Chapter 1: What is the story behind Jimmie 'Jay' Lee's disappearance?
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Hey, everyone. I'm Andrea Canning, and we are talking Dateline. Today, I'm here with Blayne Alexander, who will be talking about her episode, Bringing Jay Home. If you haven't seen it, you can find it in the Dateline podcast feed. So go there and listen to it or stream it on Peacock and then come back here.
For this talking Dateline, we have a podcast exclusive clip from Blayne's interview with Jay's parents. Then we'll answer some of your questions that you had and comments from social media. And there were a lot. Blaine, thank you for sharing Jay's story with the world.
Yeah, of course. Of course. I really, really enjoyed telling the story and getting to know him while reporting on this.
Yeah. I feel like we all really got to know Jay from your story and then some. I mean, that was one of the best datelines I've seen getting a glimpse into that person's life. You know, it was very rich. Could you just recap the story for us first?
Jay Lee was a young man from Jackson, Mississippi. He went to Ole Miss. He graduated in three years, and he was preparing to enter grad school. And he was just – I don't even know if vibrant can capture who he was, but he's somebody who lived life to the fullest. He was an out-and-proud gay man. I mean, he was very, very well-known in the LGBTQ community.
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Chapter 2: How did investigators piece together the events leading to Jay's death?
It was just funny. It was hilarious to be in the midst of it. But it was cool to just see his world and see his community and everybody being there. It was really special.
Yeah. If we all could have that much confidence, you know. That's true. I'm sure people saw him and thought, you know, I can – I can do this.
His friend Jose actually told me, Jose, who we met in the story, told me that it was Jay Lee who inspired him to go perform in drag shows, inspired him to be open, you know, kind of about who he was. So he really was a beacon for a lot of people right there in Oxford.
When we come back, we've got an extra clip from Blaine's interview with Jay's parents.
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You know, the thing that I thought early on was I thought, could this be a hate crime?
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Chapter 3: What were the challenges faced during the trial of Sheldon Timothy Herrington?
We know he's always out here posting. Let us get access and we can tell you exactly what happened. And that was just so hard for them. It's not like anybody's asking for, hey, we need to just be able to get into everybody's social media at all times. No.
If a person goes missing and they're underage, right, and we're talking about a missing person's case where days count, where moments count, hours count, then let us in. So – We'll certainly be following it, though.
I look forward to a follow-up on that. So, you know, Khaled said something that was quite the foreshadow when he told Jay that stay away from the DLs, you know, the down lows, because they're trouble, he said. And, you know, you can see that, right, on one hand, because you're not – one of the things about Jay is that he was his authentic self, and that's why he was happy.
Chapter 4: How did Jay Lee's family cope with his disappearance and eventual discovery?
Yeah.
When I always, I believe, how can you be happy if you can't be your true self?
Not only that, you're living in a constant state of fear that somebody is going to discover who your true self is. And so what does that do to your nervous system? What does that do to the way that you walk through life? If you're always waiting on a domino to fall for your secret to be exposed for this kind of carefully created facade that you've put up to just completely be shattered.
I was struck, Andrea, by the incredible parallels between Jay Lee and Tim Harrington. Both of them from Mississippi. Both of them go to Ole Miss. Both of them headed to grad school. Both of them had bright futures. Like, let's be very, very clear. Jay Lee and Tim Harrington. I mean, Tim Harrington.
Tim, too.
Yes. Started a moving company. He's got a profitable little business. He's on podcasts. He's in interviews. He's in the Black Student Union. He's kind of that kid that, you know, when you get to college, you're like, oh, who's the upperclassman that I look up to? Oh, he was one of those people, right? I mean. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Spent time in his church, influential father, influential grandfather, this whole package. And again, very similar to Jay Lee, families rooted in faith. Both fathers were ministers, right? Like all of this going on. Very similar. And there was a very big difference in that Jay was living authentically and Tim Harrington was not. And that made all of the difference.
That really made all the difference. And the fact that their lives intersected in the way that they did was just unbelievable.
Yeah.
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Chapter 5: What impact did Jay's story have on the LGBTQ community?
I mean, there were a lot of things, you know, that they didn't have before the body was found.
Yeah.
I think that, you know, even if there's no body, sometimes you can look and say, okay, there were traces of blood. There was nothing. There was no physical evidence. And, you know, I mean, they summed it up perfectly. How do you, you know, convince a jury of murder when you can't even prove that someone is dead conclusively?
Like a judge had declared Jay Lee dead at that point, had legally declared him dead. But again, no body, no traces of DNA, anything like that. I should point out, too, there was a significant amount of time, almost two weeks, about 10 days or so, between when he went missing and when police ultimately questioned Tim Harrington.
And so police have said that was a lot of time for him to be able to disinfect his truck, clean things out, like clean away any traces of whatever may have been there. And so that's what they pointed to. But at the end of the day, yes, a tremendous amount of reasonable doubt for sure.
Yeah.
Nasty Smith said, I knew the duct tape would nail him. Leah Jarrett Hedgepeth on Facebook asks, what happened to his doggie?
Lexi. Lexi went to live with Taylor, Jay's sister, and lived, actually, this is unbelievable, but she brought Lexi to Oxford for our interview. And we were supposed to meet Lexi, but things went over. And then we said, okay, we'll meet her next week when we come back to Jackson. She died. Lexi died. Aww. Three days after our interview, completely unexpected, and we were going to meet her.
But she lived a long life. She was 23 years old.
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