Dwight Lamon Jones (Photo: Scottsdale Police Department) 
 
 Police say a man who systematically gunned down members of the legal community in Phoenix and Scottsdale had killed six people before killing himself Monday as officers closed in on his hotel room. 
 
 Authorities identified that man as 56-year-old Dwight Lamon Jones, whose murderous spree was an effort to "right some wrongs" stemming from a divorce and custody battle that began in 2009, police and court records show. 
 
 Scottsdale police Cmdr. Rich Slavin said a tip ultimately helped investigators identify the shooter. And if they hadn't closed in on him sooner, the number of casualties likely would have grown, Slavin said. 
 
 Jones' ex-wife has since taken credit for the tip, saying it was her current husband, a former Phoenix police detective, who connected the dots and contacted authorities Saturday night. 
 
 For four days, the shootings had put the legal community on edge as police withheld the suspect's identity until he was no longer a threat, making some lawyers believe they could be a target. 
 
 "It's unfortunate ... we weren't able to save lives. Although the conclusion likely saved lives of those this person intended on harming," Maricopa County Sheriff Paul Penzone said at a press conference Monday afternoon. "Today is not a success story, but it's a story that has closure." 
 
 Authorities say a combination of ballistics, DNA and police work led them to Jones. 
 
 The spree started about 5:20 p.m. Thursday when Phoenix police responded to the office of Steven Pitt, a forensic psychiatrist who consulted on a number of high-profile cases including the Baseline Killer case and the JonBenét Ramsey murder investigation. He was gunned down outside his office near Scottsdale and Bell roads. 
 
 SUMMER OF FEAR: When 'Serial Shooter,' 'Baseline Killer' terrorized Phoenix 
 
 The shooter fled the area, leaving police with little more than a sketch of a round-faced man with a dark-colored cap. The witness described the shooter as a white male, but Jones is black, police said. 
 
 Slavin said Monday that Pitt had provided services to Jones as part of a court order in connection with his divorce case. 
 
 Police say Jones moved on to his next two victims less than 24 hours later: 48-year-old Veleria Sharp and 49-year-old Laura Anderson. The women were paralegals at the law offices of Burt, Feldman and Grenier, which represented Jones' ex-wife during the divorce proceedings. 
 
 Gunshots broke out at about 2:15 p.m. Friday. Shot in the head, Sharp ran out of the office and flagged down a party bus driver near First and 75th streets, asking him to call for help before she collapsed. She died at a hospital. 
 
 Police found Anderson dead inside the office with a gunshot wound to the chest. 
 
 By 11:30 p.m. that night, Phoenix and Scottsdale police knew the same gun was used in the slayings of Pitt, Sharp and Anderson, Slavin said. 
 
 Half an hour later, just after midnight Saturday, Scottsdale police received a report of a fourth victim, counselor and life coach Marshall Levine, who was shot dead at his office near Hayden and Mountain View roads. 
 
 Police say Levine was a victim of circumstance: He had been subletting the office from Jones' intended target — a woman who provided counseling services to his son during the divorce. 
 
 The tip that would lead investigators to Jones came in Saturday night, Slavin said. He wouldn't say who provided it. 
 
 Jones ex-wife, Connie Jones, issued a statement Monday saying she and her husband, retired Phoenix police Detective Richard Anglin, notified police about his identity. 
 
 "My husband, Richard Anglin (a retired Phoenix police detective), recognized the connection to my divorce and the three crime scenes and he notified the Phoenix Police violent crime unit on Saturday night," she said in the statement. 
 
 "I also contacted the Scottsdale Police Department on Sunday morning. Any reward money collected will be donated to the families of the victims and to Chrysalis, the non-profit agency that helps victims of domestic abuse and violence." 
 
 Police say they had a tip that Jones was in Fountain Hills around noon Sunday, but officers weren't able to tail him until about 3 p.m. 
 
