The Pin at Apartment 210

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Speaker 8 Tonight on Dateline.

Speaker 9 She loved her family.

Speaker 9 She put everything she had into being there for everybody else.

Speaker 10 A couple of days go by and I hadn't heard from her.

Speaker 13 She called me and she's like, have you heard Jasmine's missing?

Speaker 14 What was it about that post that stood out to you?

Speaker 9 The photos. That's not something she would put out there of her in lingerie.

Speaker 15 I pulled up her phone record. She's not making phone calls since Tuesday night and someone has been resetting her passwords.

Speaker 9 Her family catapulted the investigation. They took matters into their own hands.

Speaker 16 We can see the pin drop from Jasmine's phone.

Speaker 10 We found a way in the apartment complex.

Speaker 9 He said, I heard a scream that was so startling that I wrote the time down.

Speaker 14 So this was right next door.

Speaker 9 Exactly.

Speaker 14 Are you thinking Jasmine could be inside?

Speaker 10 Yes.

Speaker 10 We forced the door open.

Speaker 17 Terrified of what you're about to find.

Speaker 8 Could a family's all-out effort to find their missing daughter actually derail their fight for justice? I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 8 Here's Blaine Alexander with The Pin at Apartment 210.

Speaker 14 How far would you go for your family?

Speaker 14 For the people you love most in the world?

Speaker 9 When you're desperate, you just don't stop moving.

Speaker 14 Especially if one of them was in trouble.

Speaker 7 She's been missing for four days.

Speaker 14 This family went to the ends of the earth.

Speaker 9 What can we do?

Speaker 14 And the edge of the law.

Speaker 20 Can't investigate anything in there that you found.

Speaker 14 They'd only find out later if they had gone too far.

Speaker 14 Chattanooga, Tennessee, 2022, just two days before Thanksgiving. Jackie White and her family were heartbroken.

Speaker 14 The family matriarch, Granny, had cancer, and the prognosis wasn't good.

Speaker 9 It was hard, and the cancer had metastasized.

Speaker 9 It went from, hey, let's figure out what's wrong to, she's going to die very soon. That fast.
Yes, so it was really quick. It was really unexpected.

Speaker 14 The family all gathered at the the hospital, including Jackie's cousin, Jasmine Pace.

Speaker 14 Jazzy, as the family called her, adored Granny.

Speaker 14 How was Jasmine during all of that?

Speaker 9 She kept it together because that's what we do in my family. We're strong for each other.

Speaker 9 But when I got there, she was outside alone having her breakdown. So she was devastated.
I mean,

Speaker 9 devastated, absolutely devastated.

Speaker 9 Everyone had their own moment with her, and she passed

Speaker 9 as soon as I started praying.

Speaker 14 Jackie grieved with her cousin Jazzy. The two worried about their moms.
Granny had raised them both. So they made plans for the family to gather on Thanksgiving, just two days away.

Speaker 14 Jazzy helped lead the charge.

Speaker 9 She offered, you know, I can bring stuff. Our moms are not going to want to have Thanksgiving, but Granny will haunt us if we do not.

Speaker 9 She's like, we have to get everyone together, even if we're all in pajamas and crying. Yeah.
So that was the plan to kind of recoup the day in between and figure it out.

Speaker 9 And then all get back together on Thanksgiving.

Speaker 14 The day before Thanksgiving, Jackie texted Jazzy to see how she was holding up.

Speaker 14 And you got a response. I did.
Saying what?

Speaker 9 I just need some time alone after everything that happened.

Speaker 14 Was that a normal response from her?

Speaker 9 For an emotional

Speaker 9 event, yes.

Speaker 9 I think my whole family's that way. We kind of retreat inwardly and like to process alone.
So I thought maybe that's what was happening.

Speaker 14 But then Jazzy texted to say she was spending Thanksgiving with a friend instead of the family.

Speaker 9 And said, you know, I'm going to South Carolina with Emma for her family's Thanksgiving. I just need some time away from everyone after everything that happened.

Speaker 14 Jackie couldn't believe it.

Speaker 9 Her not coming to Thanksgiving,

Speaker 9 it upset me. I mean, I'm like,

Speaker 9 Girl, be here, you know, and I tried to call her on Thanksgiving and it went straight to voicemail.

Speaker 14 Jazzy's half-sister, Gabby Pace, also found it strange,

Speaker 14 especially when she got this Snapchat from Jazzy, a photo with the message, baby, I'm good. What did you think? Odd,

Speaker 10 because they were old pictures. It didn't look like the most recent Jazzy.

Speaker 14 By that Friday morning, worry started to creep in.

Speaker 14 Jazzy's mother, Katrina, realized nobody had actually spoken to Jazzy in three days since the night Granny died.

