The so-called talk-show murder trial outraged a nation, but Jones tells Jane Pauley on Tuesday night's edition of Dateline NBC that she "absolutely" would do that same show again--"it's a great topic," she says. (That would be "secret crushes"--the theme from the infamous, never-aired episode--not murder.)
"We don't do anything [on the show] differently because we don't feel there was anything to change," the former Star Search stand-up comic says. "We do the same kind of show. We check out guests the same way that we do. We haven't changed a thing."
That should come as disquieting news to those familiar with the case of Jonathan Schmitz. Last November, the 26-year-old Michigan man was convicted of the second-degree murder of Scott Amedure, the man who told a Jenny Jones audience that he had a crush on Schmitz. Schmitz was booked on the March 1995 show under the pretense that was going to meet a secret admirer.
Producers say they warned Schmitz it could be a man; still, he said he was humiliated to find Amedure on the Jones stage. Three days after the show was taped, Schmitz--portrayed at trial as suffering from mental and physical problems--went to Amedure's trailer home and shot the man dead.
Jones later read an on-air apology. Off-air, the talk-show host didn't utter a peep to Amedure's family--on the "bad advice" of attorneys, she says.
"I wanted to contact Amedure's mother--immediately. I said, 'Let's send flowers, let's send a note. I'd like to call. I'd like to go to the funeral,'" Jones says.
The Amedure snub is the one thing Jones expresses regrets about. ("It's a lesson to me to go with my gut. To go with my heart," she says.)
During the Dateline interview, Jones says it's important for her to get facts about the case out to the public. For one thing, Schmitz suspected that Amedure was his "secret crush" before the show, Jones says.
"He asked [Amedure] the night before, he said, 'Scott, is it you?' And Scott said, 'What if it is?' And Jonathan said, 'That's fine. I'm gonna go for it. I don't care what anybody thinks,'" Jones tells Pauley.
Schmitz is currently serving a 25- to 50-year prison sentence.