On the evening of September 22nd, 2023, 26-year-old tech startup CEO Pava Laair came home after attending the Artscape Festival in Baltimore. Surveillance cameras captured her calmly walking into the building where she both lived and worked. Just seconds later, an unknown man approached the entrance behind her.
He pulled something out of his pocket. Then he said something to her through the glass door. The conversation lasted around 40 seconds and then Parva let him inside on her own. A few minutes later, the two of them walked up together to the building’s restricted rooftop. Only one of them would come back down.
By Monday morning, employees at Ecomap Technologies started getting worried. It was completely unlike Pava to simply not show up for work. She lived just one floor above the office. Her apartment would later be found unlocked. Her phone would go unanswered. And then someone suggested checking the roof. That’s where they found their CEO lying on her back among broken bricks, scattered teeth, and signs of a brutal beating.
The medical examiner would later determine that she had been beaten in the head, strangled, and that her body had remained on the rooftop for nearly 2 days. And when investigators reviewed the surveillance footage, another disturbing detail became clear. The man who was last seen with Parvo was already being sought by the Baltimore Police Department in connection with another violent assault.
Hey guys, let me grab you for just a second. I’m really curious where my audience is watching from. So, I’d love for you to drop a comment and tell me what city you’re in and what time it is for you right now. Thanks for taking a moment. Go ahead and share that in the comments. And now, let’s keep going. Monday, September 25th, 2023, started like any other day in downtown Baltimore.
Inside a building on the 300 block of West Franklin Street, were the offices of Ecom Technologies, a growing tech startup. The company, which employed more than 30 people, was the realization of Pavalair’s vision. A young, ambitious, and highly successful entrepreneur. Hey uh Pavo, CEO and founder of Ecomap Technologies. The CEO was a workaholic.
She lived and breathed ecom. Growing the company was her passion, and the employees felt more like family to her than co-workers. That morning, while staff members grabbed coffee and prepared for meetings, Parva’s absence from the office immediately stood out and felt deeply unusual. Their relentlessly dedicated boss was never the type to show up late.
On top of that, Pava lived in the very same building. Her commute to work was nothing more than a short elevator ride down to the first floor. After being unable to find her by around 10:00 that morning, ECOM co-founder Sherid Davis contacted the Baltimore Police Department. Hi, I’m actually calling to file a missing person’s report.
Okay. What is the address for the officer to come? Uh 306 West Franklin Street. Uh this is my co-founder. We run a business together. Okay. And you saw him Friday, correct? One of our other co-workers saw her on Friday. Friday. Okay. And what is her name? Pava Laair. What is it? It’s Pava La Pair. P A V A.
Her middle name is Marie and her last name is Laair. L A P R E. 25. Let’s go over um 306 West Franklin Street, sweet 102. Cia Sherrod Davis wants to report her coworker is missing. While officers were being dispatched to the building, Pava’s team kept searching for her on their own. The door to her apartment was found unlocked.
Inside, there was no sign of Pava anywhere. Calls to her cell phone went unanswered. Others tried accessing her emails and messages through her laptop. At the same time, everyone started comparing their memories, trying to figure out the last time anyone had heard from her. That’s when someone suggested checking the roof.
Kevin Carter, an ecom map employee and one of Parva’s close friends, climbed the ladder leading to the building’s restricted rooftop. Bottom City now one of 1223 of emergency. Yes, an emergency. I There’s a a dead body on on the rooftop of 306 West Franklin. Tell them exactly what happened, Kevin. We we filed a missing person report for our my my friend and boss this morning and we just checked the rooftop of the building.
I’m looking at her. Okay. Is she awake? Is she? No. Is she breathing? I No. Please tell me why does it look like she’s dead. I I don’t want to get too She’s You got to get closer, Kevin. Why does it look like she’s dead? Come on, Kevin. You got this. She her face is she looks like she’s been dead for a couple of days and she’s she’s partly naked.