Speaker 9 When she couldn't reach her on the phone by the day after Thanksgiving, it was like, no, something's wrong. She's not picking up the phone.
She's not checking on me.

Speaker 14 She knows her daughter.

Speaker 9 She does. And it's very unlike Jasmine to not be there for everyone.

Speaker 14 Her mom called Emma, the friend Jazzy said she was visiting.

Speaker 9 Emma actually told her, My family is not in South Carolina, so I don't even know where that came from.

Speaker 14 And there was more. Jazzy wasn't with her on Thanksgiving.

Speaker 9 And that's when it was like panic-stricken.

Speaker 14 She knew something wasn't right.

Speaker 9 And she's like, What do I do? And I said, She's 22. She's on your phone plan.
Who is she talking to? Like, let's unravel this.

Speaker 14 The search for Jazzy would force the family to go places and do things they never imagined.

Speaker 9 What can we do?

Speaker 14 At this point, I mean, I'm not saying that sounds like you all went into full investigation mode.

Speaker 15 No, it's not her. We know it's not her.

Speaker 9 And from that moment on, it was just digging: like, where's she spending money? Who's she talking to?

Speaker 17 You're terrified of what you're about to find.

Speaker 14 November 26th, 2022.

Speaker 14 It had been four days since family and friends last saw Jasmine Pace.

Speaker 14 It was totally unlike Jazzy to disappear like that. Her family started tracking her down.

Speaker 9 It's 2022 that everyone has an electronic footprint. There are clues everywhere.

Speaker 14 Especially, they figured, for a bright and fun 22-year-old who was normally in constant touch.

Speaker 16 What was she like?

Speaker 9 Sweet,

Speaker 9 sassy,

Speaker 9 so easy to talk to.

Speaker 9 She had a lot of friends.

Speaker 9 Definitely kind of an old soul. She liked to read and as social as she was, she was a homebody too.

Speaker 14 And also outdoorsy. She liked walking along the banks of the Tennessee River.

Speaker 14 Family friend Brianna Edge had known Jasmine since she was born.

Speaker 13 She always wanted to be where the adults were. She could be five, six years old, and Jasmine wanted to know what was going on, be part of it.

Speaker 14 As she got older, Jazzy wanted to be a part of the family business, too. She started working at her mom and stepdad Scott's construction company.

Speaker 9 She was still in college, but worked for that company so it was all day every day on the phone with them.

Speaker 14 Jazzy had always been someone they could lean on in times of crisis.

Speaker 9 Her number one I would say was her family.

Speaker 14 Now Jazzy might be the one in crisis. Her family kicked into high gear.
Not only were they determined to find her, They were tech savvy.

Speaker 14 They went to the Verizon store and pulled Jazzy's phone records. One call in in particular caught their attention.
It happened on the day Granny died.

Speaker 14 A 71-minute call to a number they didn't recognize.

Speaker 14 The next day, her phone turned off. They couldn't ping her location, but they thought of something else.

Speaker 9 Every car has a computer mostly after 2015 now.

Speaker 10 And so we would be able to track her car location through that. But in order for us to be able to do that, we had to log in through her email.

Speaker 10 So we had to transfer her phone number over to a new phone to be able to access all of that stuff.

Speaker 14 Once they got into Jazzy's email account, they found out that the passwords to her bank and social media accounts had been changed. It sounds like you all went into full investigation mode.

Speaker 9 I think that idea was out there of, let's use what we can.

Speaker 14 By now, the family had accessed Jazzy's car app. Since the last time the family saw her, her car had been to two locations, and it was still at one of them, Mountain Creek Road.

Speaker 14 Jazzy's mom and stepdad raced over. Gabby arrived shortly after.
And there it was, in the parking lot, Jazzy's SUV.

Speaker 14 But no sign of Jazzy.

Speaker 14 Jazzy's mom called the police.

Speaker 19 Hello.

Speaker 14 And before long, a patrol officer showed up, body cam rolling.

Speaker 7 So what's going on exactly?

Speaker 14 That's Mom Katrina on the left. Stepdad Scott on the right.
They told the officer everything they'd learned so far.

Speaker 7 She's been missing for four days.

Speaker 15 Tuesday night at 1127, she left our house and went to a house on or a place on Fraser Avenue. Wednesday, it left Fraser Avenue, came right here.
Hadn't been moved since it hadn't been moved since.

Speaker 15 I pulled up her phone record. She has not made any phone calls since Tuesday night.

Speaker 14 Okay.

Speaker 15 No data has been used because I had her phone line transferred to a new device so I could track her stuff and someone has been resetting her passwords. You know, it's not her.
We know it's not her.

