Transcript of Talking Dateline: Bringing Jay Home

Hey, everyone. I'm Andrea Canning, and we are talking Dateland. Today, I'm here with Blaine Alexander, who will be talking about her episode, Bringing Jay Home. If you haven't seen it, you can find it in the Dateland podcast feed. So go there and listen to it or stream it on Peacock and then come back here. For this Talking Dateland, we have a podcast exclusive clip from Blaine's interview with Jay's parents. Then we'll answer some of 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. 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. 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 a 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. He was just very vivacious, but also had this desire to give back to communities. I mean, I think one of the details that really struck me was that on the day that he disappeared, he was set to hold a baby formula drive. It was something that he had organized, and then he went missing. That was one of the big clues that let his friends know, Okay, something's going on because he would never miss this. So he goes missing. It was his mom's birthday, and he didn't call her. And so immediately his mom knew, Okay, something's wrong. They reach out to Ole Miss police, and police go look at his apartment. They come across security video that shows that he left his apartment, came back, and then left again early in the morning.

And they noticed that he's holding his cell phone like this, the same way that we would all hold our cell phone if we're talking to someone on speaker. And they come to find out that he's going to have a sexual encounter with another man. Through Snapchat, through tracking things down, they come to find out that it's a young man named Tim Harrington, who there was no indication that he was gay at all. Police put together this case that Tim Harrington ultimately killed Jay Lee, strangled him to death in his apartment, wrapped his body in moving blankets and duct tape, and dumped him about an hour and a half outside of Ole Miss because he was concerned that he was going to out him as being gay. In the first trial, the first trial ended in a mistrial because one juror just couldn't get over the fact that there was no body. Investigators still hadn't found Jay Lee's body. Not too long after that, though, Andrea, They found J. Lee's body, and they were headed for a second trial, and he took a plea deal and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

I mean, thank goodness, he put the family out of their misery from that perspective, from having to sit through a trial again, from having to go through all of that.

It spared J. Lee's mom from having to testify again, Ms. Stephanie. She would have had to take the stand again.

Blaine, all these missing persons cases, they start with a text doesn't go answer to a phone call that doesn't get returned. Everyone feels the same, I think, in the beginning. Like, Oh, they're busy. They'll get back to me. Then in this case, and eventually, sadly, in a lot of these cases, they don't. In this case, it was interesting because right off the bat, this hit me because Ms. Stephanie's birthday is July eighth, which is my dad's birthday. I thought right away, I was like, The first thing on my mind on July eighth when I wake up is I have to call my dad. This is a special day. You don't ever forget your parents' birthday. Of course. And so it was just so understandable that a mom with a son like Jay would expect that phone call very quickly.

That's exactly it. So it's funny you say that, My birthday is July ninth. And so I thought, Okay, as a mom, that just hit me too, right? From a mother's perspective, yes, this was an incredibly close family. I mean, talking, texting every day throughout the day, which, again, college kids, you don't typically see that with their parents, right? And so on her birthday of all days, he's radio silent. She immediately said, Oh, no, no, no, no, In fact, she and her husband, Mr. Jimmy, they were driving down to Biloxi to just go on a little vacation, and she said, No, turn the car around. We need to go to Oxford. We need to go check on him because something is wrong when she kept calling him and when his location was off. She just knew immediately.

Mother's intuition. Yes. What I love the most is Jay being gay, his father being a pastor, that he was so accepted by his family. And I love what the dad said, be who you are or nothing at all.

I mean, I think that there were so many aspects of this that you could look at this story and just have a bunch of stereotypes, right? Like, this is the South, these These are very God-fearing, religious family. Dad's a Minister, all of these many things. And again, being African-American. A lot of times when you're looking at, especially when it comes to religion in the Black community, not typically and historically very accepting of the LGBTQ community. And so all of these things, though, that was not the case with the Lee family. I mean, Jay had no fear in being who he was. It did not not impact his relationship with his mom or his dad or sister or anybody in the family. And they were just as beautiful and as loving. And I asked Taylor during our interview, we talked for three plus hours, and I said, Where did that confidence come from? And she said it was our family. I mean, we knew that we were loved. There was not a moment that we walked outside of that house that we had any question as to whether we were loved, whether we were supported. And she said, And especially their mom really instilled this confidence and just like, No, this is whoever are, whatever you do, do it confidently.