I think she wasing killed. I’m sending you help, Kevin. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Are you okay? I’m okay. All right. Is there anything else we can do for you or your family? Just send people right away. Para was found lying on her back. There were visible injuries on her head, neck, and other parts of her body.
She was wearing socks, underwear, and a black and white sweater that was unbuttoned in the front. Another friend and coworker covered her exposed chest with a jacket before officers arrived. It was a small act of dignity for a woman everyone loved and respected. Near Parva’s body, investigators found a pair of red pants, two buttons, and a hair clip.
Detectives also recovered a brick stained with what appeared to be blood. Three teeth were found nearby as well. A short distance away, there were two red sneakers. Investigators believe the shoes, along with the red pants, belong to Pava. Crime scene technicians arrived to collect physical evidence and gather DNA samples.
And when the medical examiner reached the scene, it became official. Pava La Pair was dead. Her cause of death was determined to be strangulation and blunt force trauma to the head. The medical examiner also concluded that she had likely been on the rooftop for at least 2 days. At just 26 years old, Parva had already made a name for herself in Baltimore’s business community and had become a positive force in the city.
Raised in Texas and later Arizona, Parva moved to Maryland after being accepted into her dream school, John’s Hopkins University. At first, she planned to become a doctor. But those ambitions quickly changed when she realized her greatest opportunity to make a large-scale impact on the world would come through business.
That was where she felt she could influence the bigger picture through the many different ecosystems she was connected to. Parva began her journey in entrepreneurship by founding TCO Labs at Johns Hopkins, a student-led nonprofit organization that supported students interested in starting their own businesses. From that point on, her work only continued to grow.
She wanted to help all kinds of projects succeed, from small local businesses to medical students developing life-changing inventions and every meaningful idea in between. For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be a doctor. Like many people, I figured that this was a way for me to make a real and meaningful difference in this world.
So, for as long as I can remember, I did all of the typical premed things in high school. I was the president of the medical club. I was in National Honors Society. And I got into the John’s Hopkins University, the place that you go to become a premed. You see, I had my life entirely mapped out. You know, there are millions of people suffering every day from preventable, or rather should be preventable problems.
Needless violence, environmental devastation, severe racism, hatred, inequality, and not just in countries half a world away, but in our very own of cities. Pava’s TED talk in 2019 carried a title that would later feel both tragic and eerily prophetic. Forget about your life plan. In the talk, she spoke about the flaws within society and about how the systems we build can become tools for change, helping improve the world and make people’s lives better.
After launching several different projects, some more successful than others, it was this core belief, improving systems to create a better society, that ultimately led her to found ecom. As the company began to grow, she brought in her co-founder, Sherid Davis, to help build the vision alongside her.
By the time of her death, the two had already spent more than two years working together toward that shared goal. Hi, I’m Sherrod. I’m the co-founder and COO at Ecomap. Hi, I’m Pava. I’m the co-founder and CEO at Ecomap. At Ecomap, we’re on a mission to make information more accessible. The problem that we’re solving at Ecomap is making all of this invisible information visible.
Those efforts brought her recognition. Parava was named to Forb’s 30 under 30 list. Employees at ECAP spoke about her deep commitment to her family, her friends, and the community around her. They affectionately described her as a giant standing at 5’2. While investigators processed the horrifying scene on the rooftop, ECOM employees gathered downstairs.
Later, they were taken to the police station for questioning. As they waited, the team kept talking about Pava about the kind of person she was and who could have possibly wanted her dead. Um she’s just like a ray of sunshine honestly. Mhm. She is um very authentic. Um she says what she means and she means what she says. Um extremely hard worker, extremely brilliant.
Mhm. Um which is why I was so excited to work with her. um very very passionate about the company. I mean, the company was her life. Uh we’re her family. She moved here from Arizona, went to Hopkins, and uh she did a couple different startup things. Ultimately landed on Ecom, but you know, her family is not here.
Mhm. So, we were really like her family. Very much a workaholic, but like truly loved it. Like building something from scratch, building a team, building a product. How many y’all work for Eco? I think 32 now. It’s 32 employees and she’s the boss. Mhm. Okay.