Speaker 14 Just then, while the family stood in the lot, Jazzy seemed to emerge. A racy photo popped up on her Facebook account.

Speaker 9 That's when I got scared. You saw that post.
I did. I felt like

Speaker 9 that's someone that wants to humiliate her. That's not something she would put out there of her in lingerie on social media.
What can we do?

Speaker 21 At this point,

Speaker 21 I mean, I'm not saying it's not weird circumstances, because that definitely is. I can get her listed as missing.

Speaker 14 Jazzy's mom wanted more. She asked them to pull any security footage from that parking lot.

Speaker 15 See if she actually drove this car here.

Speaker 21 I know the courtesy officer that does work here, but as far as this time of night i don't imagine i'd be able to get anything until tomorrow can we try

Speaker 14 as jazzy's family waited on that security footage her mom remembered that long call jazzy made the day granny died

Speaker 9 when she didn't recognize the number she had called jackie who was helping from home So on the phone with me, I mean, she pulled up her Verizon and started scrolling through, and she said the last person she was on the phone with, it's this number.

Speaker 14 Jackie got right to work. While still on the phone with Jazzy's mom, she ran the number through one of her mobile payment apps.

Speaker 9 And I put it in Cash App and I said, Jason Chen.

Speaker 9 Do you know that person? She said, Yes, and she hung up on me.

Speaker 14 Katrina knew Jazzy had been casually seeing a guy named Jason Chen for a few months. Maybe he could help find her.
Hello? So there,

Speaker 14 right in front of police, Katrina called him.

Speaker 15 No one has seen or heard from her since Tuesday night.

Speaker 14 What would he have to say?

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Speaker 14 Jasmine Pace's parents were busy tracking her digital footprint, trying to determine her movements since they last saw her.

Speaker 14 They learned she'd had a phone call with Jason Chen, a guy she'd met on a dating app. The two had been casually dating for a few months and had gone on a trip to Chicago together.

Speaker 14 Now, Jazzy's mom was on the phone with him.

Speaker 15 And you seen last time you seen her was Saturday?

Speaker 7 The last time you talked to her.

Speaker 14 Jason told Katrina he hadn't spoken to Jazzy since that Monday, but she knew that wasn't true.

Speaker 15 And you hadn't talked to her since then? Hang on one second.

Speaker 7 Hang on one second, Jason.

Speaker 15 I just muted him.

Speaker 15 He just lied. He talked to her for 71 minutes Tuesday afternoon.

Speaker 15 He would remember that.

Speaker 14 Jazzy's mom pressed him.

Speaker 15 Hey, Jason.

Speaker 15 And I have it on here where she talked to you for 71 minutes Tuesday afternoon while her granny was in the hospital.

Speaker 14 Jason said he did remember talking to Jazzy that day. He'd simply forgotten.
For police, it wasn't much to go on.

Speaker 7 I can document it.

Speaker 7 Yeah, he almost

Speaker 21 putting him as a suspect.

Speaker 15 Okay, I'm just letting you please document it.

Speaker 14 Katrina pushed them to do more.

Speaker 7 Could we possibly go to a local

Speaker 9 business that you have to pass to get these apartments and ask them to pull up footage so we could see if she's driving her?

Speaker 15 I understand that.

Speaker 15 I can't just not.

Speaker 7 I understand. I understand.
I'm just, I'm

Speaker 14 trying to explain to you the extent of what I can do.

Speaker 14 Eventually, the officers left. If police wouldn't follow the leads, the family would.

Speaker 9 When you're desperate, I think that's what you do. You just don't stop moving.
It's like you're trying to lean into anything you can that you think is going to bring you some kind of answer.

Speaker 14 They went to the address they had for Jason, but all they found was an abandoned house. Frustrated, Jazzy's mom went back through Jazzy's texts from that night.

Speaker 14 And suddenly, Katrina realizes she has a text on her phone.

Speaker 9 She sees the pin drop and realizes, oh,

Speaker 14 she sent a message.

Speaker 9 Yes.

Speaker 14 At 2.18 a.m. on the night she disappeared, Jazzy had sent her mother a pin with her location on it.
Katrina was grieving Granny's passing and never saw it.

Speaker 12 How shocking was that for her?

Speaker 9 It was scary. I think that that's when I think fear really set in.

Speaker 14 You could tell immediately that a message like that was a cry for help.

Speaker 9 Yes.

Speaker 14 No other explanation.

Speaker 10 I mean, there was no for three o'clock in the morning or two o'clock, whatever time it was.

Speaker 14 That pin led them to yet another apartment complex. The family made their way into the building.

Speaker 10 Just started knocking on every single door.

Speaker 25 What are people telling you?