 Sometime in between is when police think Jones shot and killed a couple inside a Fountain Hills residence. Their bodies were not found until Monday morning. 
 
 Police identified the victims as 70-year-old Mary Simmons and 72-year-old Bryon Thomas. Any link to Jones' divorce case was not immediately apparent. 
 
 Slavin said officers had Jones under surveillance Sunday afternoon as he drove around in his gold Mercedes Benz. At one point, Jones ditched a small bag containing a .22-caliber pistol, which police later determined to belong to one of the Fountain Hills victims. Slavin said ballistics ruled out the small-caliber gun from having been used in any of the shootings. 
 
 Officers first attempted to make contact with Jones at about 8 a.m. Monday at the Extended Stay America hotel near Shea Boulevard and Scottsdale Road. 
 
 SWAT teams were evacuating adjacent hotel rooms when they heard multiple shots fired inside Jones' room. He was later found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Sgt. Vince Lewis, a Phoenix police spokesman, said. Jones was alone. 
 
 Connie Jones said she was deeply saddened by the tragedy. 
 
 "He was a very emotionally disturbed person as the court records will confirm," she said about her ex-husband. "Personally, I have feared for my safety for the past nine years. I cannot express the emotions I feel for the innocent families touched by this." 
 
 MORE ON SCOTTSDALE SHOOTINGS: 
 
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 Read or Share this story: https://azc.cc/2LXEZ6r ||||| The killings in Arizona began Thursday afternoon, and they continued with alarming frequency. 
 
 First there was Steven E. Pitt, a forensic psychiatrist known for his work on high-profile cases like the JonBenet Ramsey investigation. He was shot outside his office in northeast Phoenix. 
 
 The next afternoon, Veleria Sharp, 48, a paralegal who had been shot, was seen stumbling down a street and begging for help. When the police followed a trail of blood back to the Scottsdale, Ariz., law firm where she worked, they found Laura Anderson, 49, another paralegal who had been shot. Both women died. 
 
 Just hours later, Marshall Levine’s girlfriend found him, a 72-year-old life coach and marriage counselor, dead of two gunshot wounds in his office. That brought the killings in this otherwise relaxed golf and spa hub to four. 
 
 By then, ballistic evidence had convinced the authorities that the first two shootings were related. And at about 9:30 p.m. Saturday, they got the most important of more than 100 tips — one that would lead them to Dwight Lamon Jones, a man who had a connection to all of the deceased through a bitter divorce proceeding several years ago. 
 
 By Monday morning they felt they had a solid case against Mr. Jones, 56, and they also knew where he was. The police arrived at an Extended Stay America hotel in Scottsdale and surreptitiously began to evacuate guests. 
 
 Image Steven Pitt, a forensic psychiatrist, was killed outside his office in Scottsdale, Ariz., on Thursday. Credit Phoenix Police Department 
 
 Mr. Jones figured out what was happening and opened fire on the police. He did not strike any officers. Just after 8 a.m., he was discovered dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in his room. 
 
 But those were not the only killings. 
 
 On Sunday, the police learned of the deaths of a man and a woman at a home in Fountain Hills, about 15 miles east of the other shootings. Though the police later said they had not explicitly linked the deaths of the two — Mary Simmons, 70, and Bryon Thomas, 72 — to Mr. Jones, they said he may have been in the area sometime before the bodies were discovered. That brought the killings they believe he carried out to six in about 96 hours. 
 
 “In law enforcement, we don’t have the benefit of saying we were successful when lives are lost,” Sheriff Paul Penzone of Maricopa County said at a news conference, calling Mr. Jones’s actions “the worst of humanity.” 
 
 At the same news conference, Rich Slavin, an assistant chief with the Scottsdale Police Department, tied the first four deaths together. Mr. Jones, he said, had gone through “a divorce situation” eight or nine years ago, in which his now ex-wife, Connie Jones, had retained a lawyer at the firm where the paralegals were killed. As part of his divorce proceeding, Mr. Jones was also required to see Dr. Pitt; and his son was required to see a doctor who had used the office space Dr. Levine happened to be occupying the day Mr. Jones shot him. 
 
