School of Humans.
Last week and the week before last, we talked about the murder of Billy Jean Phillips.
Billy Jean was.
Brutally beaten to death at her home in Madison County, Arkansas, in September of nineteen ninety four. Clint Phillips, who was just seventeen years old when Billy Jean was murdered, was eventually charged with and tried for her murder. But in September of two thousand and three, Clint Phillips was acquitted
of Billy Jean's murder. He walked out of court a freeman, and as we also said last week, the community was divided over whether police had gotten the right guy in the first place, whether they were prosecuting the right man. Clint Phillips has always denied any involvement in Billy Jean phillips murder. He's always maintained his innocence, but no one else was ever arrested or charged with this murder.
Jean's killer is still out there.
Clint Phillips continued to live in the area around Huntsville. He's now forty seven years old, and the name Clint Phillips came up again in a very strange way almost thirty years later, when I was looking into the disappearance of a forty one year old man named Jason Lyrell in January of twenty twenty two. Jason Lyrell was visiting friends in Madison County, Arkansas, when he vanished without a trace.
Jason was last seen in Madison County, Arkansas. His abandoned car was found in the parking lot of a mall in Fayettville, Arkansas.
His car, keys, motorcycle.
And some other belongings were found in several different places spread out across Arkansas and Missouri, but to this day, no trace of Jason Lyrell has ever been found. On February thirteenth, twenty twenty two, a few weeks after Jason disappeared, a deputy was transporting an inmate to the Barry County Jail. This person had been arrested for shoplifting charges, and according to the arrest report, the suspect had blood on his hands and all over his clothing. The man said that
he'd had a seizure and needed medical treatment. After he got it and was brought back to the jail and was being processed, he shocked the police officer on duty when he said that he had information about Jason Lerell's disappearance and that Madison County would want to talk to him about a capital murder.
I'm Catherine Townsend.
If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven four four six ' one four or five. That six seven eight seven four four six ' one four or five. This is Helen Gone Murder line. When the deputy asked the man his name, the man said that
his name was Clint Phillips. But then there's a crazy twist in this case, because it didn't take long for police to figure out that his mugshot did not match Clint phillips photos or description, and that the real Clint Phillips, the one who was arrested, tried, and eventually acquitted of Billy Jean's murder almost thirty years ago, was currently incarcerated somewhere else in the Cummings Unit on a completely unrelated charge. So this guy with the blood on his clothes could
not have been Clint Phillips. The man in the cell with the bloody clothes on was Jimmy Evans. He was also a graduate along with Clint Phillips, Jason Lyrell, and several other people who will come up later of Huntsville High School. Jimmy Evans knew Clint Phillips, and he also had known Jason Lerell when he was a kid.
But why did Jimmy say that he was Clint Phillips.
We're going to come back to Jimmy Evans his strange story into this fateful night in February of twenty twenty two, but first let's go back to Jason Lyrell and dive into what was going on when he went missing. Jason Lyrell grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, before moving to the area around Clifty, Arkansas. His sister, Sarah said that their childhood was pretty rough and that she was one of
the closest people in the world to her brother. She described Jason as kind, gentle, and someone with a great sense of humor, someone who had issues in his life, but someone who was loved.
By a lot of people.
You know, he definitely was somebody who very depressed on like things from his own situation, but he was just always wanting to cheer other people up and make other people laugh, and just a really incredible person, a real honest person with his feelings and very loving.
Sarah said that she and Jason struggled growing up.
Our mother left us in Ohio, had a very abusive biological father. So my biological father had beaten my brother Bobby to the point where he was taken into foster care, and my sister and Jason and I all were removed from the home and brought to my grandmother's in Arkansas, where my grandmother sort of farmed my sister out to the pastor of our church because she wasn't able to
handle a teenager. And so eventually our mom came and got the only ones that were left on us, Jason and I, and we moved back to Ohio for several years, and then because of a bad situation with the person that Jason and I then called our dad, and we ended up having to come back down to Arkansas, and so that's where Jason and I finished school, graduated, and just kind of made our lives.