And it was so beautiful to see that really, really come to play as I got to know Jay throughout the course of the story. He was very clearly a fun person, right? His style was amazing. I mean, his sister and I talked about it. He would dress. He was just out there.

His dog alone.

His dog, Lexie.

I mean, the dog with the pink goggles.

Lexie would come to class. Lexie was just an icon, right? But yes, he performed in drag shows. We actually went to one of the shows where he would have performed in the course of shooting this, which was a fun and amazing experience. You have all these young college students, and then we walked in with our cameras and we're decidedly older than college. They were kind.

Yeah, but you look like you're in college. You blended right in.

I'm jealous. It was just funny. It was hilarious to be in the midst of it, but it was cool to just see his world see his community and everybody being there. It was really special.

Yeah. If we all could have that much confidence. I'm sure people saw him and thought, 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 direct shows, inspired him to be open 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 Jay's parents. The thing that I thought early on was, I thought, Could this be a hate crime?

It's interesting. I thought about this, too. When I spoke with Jose and Breanne, they talked about the fact that before J. Lee went missing, there were two murders of transgender people there in the state of Mississippi. They were thinking, Okay, what is happening? Could this be an attack on the community. And so it did put a lot of people in this place of just fear and trying to watch out, while at the same time wondering if police were going to do anything about this.

I know that that was a big concern for friends and family as to how the police would handle this because Jay is a person of color. Jay is gay. But it was the opposite reaction from the police, the Oxford police chief. He was Mr. Emotional and Mr. I'm not quitting until I solve solve this case. And he was amazing.

When it comes to emotion, Andrea, you know this. When we interview police chiefs, prosecutors, all these folks, it's not often that you get to see just true emotion tears from them, right? But that happened several times when I was speaking with Chief McCutchen. Certainly happened when I was talking with Ben Creekmore, the DA. I mean, they were tearing up thinking about the moment that they found Jay Lee's body, the pain that the family went through. And several things. One, I'll Oxford is a college town, right? Everything revolves around Ole Miss. And so you think about, okay, either I have college-age kids or my kids will one day be in college, or you can just put yourself in this feeling of, Oh, my God, I don't know where my child is when they've gone off to college. I think any parent can identify with that, and that's a terrifying thought. I also think that for Chief McCutchen and Mr. Jimmy, Jay's dad, faith really bonded them. They both talked about times that they would pray together. They both talked about times when... I mean, the police really put a lot into this. The chief told me at one point, Okay, it's like we're going to take an Ibuprofen, get some rest, and then we're going to get right back at it like they were going around the coffee, drink some coffee, and we're going at it.

And so they were putting their heart and soul into this, and it gets hard for them. They weren't able to find Jay or bring his remains home. And so we saw this back and forth where they were really leaning on each other through the course of this. And I have to say one thing that's interesting that didn't make it into our story, Chief McCutchen had actually met Jay Lee at one point, about six months Before he disappeared. Yes. He told me that there was this roundtable that they had for community leaders, and Jay was doing an internship at Child Protective Services there in Oxford. Jay was part of this meeting. He comes in, he sits down, and the chief said immediately his personality was just on display. He was like, I'm Jay Lee. Who are you? Okay, great. I mean, just talking to people like, This is what we're going to do for the kids. And he said that left a mark on him. And so then when the missing person's case came in, he said, Oh, my God. I know this kid. I remember him, right? He was a good kid. You put all these things together.

And yes, it was certainly something that was emotional.

I was cheering him on. As you took us through this investigation, he's an amazing man. And also some really good There was really good detective work in this case as well. Good observations. I wouldn't have noticed the phone. When I watched it, I didn't think about the phone being flat like that, that he was on the phone with somebody. Then we get into the technology of it all. We hear this over and over and over again. These police departments, families trying to get messages, information from social media platforms like Snapchat, and they get shut down again and again and again. I just did a dateland where they hired some professor who was essentially like a hacker, a professor/hacker who got into it or whatever. I was so impressed with Jay's parents and this Jay Lee bill that they're working on. I mean, I can't think of a better way to honor his life If they can get this passed, that law enforcement can get access to people under 21 into their social media accounts and beyond. I mean, that is so smart.