 “We started to see that Mr. Jones was visiting them in an effort to right some wrong,” Chief Slavin said, adding that the suspect had probably intended to kill Ms. Jones’s lawyer. 
 
 Image Dwight Lamon Jones, a suspect in six killings in Arizona, fatally shot himself on Monday morning, the police said. Credit Scottsdale Police Department 
 
 “She wasn’t present in that law firm that day,” Chief Slavin continued. “Unfortunately, two employees were.” 
 
 In a statement, Ms. Jones said she was “deeply saddened by the tragedy caused by my ex-husband,” who she called “a very emotionally disturbed person.” 
 
 She also said her husband, a retired Phoenix police detective, recognized the connection between the divorce and the three crime scenes and he notified the police Saturday night, around the time the police say they got the crucial tip. 
 
 “Personally, I have feared for my safety for the past nine years,” she said. “I cannot express the emotions I feel for the innocent families touched by this senseless violence.” 
 
 A Facebook page belonging to a “Dwight Jones” contains posts from May in which he leveled several accusations against Ms. Jones and called her a liar. The authorities said he had posted YouTube videos, which, as of Monday, appeared to have been removed. 
 
 Chief Slavin said Mr. Jones had been arrested around 2008 or 2009 on domestic violence charges alleging that he mistreated his wife and a child. He also said Mr. Jones had been residing at Extended Stay hotels for the past nine years. 
 
 Ms. Jones was far from the only person who was on edge over the past several days. The killings, which had not appeared to be random, worried those in the medical and legal professions and prompted the police to blanket Maricopa County with officers who provided security for people who may have been at risk. 
 
 “I personally fielded a lot of questions from those groups because they were concerned,” Sgt. Ben Hoster of the Scottsdale Police Department said. Among their inquiries, he said: “Should we go to work on Monday?” 
 
 At a breakfast restaurant just steps away from the hotel where Mr. Jones shot himself, Peter Verros, the restaurant’s owner, noted how uncommon violence was in the area. 
 
 “This is a suburb,” Mr. Verros, 40, said. “You’re not used to something like this — a four-, six-person murder spree in Scottsdale? Holy cow!” 
 
 When asked Monday about the killer’s motive, Chief Slavin said it was impossible to totally understand. 
 
 “Taking the lives of innocent people,” Phoenix Police Chief Jeri Williams said, “should never make any sense.”
– A suspect who killed himself as police closed in Monday is now believed to have killed six people in the Phoenix area, police say—and at least four of them were linked to his bitter 2010 divorce. Police believe 56-year-old Dwight Lamon Jones, who shot himself at a Scottsdale motel early Monday, killed all six people in around 96 hours starting early Thursday, the New York Times reports. Police say Jones started the spree when he killed prominent psychiatrist Steven Pitt, whom he'd been required to see as part of divorce proceedings. On Friday, he allegedly killed Veleria Sharp and Laura Anderson, two paralegals at the firm his wife used during the divorce. Hours later Jones allegedly killed Marshall Levine, a marriage counselor who used the same office as a counselor Jones' son saw during the divorce. Police believe Jones also killed Mary Simmons, 70, and Bryon Thomas, 72, in Fountain Hills, around 15 miles away from the other shootings, but their connection to him is still unclear. Jones left around 10 hours of YouTube video in which he outlines an alleged conspiracy to steal custody of his son, who's now 21 years old, the Arizona Republic reports. Ex-wife Connie Jones says Jones was a "very emotionally disturbed person" and she divorced him after he hit her and threatened to kill her. She was granted sole custody of their son. The AP reports that Jones says her new husband, a retired police detective, was the one who made the connection between the divorce and the shootings and told police of his suspicions.