She described Jason as her best friend, someone who always had her back, so they had a super tight bond. Sarah said they were always there for each other over the years, Jason struggled with different issues, including addictions to drugs and alcohol. He tried to maintain his sobriety, and it seems like he was able to at least sometimes. Twenty twenty one, Jason had a very rough year. Back
in twenty ten, Jason married his wife, Jamaica. They had a son together, and Jason also helped raise Jamaica's young son, who was apparently just four years old when they met. This information, by the way, is according to Jamaica's social media postings. But their marriage started to have problems. Whatever was going on. He was having some emotional issues, and according to things that Jamaica has put on social media, this is also a time when he apparently got back
into drugs. Whatever was going on, Jason Lirell was clearly in distress. His marriage to Jamaica was breaking up, and he was worried about the divorce and about what it would mean for his future. Jason and Jamaica officially separated in May of twenty twenty one. That's when Sarah says Jason moved in with her to an apartment in Fayetteville, which is about thirty miles away from where he'd been living in Madison County. Sometime during all this, Jason also
got into a car accident. Sarah helped him get access to a car so that he would have a vehicle to drive to work and to ride around in. She was basically doing everything that she could to help Jason get his life together. Jason and Jamaica's divorce case was playing out over the summer of twenty twenty one. Jamaica filed for custody of their son. Jason won a joint custody and for a while, according to Sarah, it seemed like Jason's life was getting back to some type of normality.
In that time frame of being in that apartment. We ended up getting him a job at the university. We hired one of the best attorneys in Fantel to be his divorce attorney. You know, he started getting visitation with his son. He was using a device that was recommended through his attorney to monitor alcohol use, you know, to show that he wasn't using alcohol. I mean things were pretty normal. I mean he would pick up his son, had his son over for you know, like every other weekend.
I don't know, we just had a lot of fun together.
Sarah said that December twenty twenty one was a happy time for Jason. He and the family had a good holiday. He saw his ex wife with his son on Christmas. Even Christmas Day he spent time with Sarah and their brother and the children. From what Sarah said, it was a very happy time. Jason said he was looking forward to the future. But then things started to change for Jason.
You know, December came, he was gone quite a bit more than January. I just noticed that I didn't think that he was even working at the university anymore. I don't know exactly what happened at different points in January. I don't know all of the people that he was hanging around with. I just know that he was gone quite a bit.
Sarah said she's not exactly sure what caused Jason to go down a darker path, but at some point, maybe on New Year's Eve, Sarah said, Jason was at a bar and ran into some people who Sarah described as people who had been old friends from back in the day, people he used to hang out with, people who she said, perhaps were not the best influences. It seems that around this time Jason made the choice to start doing drugs again.
Then came this accidental text message. According to court records, Jason sent a text about getting some rocket fuel, referring to drugs, probably to meth. Apparently he accidentally sent that text about getting drugs to his young son.
I know Jason definitely wasn't very tech savvy. I don't know how you make a mistake like he did, But yeah, I mean, shouldn't have Number one shouldn't have been sent to his son. But number two just showed it was that he was already going down a really bad.
Path at that point.
This made the divorce case take a darker turn. On January eighteenth, twenty twenty two, Jason and his estranged wife had a zoom mediation conference. She later said this was the last time that she ever saw Jason. After that, Jamaica and her attorney filed court papers requiring Jason to take a drug test on January nineteenth. Jason was supposed to show up by five pm that day for the
hair follicle test, but he didn't make that appointment. Jason was apparently in the process of rescheduling for another date. He spoke to his lawyer on January twenty fourth. After that,
Jason's lawyer never heard back from him again. I just want to say that as you go through these social media posts, it becomes clear that Jamaica and Sarah and the rest of the family kind of appeared to have a united front at first, but over time they seem to have some different views of what exactly Jason was doing at the time of his disappearance, and potentially how much of that information should be shared and who it
should be shared with. This is super common, and I'm bringing it up because I know when someone goes missing it's incredibly hard on families. Everyone has their own version of what the victim was like, what they would have wanted out there and Jamaica later talked to a reporter from the Madison County Register. This was after Jason went missing. She said Jason was not living with Sarah, his sister, but had been staying with different friends, kind of CouchSurfing
in Madison County. She said, quote, we have to get the truth out there if we're going to find Jason, if we're going to figure out what's happened and what's occurred with him.