Um, does she have a boyfriend or anything like that? Yeah, she started dating someone a few months ago. Okay. You know his name? Did Papa have any uh any enemies? Anything like that? You a friend, correct? Yeah. Yeah. Did she have did she, you know, express any problems with anybody? Anything like that? No. Did you know anybody that would have been angry with her, mad with her? No.
I mean, anybody would have wanted to harm her or anything like that? I mean, everyone I’ve ever met forgotten her and just I don’t They all seem really close to each other and uh I didn’t know anyone who I knew or anything like that. Do you know anybody that wanted to hurt? No.
According to everyone who knew her, Pava Le Pair was just as respected as she was successful. As investigators spoke with her employees, a very clear picture started to emerge. Everyone was devastated by her death, and not a single person had anything negative to say about the boss, who had also been their friend. Detectives located Par’s boyfriend, a software engineer named Jeremy.
Over the weekend, he had been in St. Lewis on a work trip. The last message he received from Pava was sent at 10:04 on the night of Friday, September 22nd. Earlier that evening, she had attended Artscape, a major outdoor festival featuring artists, designers, and live performers. She texted him saying it had been an incredible experience.
After that, none of his later messages ever got a response. Investigators carefully reconstructed Pava’s last known movements on the evening of September 22nd, trying to piece together her final hours almost minuteby minute. Every surveillance video, every timestamp, and every small detail became critical in understanding what happened that night.
Ring cameras inside the Ecom Map office captured Pava saying goodbye to co-workers before leaving that evening. In the footage, everything appeared completely normal and routine. Nobody around her had any idea they were looking at the last video of Pava alive. She was wearing the same outfit she would later be found in, a black and white sweater, red pants, and red sneakers.
Those details would later appear again and again throughout the investigation, surveillance footage, and police reports. For detectives, that video became one of the key pieces in the timeline of events. It helped establish the exact moment Pava was last seen alive in what seemed to be a completely normal and safe environment only hours before the tragedy that shocked Baltimore.
Did you guys just want By Monday morning, when Pava failed to show up for scheduled meetings and suddenly stopped responding to calls and messages, the people around her immediately knew something was wrong. To those who knew her well, that kind of behavior was completely out of character.
Parva was known as someone responsible, organized, and constantly engaged with both her work and the people close to her. It quickly became clear that after leaving the Artscape Festival on Friday night, nobody had heard from her again. Her phone stayed silent, messages went unanswered, and every attempt to reach her only deepened the growing sense of panic.
Kevin turned out to be the last person known to have seen Pava alive. He had been with her at the festival that evening before the two eventually went their separate ways. For investigators, that became an important piece in reconstructing the final known hours of her life. And as more time passed without a single word from Pava, the feeling grew stronger that this was not simply a disappearance or an accidental absence.
The people who knew her were beginning to fear the worst. Like her what? We don’t know where Papa is. And like that alone is like that’s the weirdest sentence I’ve ever heard because um we always know where Papa is. She’s either working or she’s talking to someone about work or she is you know doing something with her friends which are other people that she works with.
Shada went to step out, talk to Eden, and then he came back and rallied us all together and was like, “We don’t know where she is.” So, I’m going to call Jeremy, who was her boyfriend. And Jeremy said, “Last you heard from her was Friday.” Um, Kevin also was saying how he was with her on Friday night and like everything just kept coming back like Friday.
Like, that was the last time anyone had heard from her. And how long did y’all stay there? Uh we stayed through the set um probably 5 10 minutes after and then uh we just I went to walk home and she went to walk home. Okay. Was it dolphin or what was it like? Yeah, it was 10 I mean it was lit up because it was artscape.
There’s a lot of like stuff happening still but it was like kind of 10 10:00. Okay. So it was night time. It was night time. Yeah. Okay. So you didn’t walk with her home? No. Okay. Did she say what she was going to do? I assume she was just heading home to sleep. She she said she was about to work for like 12 hours the next day doing some engineering.