It is. It is. And I would say it seems like a common sense type of thing, because if you want to find where a young person is, not to sound old, if you're trying to find a young person, but social media is the way. I mean, right? He was communicating through Snapchat, the way that most of us would communicate via text, right? And So that is easily the quickest digital footprint, the quickest way to figure out where they are, who they've been talking to, what they've been doing. And in talking with Mr. Jimmy, he was just like, this was a constant source of torture for them because they knew something had happened. It wasn't this question of, Oh, gosh, maybe he's... No, they were like, Something's happened to our child. They're waiting day after day after day after day. They want to bring him home, and they're fighting this battle of, We know our son is always online. 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 are underage, and we're talking about a missing person In this 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. Khaled said something that was quite the foreshadow When he told Jay that stay away from the DLs, the downlows, because they're trouble, he said. You can see that 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. 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 carefully created 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. Let's be very, very clear. J. 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 podcast, he's in interviews, he's in the Black Student Union. He's that kid that 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, spent time in his church, influential father, influential grandfather, this whole package. And again, very similar to Jay Lee, family's rooted in faith.

Both fathers were ministers, right? 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... That really made all the difference. And the fact that their lives intersected in the way that they did was just unbelievable. I think that there's so much to be said about, yes, being your authentic self. I think that in this fear, that message that he confessed, set him off, I want to be able to say that I had you on the down low. It's the question of, Gosh, what are people going to think of me? What are my family's going to think of me? And of course, I'm not inside Tim Harrington's mind. I didn't speak with him. Of course, we tried to. His mom actually sent me a brief email and just said, We're going to let the attorney speak for our family and certainly understand what they're going through. This is a very difficult situation for them as well.

So the biggest problem, as you mentioned, Blaine, off the top was that they had not found a body. They had not found Jay's body in the beginning, of course, then they make that horrible discovery. We have some extra sound from Jay's parents, their interview with you about finding Jay's body, their son, and what happened after that. Sure.

You talked about once Jay was found, even just by his skeleton, you could tell that was your son. You were very intentional about wanting to say your own goodbye to him, touching his remains. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Well, we oftentimes, I know you probably know in most villages, Baptist, Pentecost, oftentimes, they touch on his forehead, prayer. They just let him touch his forehead. You know that I love him. I want to make sure I see him. He knew that mom and dad loved him and the rest of the family loved him. Sometimes we can't always get what is wrong. I would love to have seen him grow up and the more and do things within this country or abroad. I feel like I had come in that he was going to be extremely successful. I mean, Maybe just a dad just got a lot of company in his son or whatever, but I just believe he was going to be definitely somebody I'm here. But I think he was just what God wanted him to be. He touched people's lives. He made a difference. I think for you guys, he's going to continue to make a difference.

I do feel he will make a difference with this possible bill that will help other young people who go missing.

Wasn't that just the most heart-wrenching thing, though, to hear him say... Basically, he's saying that he kissed the skeletal remains of his son, right? In this like, I want him to know that he's loved. I want him to feel he's loved. And so, again, this through line of just this deep love that these parents have for their kids, that was right there until the end. And I think that one was one where I've done now a good number of just these interviews. That one just really touched me when he said that. It gave me chills and just rocked me in my core because I can't imagine just a father having this is all that's physically left of your child and wanting to still show that love and that embrace. Absolutely. I think that them telling Jaylee's story, I know, was something that was difficult for them, but I'm so grateful that they did because they really were able to bring him to life in such a way. Yeah.

I was going to say the same thing. I'm so glad they did.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That put me back to my first job, which was in Mississippi. It was fun to hear again, Ms. Stephanie, because I remember when I moved to Mississippi, everything was Ms. Andrea, Ms. Andrea. I was like, I'm not used to that. I've I've never heard anyone in my life call me Ms. Andrea. But that's how people would address me, which was hilarious.

It's like a Southern thing. The funny thing is, mind you, I don't do that in every interview, but it was just something about sitting down with them. They just gave them. I just like, You can't just be Stephanie. You're Ms. Stephanie. You're Mr. Jimmy. It's just...

I love that. I love that. I also love how you said it was something I wrote it down. It was like, Oh, full boil with Tim, right? In the interview room, because usually I say getting hot in the kitchen, and you came up with full boil. So I'm like, Okay, good. We've both got our ways that we want to say when things are getting hot.

Exactly.

