‘I want to stop wondering’: Sister of Esther Jones seeks closure as search for remains continues

The sister of Esther Jones, who is believed to have been murdered, speaks with CTV's Hafsa Arif.

Every morning Kathy Dobson raises the Canadian flag outside her home. Next to it, a smaller one flutters in the wind; it’s homemade, stitched with a name and a line of music: “Esther Jones: The song has ended, but the melody lingers on.”

It has been months since her sister Esther Jones was killed. Dobson says the grief still sits close to the surface and the unanswered questions are just as sharp.

Jones was 55 when she was reported missing on Sept. 2, 2024. She was last seen alive at the bible college in Kingston, N.S., on Aug. 31, 2024.

While the Nova Scotia RCMP has charged a man from the same community for first-degree murder, investigators have yet to recover Jones’s remains.

“I’m ready to have a way to lay her to rest,” says Dobson. “I want to stop wondering.”

Dobson says one of the hardest parts of the loss has been the uncertainty around her sister’s final resting place. At first, she said not having a body didn’t feel like a priority, but over time, that changed.

“I thought I could be OK without her remains, as long as I know she wasn’t being held somewhere suffering, but now I go behind every tree. I look at the bay and wonder, is she coming on the next wave? I thought if I just knew where she was laid to rest, I could relax. I could stop looking.”

Dobson still lives in the community where she and Jones grew up. For her, grief is not a quiet, distant process. It’s a daily presence.

“Some of our siblings live out of province,” she says. “If my siblings hear something in the news it brings back the pain.

“But for me, it’s always in front of me. I pass the street where she lives. I go to the store and see faces that remind me of her. I hear music we used to play. It’s never gone.”

The two sisters shared a quiet but deep bond strengthened by years of escaping through music – a shared love that’s taken on even more meaning since Jones’s death.

“Music was our survival tool,” said Dobson. “If the day was hard, we got through it by knowing we could come home and play. That’s why it’s so hard she died in her music. That was supposed to be her safe place.”

Police believe Jones was killed at the Kingston Bible College on Aug. 31. They say the investigation remains active and recently searched the Annapolis River after receiving a tip.

Dobson believes investigators are working hard on the case, but she wishes communication with the family was more direct.

“What’s hard is finding out developments through the news instead of being told personally,” she said. “I understand it, but it hurts.”

Still, some gestures have offered comfort. A local cemetery has donated a burial plot in Jones’s honour. Purple ribbons are also seen tied around fences and trees across the town to serve as a daily reminder that the community has not forgotten.

“It tells me people still care. It tells me Esther mattered,” she said. “Her song ended, but the melody is still here – in our memories, in our music, in our community.”

In her memory, Dobson and another one of her siblings carry Jones’s memory with a tattoo of what she loved: music and animals.

“Whenever my hand turns over, I see the memory of Esther right there and it connects me to Esther and Michelle.”

Jones was one of 15 siblings. The family, spread out across North America, reunited for the first time for Jones’s celebration of life last year in October. They plan to reunite once again – this time for the trial of the man charged in Jones’s death. They’ll be there not only for justice, but for each other.

“It’s important that we stand together in our pain,” she said. “To show the man accused of killing her that she mattered. That she matters still.”

No verdict, she adds, can undo what happened.

“There’s no justice for murder. Nothing gives back a life but maybe we can stop another family from going through this.”

Tuesday, for the first time in months, Dobson found the strength to walk by the Meadowvale, N.S., home her sister once lived in – something she had not done since packing Jones’s things after her death. As she passed it, she looked toward the window longing for a wave.

“I feel like there has to be someone at the window to wave to.”