John “Jay” Tolson Wiki – John “Jay” Tolson Biography
John “Jay” Tolson is accused of murdering Outer Banks mother of two, Amanda LeeAnn Fletcher Hartleben, in 2020. Hartleben, 38, a mother of two, died on July 25, 2020, three days after being airlifted to a hospital in Norfolk, Virginia. , for the injuries she sustained inside her cozy cabin in Kitty Hawk. Three months later, on October 26, 2020, police arrested John “Jay” Tolson in Bangor, Maine, the same day a Dare County grand jury indicted him for second-degree murder in connection with his death. He has pleaded not guilty and remains being held on $1 million bond at the Dare County Detention Center awaiting trial. After many postponements, jury selection began on Monday. A jury consisting of seven women, five men and two surrogates was selected, reports The Virginian-Pilot.
The keynote addresses began on Tuesday morning. The Hartleben family has been waiting for this moment for a long time. “LeeAnn was a good person,” Hartleben’s cousin Trisha Cahoon previously told PEOPLE. Saying that she hopes justice will be done, Cahoon stressed that her cousin “did not deserve” what happened to her. On Monday, Superior Court Judge Jeff Foster ruled on a defense motion seeking to exclude some evidence, the Island Free Press and The Virginian-Pilot report. Tolson’s public defender had filed a motion asking the court to exclude the approximately 50 photographs and physical evidence from the case, The Virginian-Pilot reports. The judge ruled that evidence taken at the crime scene immediately after Hartleben’s death could be admissible. This includes a blood-stained duvet, towel and pillow that Kitty Hawk police picked up on July 24, The Virginian-Pilot reports. It also includes a bloody T-shirt that a private investigator hired by the family collected and turned over to police on July 31, the newspaper reports.
But the judge said he had “concerns” about evidence collected after that, in September 2020, and said he would rule on that later, Island Free Press reports. On July 22, 2020, Tolson, then 29 years old, called 911 to report that he had found Hartleben unconscious at his home. “My friend, she’s laying in the bathtub, she’s not waking up,” Tolson told the 911 operator about Hartleben, whom he had dated briefly that summer. “I think she fell last night, I’m not sure,” he said. “She’s getting blood from her nose, so I can’t get her to wake up.” Hartleben, who was unresponsive, was airlifted to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital on the mainland in Norfolk, Virginia. Cahoon and her family were shocked when doctors said the mother-of-two had sustained blunt force traumatic injuries to the head that did not match the fall Tolson described on the 911 call, she says. Hartleben also had bruises on his neck and arms, Cahoon says. Cahoon says he immediately knew something didn’t seem right about his cousin’s death and said something seemed “shady.”
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Age
John “Jay” Tolson age is not mentioned.
Man Claimed His Ex-Girlfriend Died After Slipping in Bathtub
His concerns grew when he learned that Hartleben’s cause of death was listed as “complications of blunt force trauma to the head with cirrhosis of the liver with contributing clinical liver failure,” the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Norfolk, Va., confirmed in a statement. emailed to PEOPLE. “The manner of death was considered undetermined,” the statement said. Suspecting a crime when Cahoon and other family members found blood in several rooms, they hired a private investigator to help them gather evidence, arguing that the authorities were not doing enough. In court documents obtained by PEOPLE, police say they began investigating the case immediately. They also said publicly that they were investigating the case and that Tolson was a person of interest. But Hartleben’s cousin, Trisha Cahoon, and other family members argued that police were slow to investigate Hartleben’s death as a homicide. “They were saying there was no crime, no crime had been committed,” Cahoon says. “Her That she was drunk, she fell, hit her head and there you have it. And she succumbed to her injuries.
“And we thought, ‘There was a crime.’ We said, ‘Please come investigate. Please do something. There are stains that look like blood.'” Wanting answers, Cahoon and her family hired a private investigator, who went to Hartleben’s home with Cahoon. There they videotaped what they say were easily seen bloodstains illuminated with a chemical agent on the doors and walls of several rooms and on Hartleben’s mattress. “It was like a massacre,” says Cahoon, who posted their findings in a YouTube video on the #JUSTICEforLeeAnn YouTube channel. But, she adds, “The bathtub had no blood in it.” Saying they felt they were being ignored by law enforcement, Cahoon and her family and others went on social media to put pressure on authorities. Boyfriend Said N.C. Mom Died After Slipping in Bathtub — But 3 Months Later, He’s Charged with Murde. In response, on Aug. 10, 2020, District Attorney Andrew Womble issued a statement saying his office was awaiting the autopsy report before deciding whether to file charges, The Coastland Times reports.
Still pushing for answers from law enforcement, Cahoon told the Island Free Press in an Aug. 26, 2020 article that she and her family had started the #JUSTICEforleeann campaign and marched to the Kitty Hawk Police station. During a subsequent city council meeting, speakers criticized the police chief and the district attorney for their handling of Hartleben’s case, The Coastland Times reported. Hartleben and Tolson met at a party in June of 2020, says Cahoon. He told her he had recently been kicked out of the apartment where he’d been living and needed a place to stay. Her children were away “and she felt sorry for him,” says Cahoon, so Hartleben said he could stay for a couple nights. “Her worst flaw is that she was too much of a giver,” she says. Their friendship soon turned romantic. Tolson had been living with Hartleben for a few weeks when they hit a rough patch in their relationship, according to Cahoon. “He had become possessive,” among other issues, Cahoon alleges. In response, Hartleben put all of his belongings in bags and left them on the porch and said she was ending the relationship, according to Cahoon. “That angered him,” Cahoon says. His attorney did not respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
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