2nd Degree Murder

I knew something was weird about this case the first time I saw Christopher Stephen Jones do a television interview. He was too anxious to get on the camera and cry, for my taste. I can imagine the pressure that was building up inside him when things didn't unfold the way he planned. He couldn't wait for the media to come to him. He jumped the gun and went to them. He had two strikes against him from the start. The friends and family of Heather Palumbo-Jones didn't believe him and neither did the public. Destroying all credibility and any chance of establishing an alibi along the way. He was hoping for a "Unsolved Mysteries" ending and he got "Law and Order" instead.

Christopher Jones definitely isn't a cool customer. He started putting his foot in his mouth the day after his wife was reported missing. When he went to the house and found his seven year old daughter in the house alone, and didn't call the police That just didn't sound right. He couldn't come back with a plausible excuse after that.  When he said him and his wife got into a fight the night before she disappeared.  That was almost like confessing to something in itself. We couldn't call it murder. The body hadn't been found yet. But the last person that saw her alive was him. That  wasn't a good look.

There is more to this story than meets the eye. The couple was in the midst of a custody battle over their children I heard . But he claimed they talked on a daily basis. I think he wanted more than just the children back. He didn't want her to leave either. But based on the way things looked, that wasn't going to happen. She had loss a lot of weight and was starting a new life without him. Something is strange about her friends too. The couple was married for nine years and had two children together Yet none of her friends liked him at all. Somewhere in the mix there is a dead cat on  the line. This is strictly conjecture on my part. But I think one of them was crossing over. I don't know which one it was though. But there was some things just looked suspicious. After he finally confessed to killing his wife. Why was he only charged with 2nd degree murder?