Amanda Bell only has two photographs of she and her mother together.

That’s because her mother, Cheryl Jones, was murdered in a Houston hotel room on March 7, 1980, shortly after Bell’s birth. Posing as a magazine photographer — Jackie Sue Schut — had kidnapped Jones and the newborn Bell from a New Orleans Navy base. But something had spooked Schut, so Bell was returned unharmed to her father, Dennis Jones, in New Orleans. Hotel maids found Jones dead in her room.

A medical examiner ruled the death a suicide but investigators soon connected the case to the one in Athens, Alabama.

Two months earlier, on Jan. 21, 1980, Schut had murdered an Athens mother — Geneva Clemons — and kidnapped her newborn son, James. She had tricked Clemons into thinking she was a magazine photographer seeking pictures for a Beautiful Baby Contest. Schut and her husband, Harold, were actually intending to sell the infant for $2,000. With a manhunt underway, they abandoned the 16-day-old baby on that frigid January night. An observant farmer found him alive in a field.

After years of freedom, Schut was finally brought to justice in the Clemons murder-kidnapping in 1987 and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. Although the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles denied Schut parole in 2014, she has another chance Aug. 29.

Although Schut was never charged in the murder of Cheryl Jones, Bell, now 37, will travel from her home in Auburn, New York, to Alabama on Aug. 25 to be at that hearing. She will be armed with a petition filled with the names of, hopefully, 1,000 people who oppose Schut’s release. Bell has created an online petition and is hoping people in Athens and elsewhere will sign it. She already has more than 900 signatures. You can find the petition at

https://www.change.org/p/alabama-board-of-pardons-and-paroles-keep-jackie-schut-in-prison.

Bell, now 37, also has a blog on Facebook titled My Journey For Justice.

In the short term, Bell wants to keep Schut locked up. Ultimately, she wants Schut tried in Houston for killing her mother. She is trying to contact investigators in the case now. She is also trying to get her mother’s death certificate changed. It says her mother’s death was suicide by barbiturates. That theory changed when investigators in Houston learned about the Alabama case.

When the true crime author Ann Rule wrote a book about the kidnappings, which was published in 2014, Tracy Clemons, the 5-year-old girl who saw Schut murder her mother, spoke to The News Courier about her part in the book. Bell was also interviewed for the book, she said.

Bell did not learn about the circumstances of the murder-kidnapping until she was 12. Her father had wanted to shield his daughter from the horror of it. She wanted learn more about the case.

“He didn’t want me digging around in it,” she said. “He didn’t want me contacting Jackie (Schut). When I found out the same thing had happened to another baby, I desperately, desperately, desperately wanted to find him. My dad had wanted me to be so far away from it that he had told me James Clemons (the other kidnapped newborn) had died in a car accident.”

Later, she found out he wasn’t dead.

“I was not mad,” she said. “As a parent myself, I understood. But, I was so relieved he was alive and I wanted to speak to him. He did not want to speak to me. He was a man and trying to put it behind him himself. It was clearly painful to him too.”

Even as an adult, Bell finds the case so disturbing it is difficult for her to comprehend it.

“I appreciate my father protected me, but I still have a lot of questions that only Jackie can answer.

Because of the book, Bell did meet Tracy, who still lives in Athens, and described her as “the very sweetest lady you could ever meet.”

Over the years, Bell’s father received victim-notification letters about parole hearings but he did not participate, Bell said. “I think he said he wanted to put it behind him.”

When her father died, the letters came to Bell.

She is seeking justice on Aug. 29 to make sure Schut stays put in Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka, Alabama.

“I didn’t want any chance of her getting out,” Bell said. “I decided to attend the hearing as a victim because the same woman killed my mother, and I’m gonna come armed with as many signatures as I can get.”