End quote. The reporter asked her about her theories.
Jamaica said she hoped that maybe Jason just needed a break. At first, she said that she had hope that he would be found safe. Jamaica said, quote, maybe he's taken off because of his involvement with certain people. We're not exactly sure, but I hope that they find him and that he's safe.
End quote.
I cannot imagine how hard this must be, both for Jason's sister and other family members and for his estranged wife. And I can really see both sides of this because Sarah is very clear Jason was living with her. On the other hand, I also understand why potentially his estranged wife would want to get information out there about the people he's hanging around with, because that is very important.
You have to know everything good and bad about a victim, even if they're not particularly flattering, if we're going to try.
To find him.
I would say that both things can also be true. He may have been staying with friends for a couple of days, but that does not mean that he wasn't living with his sister.
So let's get back to Jason and his timeline.
The last time that Sarah was in touch with her brother was on Monday, January twenty fourthenty twenty two. Sarah has a job that involves a lot of travel. The plan was that Jason was going to stay in their apartment in Fayetteville and dog sit for her dog Witty
while she was away. Sarah believes the last time that her brother texted her was on January twenty fourth, and that the text messages she received from Jason's phone on January twenty fifth may have been someone else, someone who wanted to affect the timeline, someone who wanted to make everyone believe that Jason was still around and still texting.
You know, I didn't obviously think about it in the moment, because it's like, you don't think those things. I mean to me, I'm talking to my brother, so you know, if the text messages were strange, you know, I'm talking to my brother, so I don't know.
It wasn't until.
Afterwards, you know, when that date kind of got thrown out there as the day that he potentially was last seen, and I look back at these messages, I'm just like, wow, Yeah, this does don't look like Jason at all talking to me, you know, even though it's Jason's phone number. It's just the messages don't sound like Jason.
On Monday, January twenty fourth, at one fifty five pm, Sarah wrote, hey, brother, will you be home this week?
Or should I get a pet sitter?
She got a message from Jason's phone a reply saying he would be there tomorrow, meaning on January twenty fifth. She texted Jason back, awesome, thank you. If you can't be there at any point, let me know so I can find someone.
Love you.
She got a reply from Jason's phone love you to sister, I will see you tomorrow. Sarah believes that this was the last text that her brother sent. The next day, on Tuesday, January twenty fifth, at four oh four pm, she got a message from Jason's phone.
It read hey, what up?
She responded, asking what was up with him giving him the door code to their home. Their locks had recently being changed the apartment complex changed them from having keys to having a door code, and she needed to make.
Sure that he could use it. I mean he could get in.
She said that the replies that she got did not sound like they came from her brother. For one thing, the text were misspelled, which she said, even when Jason was drunk, She said, he would never misspell.
Texts like for instance, you know when he first came to stay with me, like he was very intoxicated, but he was a misspelling thing.
Then Sarah texted, are you in the house? He said, no, I'm in Hinesville. Hinesville is a tiny little town in Arkansas with a population of less than one hundred. It's in Madison County. Sarah got a response from Jason's phone. It just said okay with a thumbs up emoji. This was the last text that she ever got from her brother's phone. Sarah put off her work trip and stayed close to home with her dog. She still had no idea where Jason was. She was concerned, but at first
she hoped that he was just somewhere with friends. On the twenty seventh, she sent Jason's phone another text.
It read where's Woody.
Sarah sent that text to see what Jason would say. She knew he wasn't at her apartment because she was there, but she wanted to try to get him to give her a response. By the way, that text message wears Woody on the twenty seventh was the first one that Sarah sent that was green, not blue. This could mean Jason was somewhere with poor reception or no WiFi, or it could mean that for some reason his phone was
switched off. Detectives later told Sarah that that last text that she sent on January twenty seventh, on that day, her brother's phone last pinged in Carroll County, in an area right where it intersects with both.
