In the final hours before University of Mississippi student Jimmy “Jay” Lee disappeared, sexually explicit Snapchat messages were exchanged between his account and the account of the man now on trial in his killing, an investigator testified Thursday.
Sheldon “Timothy” Herrington Jr., 24, of Grenada, Mississippi, is charged with capital murder in the death of Lee, who vanished July 8, 2022.
Lee, 20, of Jackson, Mississippi, was a gay man well known in the LGBTQ+ community at Ole Miss and in Oxford, where the university is located and Herrington’s trial is being held.
Lee’s body has never been found, but a judge has declared him dead. Herrington maintains his own innocence.
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Herrington “was not openly in the LGBTQ community,” but evidence will show he had a relationship with Lee and is responsible for the death, assistant district attorney Gwen Agho said during opening arguments Tuesday in Oxford.
Herrington’s attorney, Kevin Horan, told jurors that prosecutors have “zero” proof Lee was killed.
University Police Department Sgt. Benjamin Douglas testified Thursday that investigators used search warrants to obtain cellphone records, information from social media accounts belonging to Lee and Herrington and information about Herrington’s internet searches on the day Lee disappeared until Herrington was arrested two weeks later.
One of Lee’s friends, Khalid Fears, testified Tuesday that he had a video call with Lee just before 6 a.m. on July 8, 2022. Fears said Lee mentioned a sexual encounter with a man hours earlier, which ended badly. Lee was leaving his own on-campus apartment to go see the same man again, Fears said.
Douglas testified Herrington’s Snapchat account sent a message to Lee’s account at about 5:25 a.m. saying: “Come back.” People using the two accounts then argued, and Lee’s account sent a message at 5:54 a.m. saying he was on the way over. Douglas said that at 6:03 a.m., Lee’s account sent its final message: “Open.”
Google records obtained through a warrant showed that Herrington searched “how long does it take to strangle someone”
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