Jason Chen in court
An officer told members of the Jasmine Pace family who had been carrying out their own investigation of their missing daughter, "You've done some great stuff, but we're on it," according to body cam video played in court on Friday.
It turned out that the 22-year-old Ms. Pace had been stabbed 60 times and her body stuffed into a suitcase that was dumped along Suck Creek Road. Jason Chen, her boyfriend at the time, is charged with her killing.
However, the defense is seeking to get Chen off by saying much of the evidence should be thrown out, including that collected by the family when they broke into Chen's apartment at Frazier and Tremont several different times.
The family said they carried out their own investigation when on call missing persons investigator Samansela Blount would not come out after the victim's car was located by the family at the parking lot of the Signal View Apartments.
Officer McKenzie Pierre, who responded to the Mountain Creek Road location, told the family that he would notify the missing persons detective, but they might not come out at the early hour.
The body cam video showed him utter an expletive when he saw who was on duty that night. He then muted the audio on the body cam. He said that was commonly done, though it was not according to protocol.
He said of the missing persons investigator, "I just don't enjoy talking to her, period."
Officer Pierre then returned to the family with the audio still muted, and he said he told them the missing persons detective would not be coming out.
The family then proceeded to the Chen apartment, where they got in several times, allegedly knocking and the door swung open and also using a credit card to slip into the key area. On the subsequent occasions, after they had conferred with officers in the hallway and the police left, they took some of Chen's electronic equipment with them.
Catrina Pace had told Officer Pierre that, several days after she could not reach her daughter on the phone, she had gone to Verizon and they agreed to put her information on a different phone. That enabled her to access her My Chevy app and locate her Chevrolet Equinox.
Pace family members told police that Jasmine had no ties to Mountain Creek Road and it was an odd place for her car to be left.
Using the phone, Ms. Pace found that Jasmine had talked to Chen for 71 minutes on Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2022, prior to leaving home at 11:27 p.m. and arriving at his apartment at 110 Tremont St. at 11:43 p.m.
She said Jasmine met Chen online in May of 2022 and had taken a trip to Chicago with him, but the family had never met him.
Not long after arriving at Tremont, Jasmine's phone went silent, and her banking account and social media accounts were changed out, Ms. Pace said. She said Jasmine never turned off her phone and always stayed in close contact with them.
She said she called Chen and he told her he had not talked with Jasmine for some time, though the phone records said differently.
Ms. Pace said some messages began coming from Jasmine's phone, including one saying she was leaving for a week with a girlfriend to go to South Carolina. Ms. Pace said the girlfriend, who was from Kentucky, denied any such trip.
A "pornographic" photo of Jasmine was posted on her Facebook page. Family members said it was a picture from much earlier. They said Jasmine was very modest and would never have posted the photo.
Ms. Pace said just after Jasmine's car was found, she noticed that early on Wednesday morning Jasmine had sent her a "pin" giving her location at the Chen apartment building.
Told an investigator would not be coming out that night, the Pace family arranged to have Jasmine's car towed to their residence. Her father, Travis Pace, said they were careful not to go inside of the vehicle.
The group of them also headed out to 110 Tremont to see if Jasmine was there. They were able to get security to provide them video of Jasmine arriving at the Tremont parking garage. The Pace sleuths earlier had gathered security footage from the Signal View Apartments.
According to the body cam videos played in court, they began knocking on doors in the early morning asking if anyone knew Chen. They found a resident in a stairwell who said Chen parked next to him, but lived on the second floor.
The family said they knocked on unit 212 and a couple there invited them all in. The couple said early Wednesday morning they heard the cry of a female in distress coming from Chen's 210 apartment next door. They said it lasted about 10 seconds and was so notable that the man wrote down the exact time - 2:15 a.m.
Ms. Pace told patrol officers that the time of the scream was three minutes before the "pin" was sent to her by Jasmine.
The next door neighbor also said, "We sat here for 30 seconds debating whether we should call somebody. In hindsight, we should have."
The man said they were constantly bothered by loud music from the Chen apartment. He said they went on a trip that Friday morning and, when they returned, there was not a sound coming from the apartment.
Several of the Paces then went into the Chen apartment, where they immediately noticed Jasmine's driver's license and credit cards on a table near the front door.
Ms. Pace told arriving officers that she had been getting messages from various individuals saying that Chen had been in trouble at UTC where he was a student and claims that he had been fired from two jobs for alleged identity theft.
Arriving officers at Tremont were told by another officer, "You need to make sure that they are not digging around in that dude's apartment." Two of the officers then made a three-minute search of the apartment, not finding anyone.
One of the arriving officers said he noted that Jasmine's father seemed to be getting exasperated concerning police help, so he pulled him aside to "listen to his side of the story."
The patrol officer told Travis Pace, "I can't imagine the lengths I would go to if it was my daughter."
The officer told the Pace family, "It was phenomenal that you were able to track them down here." He said, "Kudos to you."
Travis Pace on the body cam told the patrol officers that an investigator was needed to check out several things in the case, including talking with two individuals who had gotten messages from Jasmine's phone and helping examine Jasmine's car.
Jarrod Justice, who was the officer in charge of the call, told the family, "You've done some great stuff, but we're on it." He also recommended the family consider hiring a private detective.
He agreed to again try to contact investigator Blount, though he said, "I'm pretty sure I know what she's going to say." He said, "I can't mandate that she come. I can't make her."
Officer Justice called his sergeant, who suggested that they have the dispatcher wake investigator Blount up on the Thanksgiving weekend early morning. The dispatcher told Officer Justice that the missing persons investigator was awaiting his call. He called, told her about the case, and she declined to come out.
As the three patrol officers were leaving 110 Tremont one said, "There's a lot of weird stuff going on here. There's no question it's suspicious."
Officer Justice said he wrote up a report, which was to be transferred to missing persons. But he said the next day he found the matter had been shifted to the homicide division.
Jasmine Pace