The suspect accused of murdering a beloved Baltimore tech CEO was captured on surveillance footage knocking at the front door of her apartment building days before her body was found, charging documents allege.
According to an application for statement of charges filed in court, video showed that the victim, Pava LaPere, entered her building at 10:32 p.m. on Friday night.
The footage reveals LaPere then got up from the couch in the lobby of the building—which also housed her firm EcoMap Technologies—and walked to the front door. A camera on the door showed “a tall bald light skin black male wearing black glasses[,] a grey hooded sweat shirt, Black shorts walking up the steps … and look[ing] through the glass door,” the court filing states.
That man, police say, was 32-year-old convicted felon Jason Billingsley, who was already a suspect in connection with an arson, rape, and attempted murder of a family two weeks prior, and spurred a citywide manhunt that ended on Wednesday night, when he was arrested at a train station.
He “waved to the victim inside the lobby to come to the door,” the document states, adding that LaPere let her alleged killer inside and began to speak to him, before they got on an elevator together.
According to the document, the suspect was spotted around 11:08 p.m. “leaving the stairwell into the lobby with his grey hooded sweat shirt in his hand scrambling for an exit.” He wiped his hand on his shorts before he exited the building.
Detectives would identify Billingsley as the suspect on Tuesday using departmental databases and after speaking to a witness who was able to identify him from the surveillance footage.
That witness, the filing states, will be identified and appear in court at a later date.
The legal document said that cops were led to the roof of the building by a coworker, and that they found LaPere “half clothed with apparent trauma to the head, face, and body.” A brick, broken hair clip, and pair of shoes were among the items discovered at the scene, where emergency responders pronounced her dead.
The statement added that the chief medical examiner’s office ruled LaPere’s death a homicide by strangulation and blunt force trauma.
On Tuesday, Baltimore police held a press conference warning the public that Billingsley was “armed and dangerous.”
During another media update on Thursday, cops said Billingsley went on the lam after seeing himself on the news.
“As soon as the news conference happened the other day, he basically left the location where he was at. We did a search warrant at one location; he had just left because he saw the news conference,” Acting Police Commissioner Richard Worley said in a Thursday press conference announcing the arrest.
Billingsley, a registered sex offender with a violent criminal history, is now in custody on a slew of crimes connected to two harrowing incidents. Police say that on Sept. 19, Billingsley targeted a family he knew in an incident that involved a five-year-old and left a man and woman critically injured.
According to a charging document, officers initially responded that day to reports of a fire that involved a male, female, and a minor. During the investigation, authorities learned that the incident began when the female victim heard a “loud banging on the door” by an individual who identified themselves “as maintenance.”
“She stated that the suspect kicked in the front door and pointed a gun at her, duct tapped her and handcuffed the other victim,” the report states, adding that she was then “raped, slashed (cut) across the neck with a knife” before Billingsley allegedly “poured an unknown liquid on her.”
Then, Billingsley allegedly set them on fire in the basement of the house.
Days later, around Sept. 22, police believe Billingsley murdered LaPere—a Johns Hopkins University graduate once featured on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list—at her apartment building. Citing sources with knowledge of the investigation, the Baltimore Banner reported that police found LaPere on the roof of the West Franklin apartment complex around 11:30 a.m. on Monday.
Authorities did not reveal on Thursday whether there was a previous connection between LePere and her alleged murderer. Worley, however, said there was no forced entry to LePere’s apartment.
LaPere’s death spurred authorities to publicly announce Billingsley as a suspect on Tuesday, though police said that they had been “tracking” him for days prior to the previous incident.
Worley said that just prior to the Tuesday press conference, authorities were close to arresting Billingsley, but he evaded authorities. Billingsley was ultimately arrested on Wednesday evening without incident around 11 p.m.
“We are going to put this violent individual, this repeat offender, back in jail where he belongs,” Worley said.
Police said Billingsley has an extensive criminal history, including arrests in 2009, 2011, and 2013 related to several offenses, like second-degree assault charges, and robbery. The Maryland sex offender registry also shows that Billingsley was convicted of a first-degree sex offense in 2015 and released in October 2022 on parole.
“It is very clear that this individual posed a substantial danger, that he had been noncompliant and was clearly violating the terms of his supervision after being released, and that alone should be enough to make sure that we keep him off the streets,” Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said. “I hope this sends a message to everybody else who likes to commit these kinds of cowardly, horrendous acts that we will not tolerate it and we will pull you off the streets of Baltimore.”
Police documents from the 2013 crime that sent Billingsley to prison paint a horrifying picture of how he attacked and sexually assaulted a woman after luring her into a home that may not have been his. He was convicted and sentenced to 30 years before he got out on parole last fall.
In June 2013, police met the victim at the hospital where she was being treated for her injuries. She told cops that she had an argument with her boyfriend around 1 a.m. and left his home. She walked down the street and sat on the steps of a vacant building to collect her thoughts.
“She states that is when the suspect known only to her as ‘Jason’ approached her” and “asked her what was wrong,” a police report stated. Billingsley then offered to give her a place to stay for the night.
“She agreed to go with him and the two walked to an unknown House,” the document added. “He told her that he locked his keys inside of the house and that she would have to climb through the window and unlock the front door for him.” Once she did, they went to a bedroom and talked.
Billingsley then told her “he wanted to have sex with her.” But when she announced she was leaving, he hit her and began to strangle her. He then brandished a knife and forced her to perform oral sex, before stealing $53 from her wallet.
He ordered her to leave but as she reached the door he warned her, “You better not tell anyone about this. My aunt is a police officer. Know [sic] one will believe you.”