Billy Jones' criminal past and the murder of Michael Theaker

By the age of 16, he had become one of Warrington’s youngest murderers after a brutal attack left dad-to-be Michael Theaker dead.

Michael Theaker

Now, at 29, Jones is back behind bars after planting a grenade underneath a car outside a family home in Orford in a feud between rival gangs.

As a child, Billy Jones was a ‘streetwise kid’ who would often be found playing out in the streets – the same streets he would be terrorising by the time he had reached his mid-teenage years.

Even before he became a killer, the youngster had a long criminal record of community orders and ASBOs - and indeed became the youngest person in Warrington to be given an ASBO.

First appearing before the courts in 2004, he would go on to rack up 14 convictions for 34 offences over the next two years - including driving violations, threatening behaviour, theft and shoplifting.

Billy Jones outside Warrington Magistrates Court aged 13

Less than two weeks before the murder of Michael Theaker, Billy Jones had walked free from court after breaking another teenager’s jaw in an unprovoked attack on Grasmere Avenue.

On that occasion, he was handed a supervision order by magistrates after being convicted of inflicting grievous bodily harm.

And at the time of the attack on Mr Theaker, he was out on bail pending proceedings over an allegation of affray – for which he would later receive four months inside.

But the worst was yet to come.

A police source told the Warrington Guardian in 2006: “He appears to be one of those children who has gone off the rails and was always going to.”

On the evening of January 24 that year, Jones and brothers Colin and David Algie punched, kicked and stamped on Michael Theaker on Hallfields Road after picking an argument with the 22-year-old and his friends on the number 21 bus.

Colin and David Algie

The youngest of the trio, Jones was the ringleader of the attack.

Mr Theaker staggered away from the scene but collapsed shortly afterwards and died six days later – the day after his mum Jackie’s birthday – of a brain haemorrhage, having suffered severe head injuries.

Above; Michael Theaker, and, below; his parents Jackie and Mike Theaker

In March that year, his daughter Ellie May was born without a father.

Jones was jailed for 10-and-a-half years in December 2006 after admitting murder, while the Algies were handed 13 years each having been found guilty after a trial.

Colin and David Algie

Police officers found that the streets of Orford had been notably quieter in the months since Jones had been held in custody awaiting court proceedings.

But Jones’ subsequent time in HMP Moorland was not without notoriety.

In December 2008, his mum Christine smuggled drugs into the Doncaster prison for her son – telling a court that he had been bullied by other inmates while inside.

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She was jailed for 10 months in 2010, with a trial hearing that she had hid three bags of cannabis in her bra before placing them into a packet of Mini Cheddars which she then handed to her son.

Billy Jones and his mum Christine in 2004

It is believed that Jones had only been out of prison for around a year before he was in trouble with the law again.

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His DNA was found on the pin of a grenade left under a Vauxhall Insignia on Cleveland Road shortly after midnight one night in February 2018, outside a house where four children were asleep upstairs.

Jones is now facing another lengthy spell behind bars.