So that was like basically her whole weekend plan. Did she say she was going to meet anybody? It was clear that night that Parva had returned to the building on West Franklin Street. Surveillance footage and evidence collected by investigators allowed them to reconstruct her final movements before her death with surprising precision.
But the biggest question still had no answer. How and why did she end up on the rooftop, an area that was closed off to the public? For investigators, that became one of the most important and disturbing aspects of the entire case. The roof was not a place people wandered onto by accident. Access to it was restricted, and the location itself was relatively isolated from the rest of the building’s residents.
Because of that, detectives became convinced that Parva had not ended up there on her own. The investigation slowly began focusing on who had been with her during the final moments of her life and what exactly happened between the time she returned to the building and the brutal attack on the rooftop. And very quickly, investigators turned their attention to the man surveillance cameras had captured standing beside Parva that night.
Maybe it was Kevin, maybe it was me, but somebody was like, “You think maybe she’s on the roof?” Because Pava likes to go on the roof sometimes. Um, and it’s like a very positive thing to do to come home and and she loved, you know, she loved her view and loved uh love either from her window or going up on the roof sometimes.
She would take team members up there like, “Have you missed the roof yet?” “Oh, okay. Let’s go.” Like she’s gone on the roof before to just hang out. She loves the Baltimore Baltimore skyline from there. Um, so we thought maybe like, oh, post artscape, maybe she wanted to see what like artscape looked like from the roof.
Um, surveillance cameras near the main entrance of the building on West Franklin Street captured Pava returning home after the Artscape Festival at around 10:30 on Friday night. She casually walked up to the entrance, looking almost carefree after spending the evening with friends. Parva glanced back in the direction she had come from, then looked across the street one more time before stepping inside the building.
Investigators would later determine that after saying goodbye to her friends, a man approached her on the street and began following her home. Just seconds after Pava entered the building, the man quickly came up the stairs behind her. He peered through the glass into the lobby where Parva was sitting on a couch just beyond the doors.
The man pulled something out of his pocket and motioned for Parva to come closer to the entrance. The cameras did not record audio. The two spoke near the doorway for around 40 seconds. Whatever the man said apparently convinced Pava that he could be trusted. Cameras captured her making a friendly gesture, inviting him inside the building.
After that, the two went up to the rooftop together. The surveillance timestamp showed 10:34 p.m. when the man entered the building. Then at 11:09 p.m., roughly half an hour later, the entrance camera captured him again. He was leaving the building carrying the same backpack, but the gray hoodie he had been wearing earlier was now gone. Before walking away, he briefly looked around and then calmly disappeared into the darkness of the night.
Investigators were able to identify the man from the surveillance footage very quickly, partly because the Baltimore Police Department was already actively searching for him in connection with another extremely violent attack that had happened just 3 days earlier. To detectives, his face was already familiar.
32-year-old Jason Billingsley worked as a maintenance technician at a building on Edmonson Avenue. That job gave him access to residents apartments and allowed him to move throughout the property without drawing much suspicion. According to investigators, on September 19th, Jason used his position to gain entry into a building where a young couple, April Hurley and her boyfriend Jonte Gilmore, rented an apartment.
Reports say he repeatedly pounded on their front door, claiming there had been a water leak in the kitchen that needed immediate attention. When April opened the door, Jason allegedly forced his way inside. What happened next, according to investigators, turned into a nightmare. Authorities say he tied the couple up with tape, attacked April, and slit her throat.
Investigators also alleged that Jason then poured gasoline on both victims, and set the building on fire while leaving them trapped inside. Despite the brutality of the attack, the couple somehow survived. April managed to escape through a small basement window while suffering severe injuries. She then went back to help rescue Jonte from the chaos, smoke, and flames.
Both suffered second and thirdderee burns and were rushed to the hospital in critical condition. Detectives quickly uncovered multiple pieces of evidence linking Jason Billingsley to that attack. Investigators recovered a knife, handcuffs, tape, and a hoodie at the scene. items police said belong to him. In addition to that, both April and Jonte personally knew Jason because he worked in their building.
