LOS ANGELES β Ana Jones, the blonde pigtailed child star who charmed a generation of television viewers as Buffy Davis on CBS’s “Family πΆπ»π»πΆπΎπ,” was found dead in a friend’s home in Oceanside, California, on the morning of August 28, 1976, the victim of what the coroner would later describe as one of the most severe πΉπππ overdoses he had ever encountered in a person so young. She was 18 years old.
The death of the actress, born Mary Annisa Jones on March 11, 1958, in Indiana, closed a chapter of American pop culture that had begun a decade earlier, when a small-for-her-age eight-year-old was cast as a six-year-old orphan and became, almost overnight, one of the most recognizable faces in the country. It also opened a sprawling investigation that would reach into the office of a Torrance physician whose prescribing practices, authorities said, made lethal doses of controlled substances available to troubled teenagers for as little as five dollars.
Jones was discovered after a party that had begun in the beachside town of Oceanside and ended at the home of the father of one of her 14-year-old friends. She had spent the preceding months in a spiral that those closest to her had watched with mounting alarm. According to contemporaneous accounts and subsequent reporting, the actress had turned to substance use and shoplifting as she entered her teens, cycled through a series of ordinary jobs she could not keep, and suffered from erratic mood swings that friends and family struggled to understand.
Her troubles were not new. They had been building since the moment the cameras stopped rolling on “Family πΆπ»π»πΆπΎπ” in 1971, when the show was cancelled after five seasons and a 12-year-old Jones, by then openly resentful of the character that had made her famous, was left to confront a industry that could not see past the pigtails.
The trajectory that ended in Oceanside began in earnest in 1966, when Jones was discovered by a producer and cast opposite Brian Keith in the CBS sitcom about three orphaned children sent to live with their wealthy uncle. The premise was wholesome, the casting was inspired, and the response was rapturous. Jones’s physical stature β she was small for her age β allowed her to play a six-year-old at eight, and audiences were smitten.
Her character was rarely seen without her onscreen doll, Mrs. Beasley, and the network soon released a real-life version that became the bestselling doll in America. There were Buffy coloring books, lunch boxes, a line of children’s clothing, and even a cookbook with Jones on the cover.
The work behind that success was punishing. “Family πΆπ»π»πΆπΎπ” filmed year-round, and the youngster often worked seven-day weeks to meet network deadlines. As the show climbed to number one in the ratings and its characters became household names, the demands on the cast grew, and they fell hardest on the youngest member.
Cast and crew members would later praise Jones’s intelligence, her natural ability, and her deep kindness β particularly toward her younger brother, Paul, who accompanied her to set and for whom she insisted on securing a gift whenever she received one herself, giving her own away if a second could not be found.
By 1969, at the height of her celebrity, Jones had made her only feature film appearance, a small role in “The Trouble With Girls” alongside Elvis Presley. Between 1967 and 1971 she appeared as a guest on no fewer than five talk shows, including those hosted by Merv Griffin and Dick Cavett, and in 1967 she presented an award at that year’s Emmys, likely making her one of the youngest ever to do so. Hollywood pursued her for her charm, but the charm was wearing thin from the inside.
As the years went on, Jones began to tire of playing Buffy. She resented the character for trapping her in childhood and saw the role as babyish, and her displeasure began to show on screen. Her performances in the later seasons were noticeably less energetic, and the show’s ratings began to slump.
When CBS cancelled “Family πΆπ»π»πΆπΎπ” in 1971, a 12-year-old Jones was delighted and eager to begin the next phase of her career. The shadow of Buffy proved difficult to escape.
She auditioned for the role of Regan MacNeil in William Friedkin’s 1973 horror classic “The Exorcist,” but the director gave the part to Linda Blair, citing his difficulty imagining the adorable Jones in such a horrific role. She auditioned for the role of Iris in Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film “Taxi Driver,” a 13-year-old street worker who attracts the attention of Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle, but the part went to Jodie Foster. Two of the most demanding juvenile roles of the decade, both of them deliberate departures from the child-star mold, went to other actresses.