Madison and Benton Counties.
This is near Hinesville, near where Jason had said he was hanging out the previous day. Sarah also described this area, by the way, as being basically like the Bermuda Triangle. It's a spot where exactly three counties intersect. There's also a large lake right in the middle of that area.
She wrote on social media, quote Jason disappeared on or around January twenty fifth, twenty twenty two from either two four or five five zero Caps Ranches Road in Rogers, Arkansas, or four thirty five Madison one to one zero one in Huntsville, Arkansas, or another number of other places end quote. And that's what she was referring to when she wrote that those are some of the last addresses he was known to be at, which we're going to get into in a minute. But just the confusion about where he
was last seen. It's really hard in this case even to verify the most basic information.
For those of you who are not from Arkansas.
Fayetteville, where Sarah lives, it's kind of like the Austin, Texas of Arkansas, or like Athens, Georgia.
It's a cool college town.
It's where the University of Arkansas is located, and it's a very affluent area in northwest Arkansas. Whereas Madison County is very much a part of the Ozarks, the area where Jason was staying, near Hinesville in Clifty is only about thirty to forty miles away, but it's a totally different world. It is very much a rural area, very
much in the backwoods. I mentioned this because this case spreads out over several counties, as we've said, and from the start there appeared to be some confusion about jurisdiction. So let's go back to a few days after Jason went missing January early February of twenty twenty two. It's been a few days and Sarah has been sitting in her apartment. She has not heard from her brother. Several
days after she last heard from Jason. A friend of Jason's where he had been staying called Sarah to let her know that Jason had not been back to pick up his motorcycle. He loved his motorcycle. It was his prize possession. So now after hearing that Jason did not have his motorcycle with him he never came back to get it, and after calling Jason's ex wife finding out they haven't heard from him, he didn't show up for
his son's birthday. Now Sarah has gone from being worried to being scared something bad could have happened to her brother. She reported Jason as a missing person to the Washington County Sheriff's Department. That's in Fayetteville, where Jason and Sarah were living. Then apparently Madison County took over since that's where Jason was last seen and where he had been
staying with friends. After reporting him missing, Sarah started putting up missing posters, doing everything that she could to spread the word, including creating the Facebook group Jason Lirel Missing Person. Jason was described as having blonde hair and blue eyes. He has two tattoos on his right arm, one word that says cross and the numbers one eleven, twelve referring to his son's birthday. There's also another tattoo of an iron cross on his bicap.
When I first started speaking with the investigator who was initially on it, really phenomenal investigator. I mean, I feel like if he had been able to stay on this, I feel like Jay would have been found by now. Very tenacious went right and interviewing people and trying to get information, and then I just begged him, like along
and along. I just I was like, I feel like this is going to end up getting turned over into the hands of Madison County, and I'm scared to death about that because I don't think my brother would be found.
Over the next several weeks, Jason never came home, but his stuff started showing up in some strange places. The first thing that showed up after Jason vanished, as we mentioned before, was his car.
This was about a week after he disappeared.
It was found parked outside the Northwest Arkansas Mall in Fayettevielle, which by the way, was just a short distance from his sister, Sarah's apartment complex.
The car was left.
Running and had run out of gas. Sarah was trying to figure out anything that she could about where her brother had been spending time. She was trying to figure out his timeline. She learned that Jason had spent some time at a casino with a friend of his. After that, he went over to the house of some other friends of his named Randall and Rachel. He stayed for a couple of days at Randall and Rachel's house. He left there on January twenty first. On that day, Jason showed
up at the home of a woman named Miriam. Now, the exact nature of the relationship that was going on between Miriam and Jason, I'm not exactly sure of. I believe that it was some type of friendship or intimate relationship. As with some of his other friends, this was someone Jason was reconnecting with.
