Murder in Samaria adds tragedy to legacy of real-life Indiana Jones

The daughter of Vendyl Jones, biblical archeologist who spent decades looking for the Lost Ark, was allegedly murdered by her mentally ill son.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The murder 10 days ago of Sarah Richardson, a Jewish convert who lived in a Samarian settlement, added tragedy to the legacy of a real-life Indiana Jones who spent decades searching for the Lost Ark of the Covenant, as did the movie character.

Richardson, 73, was found dead at her home in the village of Maale Levona, and her mentally ill son, Joel, was arrested for her murder after signs of a struggle were found on her body. Police say Joel was found digging a hole in the family’s garden, adding that he refused to let them enter the house.

An autopsy was inconclusive, however, and he was released under restrictive conditions, until his father called the authorities on Saturday, saying that Joel had threatened him with a large knife, which led to his re-arrest.

Under questioning, Joel admitted to the murder and even reenacted it at the scene.

According to Israeli TV Channel 12, he also told the police that he had “received messages from God” telling him to kill either his father or the family dog.

His public defender said that the police had greatly overstepped their bounds and demanded her client’s release.

“It is unacceptable for the police to trample on the basic rights of a suspect, especially one with a disability,” Anat Kirshenberg said in a statement. “Officers took a man in psychological distress directly from psychiatric hospitalization … interrogated him without letting him consult a lawyer or sleep [and] took him at 4:30 a.m. to his mother’s apartment for a reenactment.”

“All signs point to a false confession,” she declared.

Richardson was the daughter of Vendyl Jones, who started his career as a Baptist preacher.

The local Klu Klux Klan chapter terrorized Jones and his family, Richardson told a Benjamin region paper in 2008, over his philosemitic teachings emphasizing the biblical role of Jews as the chosen people.

“They came to our house at night, smashed windows and car windshields, and sometimes even fired shots,” she recalled.

Jones soon turned his entire life around after delving into the Torah and discovering the seven Noahide laws promulgated there for all non-Jews to observe in order to create an orderly society based on the belief in one God.

He is credited by many rabbis with globalizing the modern Noahide movement, leading it for decades. His children, meanwhile, all eventually converted to Judaism.

In 1966, he moved the family to Israel and began a lifelong commitment to discovering evidence of the Jewish Temples that once stood in the heart of Jerusalem.

“Unlike grave robbers motivated by greed or atheist archaeologists who see Temple vessels as nothing more than historical relics, my father had a very different motivation,” Richardson said in the interview. “To him, these items are essential for the redemption of the world.”

Although other archeologists scoffed, Jones believed at one point that he had found the site of the ancient city of Gilgal, where the Ark of the Covenant had been kept for the first 14 years of the Jewish people’s conquest of Israel after leaving Egypt.

He also believed he knew where the Ark could be found but said he was stopped from searching by the Israeli government.

He led eight expeditions in the Qumran area of the Judean Desert and in one cave he found more than 600 pounds of an aromatic powder that he described as the incense used in Temple rites, a claim supported by lab tests in both the Weizmann Institute and Bar Ilan University.

Jones publicly claimed that he was the inspiration for the Indiana Jones character made famous in the 1981 hit movie “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” though director Steven Spielberg has denied the claim.