We're going to take a short break, and we'll be back to talk about your questions and comments from social media. Let's talk about some of the social media comments on our viewers, our viewers' comments and questions.

Would love to.

We We got so many comments from people on this one, people saying their move to tears about the story, what a great job you all did. So let's start with Barbara Tead. She says there was another Dateland episode about an officer on the DL married with a baby, had an affair with a gay resident. He stopped on patrol and murdered him when he threatened to expose him. Oh, gosh. Yeah, this was Keith's episode before Daylight. Okay. And this was a Missouri College student named Jesse James Valencia, murdered in 2004 by the police officer he was secretly seeing. So this, again, goes back to the dangers of D. L, what Khaled talked about.

I've got to say, too, real quick, along those lines. So this was an episode I actually had a watch party, if you will, of a bunch of maybe like 30, 35 friends came together and we all watched it because I really wanted to get people's reaction. I wanted to see how people received it. And I have to say when the down low thing, when Khalid It mentioned that, everybody was like, oh. People were like, oh, we know where this is going. It's going to be somebody who's closeted, who's not trying to... People just saw that coming, right?

And also we just want to say not everyone who's in the closet is bad or has rage issues. We're not trying to say that this is all people who are not ready to be their authentic self. Yes. But we just are saying it happens.

I'm very glad you made that point because that's very important.

Yes. Winston at Peewee Winston, said what I was thinking, no body, no DNA. Definitely, there was some reasonable doubt there. I mean, there were a lot of things that they didn't have before the body was found.

I think that 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. They summed it up perfectly. How do you convince a jury of murder when you can't even prove that someone is dead conclusively. Like a judge had declared J. 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. Police have said that was a lot of time for him to be able to disinfect his truck, clean things out, clean away any traces of whatever may have been there. That's what they pointed to. But at the end of the day, yes, a tremendous amount of reasonable doubt for sure.

Nasty Smith said, I knew the duct tape would nail him. Leah Jarrett, Hedgepath on Facebook asks, What happened to his doggy?

Oh, Lexie. Lexie went to live with Taylor, Jay's sister, and lived, actually, this is unbelievable, but she brought Lexie to Oxford for our interview, and we were supposed to meet Lexie, but things went over. And then we said, Okay, we'll meet her next week when we come back to Jackson. She died. Lexie died. 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. That is a long life. She was just forever in dog years.

That is a long life for a little dog like that. And also, given the family's feelings about God and religion, Jay Lee and Lexie are together again.

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

That's the silver lining there, right? Yes. Okay. And we have a comment from Lisa J. Miller at Lisa J. Miller, CEO as in Colorado. She's a detective out of Colorado who has been featured multiple times on Dateland, including in Keith's episode, While She Was Sleeping, and on our podcast, After The Verdict. And she says, I'm grateful the Dateland community gets to see these officers carrying good humans, doing the right things and the right way for the right reasons. Most that wear the badge are good humans. Grateful these particular humans were on this case.

Thank you. I'm glad to hear that Lisa. Thank you for writing that because You're right. I mean, like we said earlier, I'm so glad that we were able to just really shine a light on their heart through this process. Of course, their investigative prowess, their work, all of that, but just show their heart in who they were and the type of emotion and genuine caring that they brought to this case.

And on a different note, Dateland will be off for the next few weeks for the Winter Olympics. And Amy Gatch on Facebook asked, with the Olympics airing for the next few weeks, what will you do during this time? Will you take time off or work on other Our stories. Time off. We got time off.

What is this you speak of? We will be working. We will be, gosh, shooting. I know I've got shoots. I'm sure you have shoots coming up. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's what we do, right?

Just keep working. And then as soon as the Olympics are over, we'll be back at you with new episodes.

That's what we're doing. We're working on the off time to make sure that we've got all the new episodes ready to go. Just fire them out the gate.

Exactly. Blaine, thank you for this. I want to say, very special Dateland because it really was. A lot of ground was covered in a lot of different societal issues with this one. So thank you.

That means a lot to me, Andrea. It really does. So that's what we hoped to do. So I really appreciate you saying that. Thank you.

That's it for Talking Dateland this week. Remember, if you have a question about Dateland, DM us, a video on social media @datelandnbc, for a chance to be featured in a future episode of Talking Dateland. Or you can leave your question in a voicemail at 212.