By the time surveillance cameras captured Jason with Parva on the night of her death, police were already searching for him under an active warrant. That fact later became the center of intense public criticism and debate. Some people argued that the search efforts had not been aggressive enough and that the public had not been properly warned about the danger.
Information about the search for Jason only became public after he was also identified as the main suspect in the murder of Pava Laair. The police commissioner later stated that publicly announcing the manhunt complicated the operation because Jason now knew law enforcement was actively hunting for him.
But once investigators connected Jason to being inside the building with Parva that night, there was no longer any way to keep the information from the public. Fear and tension across Baltimore escalated rapidly as people realized that an extremely dangerous violent offender was still out on the streets. This individual will kill and he will rape.
He will do anything he can um to cause harm. So please be aware of your surroundings. Every single police officer in Baltimore City, the state of Maryland, as well as the US Marshalss are looking for you. We will find you. The Baltimore Police Department tracked Jason Billingsley down and determined that he was at a train station in Bowie.
According to investigators, he was heading to his sister’s home in an attempt to leave Baltimore after the city had already been flooded with news about Pava’s brutal murder. A task force with the United States Marshall’s Service arrested him on September 27th, just 2 days after Pava’s body was discovered on the rooftop.
The search had unfolded under intense pressure and urgency because law enforcement considered Jason extremely dangerous. Despite the seriousness of the allegations and the scale of the investigation, the arrest itself happened without incident. Jason was taken into custody without resisting. After his arrest, officers read him his Miranda rights, the standard warning informing him of his right to remain silent and his right to an attorney.
According to investigators, Jason confirmed that he understood those rights. He initialed each section of the document and then officially waved his right to remain silent, agreeing to speak with detectives. It was after that moment that the interrogation began, an interview that would later become one of the key turning points in the entire investigation.
You went in there fully clothed and you came out there partially clothed, right? And we found a white female dead up on the roof and you’re being charged with that murder. Can let me ask you this. Let me ask you this. Were you at 306? Um, that is the address, right? Yeah. 306. 306 West Franklin Street. You’re not answering that. Okay.
Detectives almost immediately began confronting him with evidence tied to Pava’s murder. They didn’t waste time with small talk or long introductions. Investigators already had enough information to slowly lay out a detailed picture of what had happened that night. During the interrogation, they walked through the facts step by step, comparing timelines, surveillance footage, and witness statements gathered throughout the investigation.
The atmosphere inside the room became increasingly tense as detectives made it clear that they already knew far more than Jason probably realized. They repeatedly emphasized that Jason had been seen with Pava shortly before her death and that he was the last known person to go up to the rooftop with her. With every new piece of evidence, his ability to deny involvement grew smaller and smaller.
According to investigators, the interrogation gradually turned into intense psychological pressure built entirely around facts Jason could no longer simply brush aside. And it’s soed up that my my own sister like set me up though tonight. That’s crazy. That’s crazy. Let me tell you what’s crazy. What’s crazy is this young lady was a pillar in the community going into her apartment trying to make her life better and the lives better for everybody around her.
She fought for Black Lives Matter. She fought for police injustice, right? She fought for all of that. She was an advocate for all of that. And the very thing and the very people she fought for, she died at the hands of this guy right here. She died at the hands of this guy here. The guy that she would advocate for the guy. So that’s what’s up.
Ecomat technology stands against systemic racism, bigotry in a police state that criminalizes black bodies. That’s what she promoted. That’s what she was about. That’s why she trusted and wasn’t biased and trusted that you would be an honorable person and let you in the building. Reports say Jason Billingsley had a difficult and unstable childhood.
He was separated from his five brothers and sisters at a young age and placed into foster care. People familiar with his background later said troubling behavior began showing up very early in his life. Over the years, those problems only escalated, eventually turning into a long and serious criminal history. The first records connected to his crimes date back to 2009.