He had not seen her in a long time, but they appeared to kind of like each other.
Miriam lives on a huge property that's owned by her family, spanning over two hundred acres.
Now, Miriam has.
Posted a detailed timeline on social media of who was at her house and what, to her knowledge, they were doing. This is a timeline that she said she posted to help the investigation. She claimed that it covered the period from the twenty first through the twenty fifth of January
twenty twenty two. Miriam also did a Facebook live. I know that I'm throwing a lot of names at you, but the good news about it is if there were a lot of people on that property, potentially there are a lot of people who have some information who might have little pieces of this puzzle. By the way, I'm getting a lot of this information directly from Miriam from
what she's posted on social media. I also have a very close source to the case who I'll talk about a bit later, plus official police documents, including arrest reports and things we've been able to access through freedom of information request. But I am totally aware there may be incorrect information in here. So if you hear something that you know is wrong, I really hope that you'll reach out. This is a developing story. We're trying to figure out what's going on with no access to a case file.
There were several people on Miriam's property, and I believe that someone there knows something that could potentially crack this case. A journalist named Nicole Castile made a podcast a while back called Hell in the Highlands.
She interviewed Miriam as part of that podcast.
So let's go back to Miriam's timeline. Miriam told Nicole that before January twenty first, the day Jason showed up on her property, she had not seen Jason in around ten years. She said that Randall, Jason's friend, came to her house on the twenty first. Apparently Randall had to pay Miriam for a trailer she had sold him. When he showed up at the house, he randomly had Jason with him, probably because Jason had been staying at Randall's place.
A little while later, another friend named Don showed up at the house. She also said she had two friends of hers named Charity and Troy staying at her property in a different part of the property. She said they were also home during this time. So at some point Jason and Randall left. Later, Miriam said that she called Jason and asked him to come back over and hang out. Jason didn't want to drive his motorcycle to her place,
so he left it parked at Randall's house. Now, remember this is Arkansas in the woods and the dead of winter in the twenties.
The road out to Miriam's.
Had a lot of dirt roads, so I can totally understand Jason not wanting to ride his very nice bike out there. According to Miriam, Don went to pickt ure Jason up. Don and Jason showed up back at Miriam's at around ten pm that night.
Charity and Troy were still there.
At this point, Miriam said she and Don and Jason started smoking meth again. According to Miriam, Jason wanted to try heroin, though he normally did not shoot up. A little while later, someone else, a man named Aaron, showed up sometime in the early morning hours of January twenty second. Miriam said they were injecting heroin mixed with methamphetamine. Now, apparently Jason never injected himself. He had someone else do
it for him. Now, this immediately makes me think of something that could be very dangerous, because someone injecting someone else with a drug makes me think of giving people hot shots, in other words, giving them a lethal overdose. But when I talk to people who know a lot about injecting drugs and have done it themselves, they tell me that it's not uncommon for someone who is not in the habit of injecting themselves with drugs to have
someone else do it for them. Miriam said that even though Jason apparently did not have a habit of using heroin and injecting himself.
He didn't seem to be super affected by the drugs.
In other words, she said he was acting normal, at least normal for someone who was doing drugs and having a good time. What happened on Miriam's property and who exactly was there is something that I'm still working out, and we're going to follow up with in a lot more detail on next week's episode. But for the moment, I just want to point out a couple of things that supposedly occurred during this time that I think should
be investigated further. Now, at some point over the next couple of days, Jimmy Evans came over to the house. Now you'll remember Jimmy Evans was the guy we mentioned in the beginning of the episode, the one who was arrested weeks later with blood on his clothes, the one who claimed to be Clint Phillips. Now, according to Sarah, Jason knew Jimmy. In fact, Jimmy and his sister were very close to Sarah and Jason in childhood.
Miriam said she gave Jimmy a check.
He was supposed to cash it for her use some of it to buy drugs and some of it to buy groceries. But apparently Jimmy didn't come back with the check. Miriam said, Don and Jason ended up getting some money together. They went to the nearby town of Eureka Springs to get groceries. Miriam claimed this was no big deal, that she had just canceled the check, But this was a lot of money, around six hundred dollars apparently, and I do wonder if she was more upset about that at.
