Man arrested six years after wife found murdered in Patchogue

PATCHOGUE, Long Island (WABC) -- A husband is under arrest in the murder of his wife six years ago on Long Island.

Joseph Jones didn't have much to say as detectives led him to jail Friday night, accused of murdering his wife half a decade ago.

Back then, he couldn't stop talking.

"I can barely sleep, I can't eat. Every time I eat I throw up and get sick," Jones said in 2010.

It was days before Christmas in 2010, and the body of 31-year-old Nicole Tessa had turned up about a football field away from the home she shared with Jones and their 3-year-old son.

Jones was seemingly beside himself with grief, and claimed Tessa had disappeared days earlier, but he'd waited two days to report her missing. It didn't take long for a police dog to find her body.

"I got my son inside asking me, 'What's going on, why you so sad?' I don't even know how to explain to him," Jones had said. "A caring, loving mother who tried to do everything she could for her children and her family and everything."

When investigators took Jones in for questioning back then, he told them he and Tessa had been arguing over drugs, when he left in a huff, and returned to find her gone, having left their son, he claimed, with a family member.

At the time, neighbors said the couple fought regularly.

"You don't argue with somebody and then he leaves and then she leaves and then she's found in the woods dead. I mean it doesn't make any sense," a neighbor said in 2010.