Over the following years, Jason built up an extensive list of convictions, ranging from assaults and violent behavior to robberies and other serious crimes. His name appeared more and more frequently in police reports and court records. In 2015, he was sentenced to 14 years in prison after the brutal sexual assault of a young woman he personally knew.
Details from that case were so disturbing that it became one of the most serious incidents in his criminal past. Following that conviction, Jason was officially classified as a sex offender. However, in October of 2022, Jason was released early after receiving what are known as good time credits, a system designed to reduce prison sentences for good behavior behind bars.
The program was intended to encourage discipline among inmates, allowing accumulated credits to automatically shorten prison terms without requiring a separate parole board decision. In Jason’s case, that decision sparked major outrage after his arrest. The parole board had reportedly denied his release twice, officially determining that he still posed a danger to the public.
Despite that, the Good Time credit system ultimately allowed him to leave prison before completing his full sentence. For nearly an hour, detectives repeatedly confronted Jason with facts gathered during the investigation. Step by step, they reconstructed the events of that night, pressuring him with evidence and inconsistencies in his statements.
Investigators knew he had followed Parva. They knew she was the one who let him into the building, and they knew the two of them went up to the rooftop together, but only one of them came back down. And guess what? We only saw one person come down off that roof. And guess who it was? This guy. And when he came down, this is how he was dressed.
But when he went in, he had on a hoodie, backpack, and everything. The question that finally got Jason to start talking was surprisingly simple. It wasn’t about complicated evidence, forensic reports, or technical details from the investigation. Detectives asked him just one thing. What exactly did he say to Pava at the door that convinced her to let him into the building? That brief moment lasting only a few seconds ultimately became fatal.
One interaction at the entrance, one short conversation, one decision to trust the person standing in front of her. And in the end, that decision led to her death. For investigators, the question was incredibly important because it could explain how Jason gained access to the building and why Pava did not recognize him as a threat in that moment.
According to detectives, the atmosphere inside the interrogation room noticeably shifted after that question was asked. Jason began talking more openly than before, and investigators realized they were getting closer to understanding one of the key missing pieces of what happened that night. I wanted to talk to you before.
Mhm. So, why you don’t talk to? Mhm. That’s what I said. Mhm. Yeah. I went to see her. She open. Mhm. So, you said I wanted to talk to you for a minute, but what made you first think that you wanted to talk to her? Where did you see her at at first? Up the street. Did you say anything to her at that point? No, she had stopped to say something to me.
She was she was juggling a little bit. Okay. And what does he say? So she sound like something funny or something. I don’t know. A little joke or something. Yeah, like a little joke. Mhm. She left. I found I went asked her why she don’t talk to me for a little bit more. Guess she don’t want a dog. We went out to the roof. What made you all go to the roof? She b it up.
What’ she say? She said, “Come on. I want to show you something.” Mhm. What? Okay. And once you How did you get up to the roof? the latter. Okay. And once you got up on the roof, what happened? She was talking for a little bit. Mhm. What What was she talking about? I don’t remember. Mhm.
What were you talking about? Nothing. Okay. Just And then what happened? Just just blacked off. Jason’s claim that he had supposedly blacked out during the actual attack was immediately met with heavy skepticism from detectives. During the interrogation, investigators noticed that he remembered the events before and after the murder far too clearly.
Jason described in detail how he met Parva on the street, how he followed her home, how they spoke to each other, and how he left the rooftop after the attack. For investigators, that became a major detail. His own statements showed that he was aware of the situation and understood the sequence of his actions. Everything pointed to the conclusion that Jason knew exactly what he was doing at the time of the murder.
Detectives saw no signs that he had completely lost control or genuinely forgotten what happened. In fact, the overall picture investigators pieced together appeared calculated and deliberate. Because of that, they almost immediately rejected the idea that he had suddenly blacked out. At the same time, Jason never managed to clearly explain the motive behind his actions.
He claimed he had no specific intention or reason to attack Pava. According to him, by the time they went up to the rooftop, he was already struggling internally with violent thoughts and dark impulses that he supposedly had been trying to suppress. But in the end, he gave into them. I don’t know what we got on the roof.