The time than she's letting on.
I have a lot more questions about Jimmy and exactly what he was doing there, how long he stayed there, what exactly went down. That's something Sarah says she's also trying to figure out, and that's something we're going to be focusing on in next week's episode. For now, we'll say, over the next couple days, there were people coming in and out of the house, people were partying for a couple of days. During that time, there were a couple more disturbing incidents. But for now, I want to go
back to Miriam's timeline. I want to focus on the last and most crucial day, January twenty fourth, that's the day when Jason last spoke to his lawyer, and also the day when he last texted his sister. Text that she feels confident came from him. Miriam later told people that she went to bed that night. She said that she saw Jason there, that he had wrapped himself in a blanket on the bed, lying above the covers, kind of rolling himself in one of her blankets like a
sleeping bag. The next morning, on the twenty fifth, she said she wasn't sure if Jason was in bed with her or not. She said, on that morning, Don woke her up and told her if she wanted to get to town, where she apparently needed to run some errands, she needed to get up right now to get a ride there with one of her friends.
She said, that's what she did.
Yeah, she said, you know, because she's gone back and forth with her story quite a bit, and you know, at a certain point she finally said, you know, now that she's thinking about it, she thinks that he was next to her in the bed, motionless. So there's that story, and then there is another person in the house saying that she actually spoke to my brother that morning. He's making a cup of coffee. She said she was going
to the store. Did he need anything. He got some money out of his wallet, gave it to her, said that he needed a pack of cigarettes. All these things like just in my mind, you know, the car being left at the mall.
His wallet was.
In the car, completely cleaned out. So there's just so many strange things to all of this.
Now.
The other woman who was staying at the property told Sarah that there wasn't some big rush that morning, that she had had a cup of coffee with Jason that morning, that she'd actually seen him up and moving around on the morning of the twenty fifth, And the other woman told Sarah that Jason gave her money out of his wallet that morning for groceries. Remember, Jason's car was found about a week after he disappeared. Sarah gave me more details about what happened when that car was found.
The crime scene investigator who was there, who was you know, processing things from in the car. She went to get in the car and couldn't, and you know, right away was like, well, hey, you know, you said your brother is around my height, maybe like an inch shorter. She said, the seat the way that she initially asked me. She said, did your brother sit up close.
To the wheel?
And I was not thinking, like.
Have his seat pushed forward?
I hadn't even looked much at the seats until she brought it to our attention, and it was just like she said that the seat was pushed so far forward, you know that she couldn't even squeeze herself into the car, So you know, she was just like, it seems to me that the person who was driving it must have
been very short. The passenger side seat was lean basically all the way back, and the seat itself was pushed all the way back, which you know, just in my mind, I'm like, well, seems like a really tall person.
So was that Jason driving the car or did someone else, maybe the same person who took cash out of his wallet, park that car in the mall parking lot to stage it. I have a lot of questions about this timeline and these stories, because I do believe there's some grains of truth contained in it. A lot of people tend to keep their lives close to the truth and include elements of the truth and their story because a complete lie
is harder to remember and keeps. That's right, This is also complicated by the fact that, even if people are telling the truth, they by their own admission, were on drugs at this point, So keeping dates and facts clear can be very challenging. Whatever really happened that morning, whether Jason was up and around, or whether this other house guest got those dates confused, Miriam was clear. She said she never saw Jason again after the morning of the
twenty fifth. The last person to see Jason alive, according to the official timeline, was Don. Don told Sarah he was with Jason later that day on the twenty fifth. He says they went out to a property in Hinesville where Don lives.
Now this would appear to match.
The last phone ping because Don lives in the same area where that cell phone tower pinged on the twenty seventh.
Don said that he jumped in the shower.
