A man charged for murder for the disappearance of a woman in early 2022 will now face a judge’s sentence after he was found guilty by a jury following this week’s murder trial in a Polk County courtroom.

Jury deliberations went three hours after closing arguments were made in the murder trial of the State versus Joseph Leroy Jones on Friday, February 2. Jurors came back to find Jones guilty on all three of the counts he faced in front of Tallapoosa Circuit Superior Court Judge Andrew Roper.

He’ll now face sentencing for malice murder, felony murder and aggravated assault for the death of Monisha Sharae Leath.

Leath went missing in February 2022 and her remains have still yet to be located by authorities. The 32-year-old was last known in the location of the Floyd-Polk County lines when she went missing on February 24 just under two years ago.

Jones was brought back to Polk County after being charged for murder in August 2022.

Tallapoosa Circuit District Attorney Jack Browning personally tried the case, and said that even though justice was served the loss of Leath to her family and not being able to say goodbye is a painful reminder daily of the hole left with her disappearance.

“A successful prosecution never truly brings closure for a victim’s family in a murder case,” Browning said. “And where the victim’s body was never found, there is basically no sense of any sort of closure. But I’m comforted in knowing that the jury’s verdict in this case did bring a sense of justice to the family that Mr. Jones has now been held accountable for the death of their loved one. On that note, I thank the jury for their attentiveness and dedication to their civic duty of serving as jurors in this case: without our community being willing to perform their civic duty, our criminal justice system would not work.”

Browning said the case provided a difficult prosecution due to Leath still missing, and the prosecution and conviction on such a case is rare. He credited much of that to the work of law enforcement agencies cooperating with one another in an investigation that included agents from the GBI, officers in McDuffie County, Floyd County, the City of Rome, and 911 operations in Polk and Floyd counties.

“I want to commend and thank the tireless and dedicated work of all the law enforcement agencies who worked on this case, particularly our local GBI agent, Ghee Wilson, and Cedartown Police Department officers, particular Josh Jackson. Without their steadfast dedication in investigating this case, prosecuting it would not have been possible,” Browning said.

Sentencing will come on March 6, just a week more than two years after Leath disappeared.