I almost was like I was like something something in my head like just one person saying don’t do it. One person said don’t do it, don’t do it. You got too much going on. And then like just demon like it just like it seemed like it was just wait but just he let out or something like that. But when you were out what was your intentions? I don’t know. I don’t know.
I just I don’t know. I ain’t I ain’t I ain’t like thinking about none of that till after like I as myself like why I do it and I don’t know why I do why I did it. I don’t know like my conscious and everything else was saying just go downstairs and then I don’t know it was just something that just had to do.
Jason admitted that he used the bloodstained brick found at the crime scene to beat Pava. That horrifying piece of evidence became one of the key elements of the investigation and further highlighted the extreme brutality of the attack. But despite the confession itself, Jason provided almost no additional details about what happened that night.
He did not explain his actions, describe a motive, or talk about the final moments of the assault. For investigators and for Parva’s family, that left even more painful questions unanswered. Parts of what happened that night remained known only to one person, Jason Billingsley himself. When detectives shifted the interrogation toward the earlier attack involving April and Jonte, the brutal attempted murder, assault, and arson case, Jason denied everything.
Despite the severity of the accusations and the devastating injuries suffered by the victims, he refused to take responsibility for those events. That selective confession only made the case even more disturbing and created the impression that Jason was carefully controlling the information he chose to share with investigators.
For many people, it became yet another deeply unsettling aspect of the case. A mix of partial admission and complete denial surrounding multiple violent crimes. So, I’m going ask you straight up. I’m going to look at you in your face. Has there been another time that you blacked out? No. And maybe you had did something that you aren’t so proud of.
I’ll be my life. I’m talking about within the last couple weeks. No. Okay. The fact that I’m sitting here in front of you guys today is honestly a miracle. Um sometimes it’s it’s still unbelievable that I’m here. Um Jason Billingsley literally tried to take my life. He tried to take my life and this could have been prevented.
At first, Jason pleaded not guilty to the long list of charges filed against him. Despite the overwhelming amount of evidence and the intense public attention surrounding the case, his defense team attempted to challenge key parts of the investigation. Jason’s attorney argued that the confession he gave to the Baltimore Police Department regarding Parva’s murder had been obtained under pressure.
According to the defense, Jason did not fully understand his rights during the interrogation and was not completely aware of the legal consequences of his statements. Those claims became part of an ongoing legal battle that only intensified public focus on the case. While prosecutors and defense attorneys continued fighting in court, the victim’s families were dealing with their own battle outside the criminal proceedings.
For them, the case was never just about securing a conviction. They were trying to understand how someone with Jason’s history had ever been placed in a position where he had access to potential victims in the first place. April Hurley later filed a lawsuit against her landlord and the property management company. The lawsuit claimed they failed to properly screen Jason Billingsley when hiring him as a maintenance worker despite his status as a convicted sex offender.
According to April, that decision gave him access to the building where she lived and ultimately created the conditions that led to the horrific attack. The lawsuit once again brought attention to questions surrounding corporate and employer responsibility, especially when it comes to hiring individuals with dangerous criminal histories who are given access to residential buildings and private spaces.
And we are here to announce that today a Baltimore City jury awarded April and Jonte Gilmore a $21.5 million verdict against Eden’s Homes LLC and Property Pals LLC for failing utterly to vet to do any background research on Jason Billingsley, a terrible, terrible repeat violent sex offender. Pava’s parents, Frank and Caroline Leair, also spoke publicly about what they described as the tragic and entirely preventable nature of Jason Billingsley’s crimes.
In multiple public statements, they emphasized that the tragedy might never have happened if the system had stopped someone with such a violent past much earlier. Their words reflected deep grief, frustration, and the painful realization that their daughter’s life could potentially have been saved. After Pava’s death, her parents began actively campaigning for the passage of the Parva Marie Laair Act.