While he did, He said Jason went out for a walk in the woods at around nine thirty pm and never came back. But apparently Don told someone else that Jason had left the house much later, at around two thirty am the next morning. I'm still trying to investigate that potential contradiction. This story is weird for a couple of reasons. First of all, the reports of the last thing that Jason was seen in that he was wearing are jeans, boots, a flannel and a white T shirt.
He had no gloves, no hat, no heavy coat, and the nighttime temperature in those nights was down in the twenties. Some people have brought up the possibility that Jason could have wandered off and succumbed to hypothermia. But if that happened, then where is he? Where's the body? As we said before, police searched Jason's car. They eventually found his car, keys, his motorcycle, and some of his other belongings, but they never found his cell phone and they never found his
motorcycle keys. Police did a search of Miriam's property and Madison County. By the way, Miriam has pointed out this entire time that she has been extremely cooperative. She volunteered to let people search, She's told people everything she knows, both police and people asking on social media, and says that she feels that she's been unfairly targeted as a result of this. Apparently, they didn't find anything, No items
were seized. There was also a search in the area around where Don lived in Hinesville and nothing was found there either. But there are a lot of woods back there. There are underground caves and sinkholes, and this is an extensive area that spans several counties. Miriam has also shared some screenshots from her phone, including one that was very interesting. Remember Don told Sarah that Jason was with her on January twenty fifth at his property near Hinesville.
Miriam told Sarah a similar story.
Miriam said she texted Don on January twenty fifth, and when she did, she said, Don said Jason was with him near Hinesville. At five twenty two pm on January twenty fifth, Miriam got a text from Jason's phone. It said you busy, but there's something else. Right afterwards, there's an image with that text. It looks like the bottom of legs in jeans with brown boots standing next to
a tree in the woods. Of course, we don't know for sure, but to me, it looks like the person who was texting accidentally took a picture of their bottom half and hit send. I also say that because the lens is partially covered up with a finger and it's kind of blurry. It's something that I've done many times. Accidentally taking a picture while sending a text. I asked Sarah if she believed that that bottom half of that person standing there was her brother, if she recognized the boots not at all?
You know, the boot that just surprised me because you know, at that point, a lot of times I was putting his laundry away, like I organized his closet, that sort of thing, So you know, I never saw him have a pair of boots like this. So you know, right away, I'm just like, you know, I'm like, well, maybe he got a new pair of boots. And then I you know, when I sort of you know, make the picture bigger, I'm like, well, these look very worn, which you know,
it's it's still possible. I guess it's still possible. It's just I never saw him in anything like this. And when I asked his ex the same thing, she said, no, that he hated boots that had like like laced up boots, like he always wore just pull on boots.
So was that mystery person Jason?
And if it wasn't Jason, was it someone else texting from Jason's phone. There's so much more to this story, and we're going to continue it next week. But first let's go back to February thirteenth of twenty twenty two. After Jimmy was arrested. By the way, there's no information about what happened next. Did they interview him about Jason Lerel? Did they take his bloody clothes? Did they send them to the crime lab? Was that his blood or someone
else's blood on his clothes? As with so many other things in this case, we don't know for sure, but we do know that something else critical happened in February of twenty twenty two, around the same timeframe that Jimmy was at the police station blurting out that he had information about Jason Lerell's case. Police went to Aaron's house. Remember Aaron was the friend who briefly came by Miriam's house. Aaron also has a history of arrest for drug charges.
Police were at Aaron's house following up on a report that Aaron's mother had made. She reported her van stolen, but the van was returned to Aarin on January twenty fifth. According to police documents, When they got to Aaron's house, sitting out on his porch, police found a pile of bloody clothes, clothes that one of Jason's family members identified as belonging to Jason Lyrell. Sarah sent me a photo
of the clothes, she said. Miriam identified the blanket on the porch as being the blanket that came off her bed, the one that Jason was wrapped up in when he was lying motionless. What were Jason Lyrel's bloody clothes doing on that porch and who put them there?
I'm Catherine Townsend.
This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced by Gabby Watts.
Music contributed by Ben.
Sale, Executive producers of Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowley. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hellingonge Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five.
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