Joneses

“My detectives are too busy just trying to keep up with the Joneses,” Hamilton said.

The Joneses gave him a few thousand dollars to buy off the babysitter’s family.

But because it appeared everyone on television and in magazines was doing so well, relative deprivation — feeling the need to “keep up with the Joneses” — replaced common sense.

According to court records the Joneses used increasingly severe methods to control the boy’s behavior, including strapping him to an inversion table, handcuffing him and shocking him with a device called a Zap Enforcer.

The Joneses and Wass deduced that the guitar, after being stolen, was eventually sold to a man named Ron Guest.