A 33-year-old man admitted Friday to killing Baltimore tech entrepreneur Pava LaPere last fall and was sentenced to life in prison.
Jason Billingsley, of Harlem Park, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the killing of LaPere, a 26-year-old entrepreneur, shocking the city and its tight-knit tech community and inspiring changes to Maryland law.
Abiding by the agreement Billingsley struck with prosecutors, Baltimore Circuit Judge Robert K. Taylor sentenced him to life in prison with the possibility of parole. Billingsley will begin serving the life sentence Taylor imposed Friday after finishing simultaneous life sentences the judge handed down earlier this week in a separate case for Billingsley.
The consecutive sentences means it’s less likely he’ll ever be paroled.
“No one in any community, in my opinion, will be safe if you are free,” Taylor said.
Three days before strangling and bludgeoning LaPere to death Sept. 22, 2023, authorities said Billingsley forced his way into an basement apartment in West Baltimore’s Upton neighborhood, bound a couple, raped the woman and then set her and her boyfriend at the time on fire. On Monday, Billingsley pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted first-degree murder in that case.
Taylor had little to say when sentencing Billingsley in the home invasion case.
“The facts speak for themselves,” the judge said, giving Billingsley concurrent life sentences with the possibility of parole much later in life.
Prosecutors in the office of Baltimore State’s Attorney Ivan Bates, a Democrat, previously indicated they would seek the penalty of life without the possibility of parole — the harshest sentence under Maryland law.
People convicted of crimes of crimes of violence here become eligible for parole after serving 50% of their sentence, but it’s up to the state’s Parole Commission to decide on early release. That body considers such things as the nature of the crime and victim input.
Taylor said Billingsley would technically become eligible for parole after serving 40 years, but Bates later told reporters that he does “not suspect he will even be able to see the twinkle of light until he’s done 60 years, which would put him at 93 years of age.”
At a news conference following Friday’s hearing, Bates said his office decided to pursue a plea agreement after speaking to the victims or their families, concluding it was the appropriate course of action because it avoided the traumatizing experience of two trials.
“We wanted to have life sentences. We wanted to ensure that he would not see the light of day,” Bates said. “We feel that this plea has done that.”
In a statement, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, a Democrat, said justice had been served for Billingsley’s “heinous crimes,” which “impacted our entire city.” Scott added that he hoped the multiple life sentences would “bring a small amount of peace” to LaPere’s family and the man and woman who survived Billingsley’s attack.
On Monday, Sept. 25, 2023, Baltimore Police went to LaPere’s apartment building after her colleagues reported her missing when she didn’t show up for an 8 a.m. meeting with her start-up tech company, EcoMap Technologies, Assistant State’s Attorney Elizabeth Stock said in court. Her coworkers hadn’t seen her since the Friday night before, when she left Artscape around 10 p.m. Officers couldn’t find her.
Police returned to the building later the same day after after someone discovered her body on the roof, bloodied and with “apparent head trauma,” according to charging documents. Police identified the woman as LaPere and medics immediately declared her dead.
Officers found LaPere “with obvious signs of trauma and in a partial state of undress,” Stock said. The prosecutor added that a forensic pathologist with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner later noted that LaPere had brain hemorrhaging, orbital fractures and vaginal abrasions, among other injuries, ruling her death a homicide by strangulation and blunt force trauma.
During the investigation, police DNA analysts identified LaPere’s genetic matter on a brick located next to her body on the roof.
Homicide detectives found video showing LaPere encountered Billingsley on Howard Street the night of Friday Sept. 22, 2023, before she continued home to her apartment building, Stock said. According to charging documents, security camera footage from the apartment building showed LaPere entering the building’s lobby around 11:30 p.m. Shortly after she entered, Billingsley, who was wearing a gray hoodie and camouflage shorts, waved her to the front door. She let him in and the two were pictured getting onto an elevator together.
Later, detectives wrote of the footage, the “male suspect can be seen leaving the stairwell into the lobby with his gray hooded sweatshirt in his hand scrambling for an exit. The Black male located the front door and could see him (sic) wiping his right hand on his shorts before exiting the building.”
A witness who reviewed the security camera footage identified Billingsley, with detectives also assisted by “departmental databases and resources,” according to charging documents.
On Sept. 27, detectives interviewed another witness, who told them that they drove Billingsley to Washington, Stock said. Police “quickly” arrested him, confiscating his teal backpack. DNA analysts tested a pair of camo shorts they found inside the bag, determining that the stains were LaPere’s blood.
Stock said Billingsley confessed to detectives.
LaPere’s parents and one of her friends testified to the void her death had left in their lives. They spoke of her promise, saying she had much more to give to the world, particularly her adopted home of Baltimore.
“Pava didn’t have a hateful bone in her body,” friend Shrenik Jain said, adding that her killing “has shaken me to my core.”
When Caroline LaPere learned her daughter had been slain, “every cell in my body froze,” she told Taylor, calling it a “great injustice.”
“Pava should not have been murdered,” Caroline LaPere said.
Frank LaPere lamented that he’d never have the opportunity to walk his daughter down the aisle at her wedding, or to meet her children in the future.
“Our dinner table will forever be missing a very important person,” he said. “The crimes against my daughter had a life-altering personal effect on me.”
Billingsley’s attorney, public defender Jason Rodriguez, said in court that it was important to his client to accept responsibility for what he’d done.
“Your honor, I hold myself fully accountable and I’m very remorseful,” Billingsley told Taylor. “I sincerely and deeply apologize.”
Frank LaPere said he had “a difficult time accepting that statement” from Billingsley.
Given his criminal record, LaPere said, “I don’t think this is a person who can understand remorse or really feels it.”
Her family also led calls to introduce legislation in her honor.
Billingsley was sentenced in 2015 to 30 years in prison, with all but 14 years behind bars suspended, for a first-degree sex offense. In October 2022, he was released early after earning diminution, or “good time,” credits while incarcerated.
Stock said Billingsley was on probation from a 2009 assault case when he committed the sexual offense that landed him in prison.
“He should have never been released in the manner he was, and his victims paid the price when he decided to take advantage of that to further terrorize our city,” Scott said.
One of the bills inspired by LaPere’s killing would prevent people convicted of first-degree rape from earning diminution credits. Signed by Democratic Gov. Wes Moore, the law takes effect Oct. 1.
On Sept. 19, 2023, three days before he killed LaPere, Billingsley, identifying himself as a maintenance worker, banged on the door of a basement apartment in Upton early in the morning, saying there was a flood upstairs. When April Hurley opened her door, Billingsley kicked his way in. He pointed a gun at Hurley and her then boyfriend, Jonte Gilmore.
After duct-taping Hurley and handcuffing Gilmore, authorities said Billingsley raped Hurley repeatedly and slashed her neck. When she played dead, a prosecutor said Monday, Billingsley doused Hurley and Gilmore in gasoline and set the apartment ablaze. Both victims sustained second- and third-degree burns.
The Baltimore Sun does not typically identify victims of sexual violence, but Hurley and her lawyers held a news conference in April to publicize their lawsuit against Billingsley and the companies that employed him as a building maintenance worker.
Hurley testified Monday that she suffered from constant fear for her and her young daughter’s safety, sleepless nights and post traumatic stress disorder requiring therapy and medication. She also said that people stare at the scar on her neck when she’s in public, and that the thought of intimacy repulses her.
“The impact that this heinous attack has had on my life is nothing short of devastating,” Hurley said.
At the news conference Friday, Hurley’s civil lawyer, Billy Murphy, credited Bates’ office “for swift and decisive action in bringing Jason Billingsley to justice” for “an act of unspeakable evil” against his client.
