Sarah Richardson, the daughter of the enigmatic Noahide archaeologist Vendyl Jones, was found dead in her West Bank home last week.

Police suspect that the 73-year-old Jewish convert was killed by her son, Joel — who suffered from mental illness — in her Maale Levona settlement home on May 27.

Richardson moved to Israel as a child on the eve of the 1967 Six-Day War with her father, a Christian preacher turned archaeologist who spent the latter part of his life trying to track down lost ritual objects of the First and Second Temples.

“When we came to the apartment, we saw the son digging a hole in the garden with a shovel,” a police officer told Channel 12. “He kept us from going inside, and that immediately raised suspicions that he was trying to bury his mother and hide evidence.”

Police initially detained the 37-year-old son and transferred his mother’s body to the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute for examination. Forensics experts were unable to determine the cause of her death, leading to his release under restrictive conditions.

Joel was later arrested again after his father called the cops, reporting that he had threatened him with a knife.

During a subsequent conversation with police, Joel confessed to murdering his mother and even reenacted how he killed her at the scene of the crime. The son also told investigators that he “received messages from God” commanding him to kill either his father or their dog, according to........

© The Times of Israel