settled and the grand jury proceedings over, what were next steps for the case?
State Police Lieutenant Michael Quinn told Celeste Katz of the Providence Journal that they didn't have enough evidence to charge anyone. By the sounds of it, there were no plans to reinvigorate the investigation after three unsuccessful attempts to get an indictment either. The story of Eamon J. Meal's murder more or less faded into the mist.
Mark, Jonathan, and Marcel stayed in Warren, in the same house where it all happened, and went about their lives. But they were never really any good at keeping a low profile, despite the suspicion that followed the family everywhere they went. In 1991, on the morning before the 13th anniversary of Eamon's murder, an anonymous caller notified police that there was some kind of disturbance happening inside the Jamiel house.
When officers responded, they had to break up a physical fight between Mark and Jonathan. Bob Mello reports for the Providence Journal that Jonathan claimed they got into an argument that morning about control of the household and about their father's murder, and both Mark and his mother came at him. But Mark said Jonathan attacked their mother, and he intervened. However, Marcel denied even seeing the fight or being in the room when it all went down.
Michael McKinney reports in the Providence Journal that more than 10 years later, in 2003, the spotlight was on the Jamiel family once again when Jonathan called police and alleged that Mark was threatening him with the same gun that Mark allegedly used to kill their father. Officers investigated the complaint but found no evidence of guns at the Jamiel home, and Mark apparently wasn't even there when the supposed threat was made.
Jonathan was ultimately found guilty of filing a false complaint. There have been other incidents in the past several decades between the brothers and their mother too, but as far as I can tell, Jonathan finally moved out of the house after being ordered to have no contact with Marcel in 2004. Though Marcel may have asked that the no contact order be dropped. The details are fuzzy. Marcel died four years after that in 2008.
She was 88 years old. Her obituary lists her children as "Amon Jr., James, and Jonathan." Mark's name is missing. The 1978 murder of Amon Jamiel remains unsolved to this day. No charges have been filed against anyone over the course of almost 50 years, and without new evidence, the case simply can't go any further.
Current investigators would face an uphill battle piecing together the inconsistent stories and timelines provided by the very people under suspicion. Jonathan and Mark have been subject to endless scrutiny throughout the years. But there are some important questions we need to ask about the matriarch of the family too.
Marcel told police that when she and Jonathan got home on the night of the murder, she noticed the back door in the kitchen was hanging open a little.
Since there were no signs of forced entry, a door slightly ajar suggests that's how the killer came and went, right? But Bruce De Silva reported that when police checked the door themselves, they found that it closed automatically. I don't know if there was like an auto-close mechanism on it or if it was just a heavy old door that tended to swing itself shut, but they could not duplicate the door hanging open like Marcel said she saw.
And some details from the autopsy report that I haven't told you about yet raise some other questions about Marcel's version of events too. Eamon's stomach contained undigested clams. They were from his multiple bowls of chowder at the clam bake earlier that day, of course, but it meant that the established timeline of his murder could be off by as much as three hours.
Remember, Marcel told police that the water was steaming hot when she found Eamon in the tub, making the possible time of death on the later side of the 6 to 9 o'clock range. But if he still hadn't fully digested his lunch, the medical examiner shifted the time of death much earlier, probably closer to 6 p.m., roughly the same time Jonathan supposedly left the house through the back door to meet Marcel after her walk around the neighborhood.
And then there's the fact that Marcel had Eamon's body cremated after his funeral service, and his ashes were spread in the river. It's odd, because reports say Eamon had purchased 12 plots in the Gate of Heaven cemetery for himself and his family members.
His son, Eamon Jr., was already buried there, and that's where Marcel would eventually be buried too. So then, why would his wife have Eamon cremated within days of his murder? I mean, the medical examiner had already performed an autopsy, so it's not incredibly suspicious, but it's not not suspicious. I mean, Eamon seemed to have clear wishes for what would happen to him after his death, and those just weren't followed.
But the part that really trips me up about this whole thing is this. WPRI reports that once Amon's body was removed from the bathroom and law enforcement had finished processing the scene that night, the scene wasn't sealed. At all. No one stood guard, it wasn't taped off, nothing.
Marcel, Jonathan, Mark, and perhaps other members of the family too were all permitted to remain at the house and were just told not to go in the bathroom. But when the last officer cleared out, Marcel grabbed her cleaning supplies, climbed the stairs, and scrubbed the bathroom until it sparkled.
A murder scene wiped clean. No fingerprints to speak of. And the chances of finding any DNA from the killer after that had to be slim if they even tried. This was 1978, after all. DNA analysis would have been relatively rudimentary compared to what investigators have to work with today. And besides, the only person ever named as a suspect in this case lived in the same house as the victim.
No doubt Jonathan's DNA and fingerprints were everywhere. But the possibility remains that Eamon Jamiel's killer could be someone else entirely. A still unknown person that the investigation has yet to uncover after all these years. If only the right pieces of the puzzle would surface.
If you have any information about the unsolved homicide of Eamon Jamiel, please contact the Cold Case Rhode Island tip line at 1-877-RI-SOLVE. Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. You can find all source material for this case at darkdowneast.com. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram at darkdowneast.
This platform is for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones and for those who are still searching for answers. I'm not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East. Dark Down East is a production of Kylie Media and Audiocheck. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
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