The rejections coincided with a period of personal upheaval. Jones’s parents had divorced shortly after the family moved from Indiana to California, touching off a bitter custody battle that lasted for years and ended in victory for her father. On March 7, 1974, four days before his daughter’s 16th birthday, he died of cardiovascular disease.
Although Jones’s mother, Mary, was technically her guardian, she never spent time at the family home, and the arrangement infuriated her. Jones would disappear for days with friends her mother considered a bad influence, prompting Mary to file missing person reports with authorities when her daughter failed to surface.
Jones turned 18 on March 11, 1976, and with adulthood came access to the money she had earned on “Family πΆπ»π»πΆπΎπ,” previously held in a savings account on her behalf. The one-time payout was just under $200,000. According to reporting on her final months, she began putting it toward her new favorite hobby β partying β and her substance use worsened.
Within four or five months, most of the money was gone.
On August 27, Jones traveled with her boyfriend and several friends to Oceanside to party. The gathering ended at the home of the father of one of her 14-year-old friends. The next morning, she was found dead.
The coroner, confronted with the quantity of drugs in her system, called it one of the most severe overdoses he had ever seen. After a small private service, her family had her body cremated and scattered her ashes over the Pacific Ocean, a fitting resting place for a girl who had always loved the seaside.
Among the items recovered at the scene was an envelope bearing the business address of Dr. Don Carlos Moshos, containing a detailed description of the type and quantity of one of the substances that appeared in Jones’s toxicology report. Moshos, authorities would allege, had been functioning as the actress’s doctor feel-good, prescribing illicit substances on demand.
He was already under investigation for suspicious professional practices before her death.
The evidence mounted quickly. When a local news team visited Moshos’s office, they found it full of young people, most of them around Jones’s age. A report released around the time of his investigation alleged that the doctor wrote more than 100 prescriptions a day and required only a valid ID before selling a patient a prescription for whatever they wanted, at a price of just five dollars.
Occupants of the building housing his practice described long lines outside his office. Jones, 18 at the time of her death, fit the profile of his average client.
Six days after Jones’s body was discovered, authorities apprehended Moshos at his office in Torrance, California. He was charged with illegally prescribing secobarbital to the young actress and, in a separate undercover investigation, with multiple counts of prescribing for profit, amounting to 11 offenses in total. He would never stand trial.
Moshos, who suffered from diabetes, hepatitis, and high blood pressure, was admitted to a hospital on December 6, 1976, and died three weeks later, just four months after his most famous patient.
Jones’s family sought their day in court regardless, suing the doctor’s estate for $400,000. A 1979 verdict found Moshos only 30 percent liable for the actress’s death, resulting in a $79,500 payout to her family. The outcome offered little consolation, and worse was to come.
In 1984, Mary Jones suffered another unimaginable loss when Paul, Ana’s cherished brother, died of an overdose on March 15 β days after what would have been his sister’s 26th birthday. He was 24 years old.
The tragedy that claimed Ana Jones was not the only one to touch the cast of “Family πΆπ»π»πΆπΎπ.” Her co-star Sebastian Cabot died of a stroke in 1977 at the age of 59, and Brian Keith, who played the children’s wealthy uncle, took his own life in 1997. Together, the deaths form a damning indictment of the physical and mental toll that show business can exact from its most vulnerable talents β children elevated to stardom before they are old enough to understand what is being asked of them, and discarded when they cease to be useful.
Jones’s story has become a cautionary tale retold in documentaries and retrospectives about the child stars of television’s golden age, a blonde girl in pigtails who was easy to love and impossible to protect. What the coroner found in her bloodstream, and what the envelope on the table pointed toward, made clear that the industry that made her famous had no mechanism for saving her. The money she earned as Buffy was gone within months.
The doctor who supplied her was dead within a year. The brother she adored was gone within eight. What remains is a body of work from a child who wanted nothing more than to be taken seriously, and a family that spent decades seeking an accounting that never fully came.