Justine Billingsley exhaled loudly when she saw her brother Jason enter the courtroom in a yellow jumpsuit. She began to cry when security officers removed the shackles around his waist and his wrists. Her brother didn’t look her in the eye once.
Read More
Then she grabbed her pen and began to take notes as the judge handed down the maximum sentence of life in prison. She wrote it all down, keeping a straight face. She had watched her brother plead guilty to attempted murder and to setting two people on fire a few days prior. She wanted to hear for herself what he had to say when he entered a plea of guilty to the killing of 26-year-old Pava LaPere.
By the time Jason Billingsley, 33, was LaPere’s age, he was in prison for a sexual offense. LaPere, who started EcoMap Technologies when she was a student at the Johns Hopkins University, was named to the Forbes “30 Under 30” list in the social impact category. Their lives converged on a rooftop in 2023, bringing about a case that commanded the attention of Baltimore for a year.
The sentencing on Friday was the end of the case, though not to the LaPere family’s grief and to the trauma her brother caused another couple he attacked, April Hurley and Jonte Gilmore. The sentencing was also the last time she would see her brother as a free man. Maybe the last time she would see him at all or contact him, she said in an interview with The Baltimore Banner.
Justine Billingsley saw him for many years well into his adulthood as the kid she grew up protecting, an affectionate, chubby boy who had a stutter, who liked to cuddle and tell her stories. When Justine and her sister Jasmine found out their brother was on the run, they wondered what happened to him. They still don’t know. Justine Billingsley doesn’t know who this person is.
She recalled how Jason went to group homes where he described being mistreated before moving back in with his mother when he was a teenager. His brother Joshua kept running away, until they let him stay with their mother. Justine and Jasmine never returned to their mother’s home, although they visited often.
One day, Justine arrived at her mother’s home to her sister searching a trunk, looking for “a bat or something.” Her mom told Justine her brother was angry and was going to hit her. Jasmine had told his girlfriend he was seeing another woman.
The first time Justine saw her brother angry enough that she could see violence in him, he was 18. He didn’t hit her. She calmed him down.
A few years later, rumors started going around that he had sexually assaulted a woman. He denied it. He took his shirt off to prove it, asking them to look for any marks on his body, on his arm. He didn’t do it, he said to his sisters, over and over. Justine believed him.
But people started going to their cousin’s house, which was next to their mother’s, looking for Jason. Joshua protected him, Justine said. The rumor was that the woman was the girlfriend of someone their brother knew. They told Joshua to “take care of it.” She thought they meant take care of Jason.
Jason asked to spend the night at her house in Prince George’s County that week, wanting to stay low for a bit. The next morning in June 2013, Jasmine called her. Joshua had been shot and was in shock trauma. He died that day.
Police came for Jason the day of Joshua’s funeral, Justine said, on July 11, 2013. He was calm when they arrived and arrested him on a sexual assault charge.
Justine cried and screamed. She told them they were making a mistake, that he hadn’t done it. He had told her so.
He pleaded guilty to first-degree sexual offense and was sentenced to serve 30 years in prison, with all but 14 years suspended and five years’ probation.
She visited a few times each year and talked to him frequently. It wasn’t until the third year of his sentence that he told her the truth.
But over the years, she said, he told her he wanted to get on the “straight and narrow,” that he wanted to work out and get a job. He wanted to go home. He got certificates, started doing therapy and took strong antidepressants. When he left prison in October 2022, it seemed he was on the right track. He surprised their mom the day he was released and sent a video of them to Justine.
He moved in with a girlfriend and got a construction job, then as a maintenance worker. Justine visited them once. He looked healthy. Then her mother told her one day he was kicked out of the woman’s house — she found out he was cheating on her.
Justine was mad. Here was this woman letting him live with her while he was on probation for sexual offense. Then he cheated on her.
“Just leave women alone,” she said. He told her to mind her business.
They stopped talking for a while, though she checked in on him through his mother. In July, Jasmine visited Baltimore from Georgia, where she lives with one of her nieces, Joshua’s younger daughter.
Jasmine and her niece were going to their mother’s house, and Justine went to the city as well. They were all standoffish to Jason, she said.
Then, Justine said, she found out through her mother that Jason was back to using drugs.
Justine knew he had used recreational cannabis and took Percocet at least since he was 18. He tried to hide it from her back then, she said, but she knew. He was too talkative when sober, and the drugs made him quiet. She gave him a lecture.
“Why would you want to use drugs when you saw firsthand what it did to our family?” Justine asked back then. Years later, there she was asking him again. He told her he liked the way the drugs made him feel.
Her cousin was the one who called her in September.
Her cousin, who lived next door to her mother, called Justine sobbing. Justine was making dinner with her girls at her house. She asked her cousin to calm down, asking her what was going on.
“It’s your brother,” her cousin said. “I can’t believe he is throwing his life away like this.”
“What do you mean?”
“He killed someone,” her cousin said.
Justine has this nervous tick. She laughs or giggles at times of stress.
“You can’t be serious,” she said, giggling.
He would never kill anyone, she said, let alone a woman, not after serving 10 years in prison, she thought. Everything is supposed to smooth out after prison, she said. They got a second chance — why was he wasting it?
Her cousin told her to check the news. She typed his name and saw a wanted poster.
She called Jasmine. They read the news that he may have killed an entrepreneur and that he may have set two people on fire. That he could have sexually assaulted a woman, slit her throat and left them to die.
“I don’t know this person,” she said to herself, referring to her brother.