Their goal was not only to push for legal reform, but also to do everything possible to prevent other families from experiencing the same nightmare. The proposed law aimed to eliminate early release through goodtime credits for individuals convicted of firstdegree sexual offenses. In the eyes of Par’s family and many supporters of the initiative, programs that allowed violent offenders to shorten their prison sentences could create serious risks for public safety by allowing especially dangerous criminals back onto the streets earlier than expected. For
Frank and Caroline, that fight became a way to preserve their daughter’s memory and give meaning to a tragedy that permanently changed their lives. I greet you as the proud father of Pava Marie Le Pair, my only daughter, and the latest victim of Jason Billingsley. However, Pava was not his only victim. Her grieving mother, Caroline, and her loving brother, Nico, are also victims.
The first violent crime, which has been stated, which he plead guilty for and was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison for, happened in 2015. And yet, he was released early in October of 2022. And Governor Moore has stated emphatically on multiple occasions that the system failed Pava. It’s time to change that system.
Of course, I struggle here because I’ve never had a more profound loss. It’s hard to talk, focus, get up every day. But I have an important mission. I’m here for two reasons. Preserve the legacy of Pava Marie Leair. And please, all of us, we need to prevent the violence in our society through whatever means available.
In May of 2024, the Pava Marie Laair Act was officially signed into law and went into effect. The legislation created in response to this tragedy was designed to protect innocent people from repeat violent offenders and help prevent similar cases from happening again. For many people, it became more than just a legal reform.
It became a symbol that Parva’s death would not be forgotten. On that same day, another law inspired by Parva’s story also took effect. The Pavalier Legacy of Innovation Act established special grants for student entrepreneurs in Baltimore. The decision carried special meaning because Pava was remembered as a talented, ambitious, and deeply driven woman who wanted to create opportunities not only for herself but for others as well.
John’s Hopkins University also chose to honor her memory in a similar way. The university renamed Fastforward U, an innovation hub located in Baltimore’s Remington neighborhood to the Pava Marie Leair Center for Entrepreneurship. For many people, it was a sign that her name would forever remain part of the city and the community she inspired during her life.
In the end, Jason Billingsley reached plea agreements in both cases. He received two life sentences for the rape, torture, and attempted murder of April Hurley, as well as the attempted murder of Jonte Gilmore. Court records and the horrifying details of those crimes once again revealed the extreme level of violence involved in the attacks.
For the murder of Paval La Pair, he received another life sentence to be served consecutively with the previous ones. In effect, the court made it clear that he would almost certainly never have the opportunity to return to a normal life. Technically, Jason could become eligible for parole after serving 60 years in prison, at which point he would be around 93 years old.
But prosecutors and legal experts stated that the chances of him ever being released are extremely small. For many people, that provided at least some small sense of safety after everything that had happened. Maybe in some way justice was finally served. But no sentence can fill the emptiness left behind by this tragedy.
Nothing can erase the pain and grief carried by Pava’s family and loved ones. And nothing can ever bring back the impact Pava might have had if she had been allowed to live the life she truly deserved. Acceptable justice may have been served today, but it will never fill the void, erase the grief, or replace the impact that Pava would have had given the full life that she so deserved.
I know that he did not have a good life. I know that he has five siblings. I know they were all given up. Um, and they grew up separately and independently in foster care. Um, and I was sorry that what possibly could have been a prosperous life of his was taken from him at an early age and unfortunately created by the monster that attacked um, April and Jante and murdered our daughter.
Um, and II pray for his mother and that she may find peace. But um other than that, I I don’t have any other feelings about Mr. Bellings. And that was the tragic case of Pava La Pair. A story that shocked countless people and left behind more questions than answers. It was a case that sparked waves of discussion, fear, and heartbreak among those who followed the investigation from the very beginning.
What happened felt almost impossible to comprehend, especially because of the brutality of the circumstances and the disturbing details that slowly emerged throughout the investigation. This case remained deeply etched in the minds of people who heard about it even once. And even today, for many, the name Paval Laapair is still associated with one of the most tragic and deeply unsettling stories of that time.