Their mother hadn’t seen the news when they called him. She told them she knew something had happened, that something had changed in him. Their mother kept asking him to talk to her, to tell her what was going on. But he didn’t open up to her.
Justine told her mother to tell Jason to call her if he reached out. He called the next day.
“Is it true?” Justine asked.
“Yes,” he said. He sounded defeated. Tired. Confused.
She asked him why.
“I don’t know, Sis,” he said.
He told her he couldn’t talk long. He thought police could be tracking him. But he called several times throughout that day. She asked if he was safe. If he had eaten. She never asked him where he was.
“This is me, being an idiot, trying to protect him again,” she said.
Justine asked him many times what happened. He said he crashed out. Another time, she asked if he had a plan. He didn’t know either.
More news began to come out, photos and details that scared her. Justine worried he had snapped. She decided to call the police and tell them who she was. She didn’t know where Jason was, she told them, but their mother might.
Then he called her again and told her he was at the New Carrollton Metro station, not far from her home. He was going to take the MARC train, he told her, to try to flee the state to “get his mind right.”
He asked her to meet him at Bowie State University and give him a hug. She paused.
“Do you plan on hurting me?” she said. Jason got offended.
“I would never hurt you,” he said. “Why would you think that?”
He asked her again to meet him and if she could give him money. She said she would if he told her the truth.
She wanted to know everything, Justine said, to process it all. When Joshua had died, she asked the police to see his body, bullet holes and all. She wanted to figure out on her own which of the at least seven bullets led to his death. Police didn’t let her see his body then, saying it was too damaged.
Jason agreed to meet her the next morning. She didn’t tell anyone.
She went to a 7-11 convenience store to grab food, but the ATM was broken. She saw that as a sign she wasn’t supposed to help him in that way. She got cash back with some food. The highest amount she could get was $10.
Then she drove to Bowie State to meet him. She had walked past him when he called her name.
“Jason?” she said, “Is that you?”
She gave him the food, then the $10, saying that was all she had because the ATM was broken. Then she asked him to tell her what happened. She needed to know.
Jason said he didn’t want her to see him as a monster. Jason told her he got into a fight with the man, that Gilmore had shot him, and he shot him back, put him inside the building and set it on fire. Jason said he had nothing to do with Hurley.
“Okay, so then what happened with Pava?” she asked.
Jason talked of seeing LaPere walk down the street before the two exchanged pleasantries. A short conversation ensued that he took as insulting.
Jason said they walked into the building together, then to the roof, that she looked out at the landscape, saying the night was beautiful. He said she insulted him again, saying he couldn’t afford living there.
Justine said he said it all “pissed him off,” the insults, his girlfriend kicking him out. He said he “hit her [LaPere] and didn’t stop,” Justine said.
She didn’t believe a word. She had already read the articles. She had seen Hurley’s neck and Gilmore’s burns. She knew he was lying about LaPere, too. But she didn’t want to make him angry.
Justine told him she was going to the ATM to get him more money. She went to the car and called the police.
Justine did what she was told. Jason called her throughout that evening from different phone numbers, telling her he was on campus. She told him she was coming; to give her a few more minutes, she told him whatever the detective told her to say. Meanwhile, the U.S. Marshals were on their way.
He stopped calling her after a while, Justine said. He saw police cars rolling around and that’s when he knew, he told her later. Police arrested him at the train station.
Justine didn’t talk to him for a long time. She couldn’t sleep. It was all weighing on her, how he became a man who could harm people for no reason, who could kill.
She wrote him a letter a few weeks after he was arrested, Justine said, even though he said he didn’t want anyone writing to him. She was so mad. She had two daughters, and he had involved her in this whole mess.
Neither of her brothers got to see her older daughter grow up. Joshua never met her younger daughter; Jason only met her once. Jason would never see either again, she wrote in the letter. Their mother was getting older, she wrote. She was probably going to die while he was in prison. He would never have a family of his own.
He called her every day, but she ignored the calls for a while. A few days before his trial was set to begin, he told her on a video call he was going to plead guilty.
“You’re going to die in there,” she said.
He said he was probably going to do 20 years — he said 20 years like it was 20 minutes, Justine said. She became angry.
She repeated what she said in the letter. Jasmine was never going to talk to him again, she said. He would never have a child, see life through their eyes.
He broke a woman, he took someone’s child, she said. All it takes is one second to change your life.
“You changed her life,” she said, referring to Hurley. She was traumatized. “You ended someone else’s life.”
Her parents will never get a call from their daughter again, she said. LaPere had a brother. Justine knew what it was like to lose a sibling.
Jason began to cry then, she said.
“I know, Sis,” he said. “I know.”
She had asked him again recently if it was true. He told her some things were, others weren’t. She pushed him to be specific, but he never was.
Justine went to the hearing where he pleaded guilty to attempting to kill Hurley and Gilmore. She sat two rows behind him, the only person sitting on his side of the court. He walked in, smiling at her. He mouthed: “Hey, Sis.”
Justine thought of her dog, whom she sometimes puts in a cage. She looked at her brother with shackles.
“When you leave here, they’ll put you inside a cage,” she thought to herself.
She saw him stand by his attorney and plead guilty, listening to prosecutors recount what he did. She saw Hurley, wearing a blouse that hid her scars, talking about her daughter, how much her daughter loved her. Jason just stood there.
As the courtroom emptied, Justine Billingsley stood, looking at her brother as the security officer put the shackles around his waist. Her mother, who was sitting in the last row, joined her.
His attorney put his hand on Jason Billingsley’s shoulder. They watched him as the officers took him out of the courtroom.
He didn’t look back once.