Speaker 10 At first, they said, no, we haven't seen that girl. No, we haven't seen that girl.
And we almost gave up on knocking on the doors because we were coming to dead ends.

Speaker 14 So you're just trying to narrow down which floor, which apartment?

Speaker 10 Yes. And then finally, we realized that...
Her pin drop had coordinates to it.

Speaker 10 So then we would walk near every door and down the hallway, just brushing up against the side of the wall, trying to get as close to the coordinates as we possibly could.

Speaker 14 Finally, they got the perfect hit, apartment 210.

Speaker 2 You knock on the door?

Speaker 10 Yes. What happens? Nobody answers.

Speaker 14 So they knocked on the next door, apartment 212. A couple answered.
The family asked if they'd seen anything. Seen?

Speaker 14 No, the couple said, but they had heard something.

Speaker 9 He said, I heard a scream that was so startling that I wrote the time down. So he went and got the paper and

Speaker 9 I want to say it was in three to four minutes of that pin drop that he heard that scream.

Speaker 14 The neighbors clocked that scream at 2.15 a.m.

Speaker 14 Just three minutes before Jazzy dropped that pen. They said it sounded like it came from next door.
Apartment 210.

Speaker 14 Are you thinking Jasmine could still be inside? Yes.

Speaker 25 She could need help.

Speaker 10 Yes.

Speaker 14 Jazzy's mom was fearless, maybe even a little reckless.

Speaker 12 She went down and got her credit card out of her car and

Speaker 9 they got in.

Speaker 13 They popped the lock with the credit card.

Speaker 14 The family slowly made their way into the small one-bedroom apartment. Right away, something caught Katrina's eye.

Speaker 10 They had found my sister's to-go bag, like a night bag that she takes to go and stay places.

Speaker 14 As you guys continue looking around the apartment, what else did you see?

Speaker 10 In the desk drawer, they found my sister's credit cards and her driver's license all stacked up neatly in a pile.

Speaker 14 Also on the desk, a notebook. They opened it and saw a name, Jason Chin.

Speaker 10 And then we proceeded to call the police.

Speaker 14 For the second time that night, police met the family. The officer told them an investigator had already been assigned to the case.

Speaker 20 I've talked with

Speaker 20 the investigator.

Speaker 14 That was news to the family, who said they'd not been contacted by anyone.

Speaker 7 As of right now,

Speaker 20 there's nothing more that we can do.

Speaker 15 We're trying to vary all the details yet. Yeah, that

Speaker 3 was the case. We've got phone numbers where they're going to be able to do that.

Speaker 20 We found out.

Speaker 20 He said, there's nothing more that we can do right this second

Speaker 20 to figure out where she's at. Now if you have phone numbers or other information, I can put it in the report and then I can forward that along to the investigator.

Speaker 20 But she's the one that has made the call that she's not responding out here tonight.

Speaker 14 The police issued a warning. Do not go back into the apartment.

Speaker 12 Thanks for finding this.

Speaker 12 Yes, let us take it from here.

Speaker 9 We had no confidence. whatsoever in the police because up to this point, it was like, we can't be, it's a holiday weekend.
How'd you get my number? She's fine. She's posting on social media.

Speaker 14 So at this point, you're like, it's up to us.

Speaker 11 Absolutely.

Speaker 7 Did your family come back?

Speaker 9 Absolutely. Because what have you guys done for us this far? Anything we thought could be a clue to help us find her, we were chasing that.

Speaker 14 Jasmine Pace's loved ones had done all they could, and maybe more than they should, to find her. They'd broken into an apartment, then defied police instructions, and gone in again.

Speaker 14 What was it like to just be inside that apartment?

Speaker 10 Very anxious because even though you know that you're in the right direction, you're terrified of what you're about to find.

Speaker 10 You have no idea what you're going to find, find, and you don't want to find certain things. So it's just a lot of

Speaker 10 anxiety, a lot of adrenaline, a lot of, you know, being scared.

Speaker 14 They didn't find anything new, but they were convinced Jazzy had been there. What's more, they were sure Jason Chen, the guy Jazzy had been seeing, lived in the apartment.

Speaker 14 His name was on the notebook and a neighbor confirmed it. Jason was the son of Chinese immigrants who owned a restaurant.
The family lived 30 minutes outside of Nashville.

Speaker 14 But Jason moved to attend the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, where he majored in computer science. That's where Ryan Barrett met him in the summer of 2020.

Speaker 26 Initially, we were the first two people at the dorm, so we spent about the first three or four days just us together, really just getting to know each other, just figuring out general interests that we both like, you know, playing video games.

Speaker 14 Ryan says he and Jason became good friends, that he was fun to be around what was his demeanor like more quiet guy but he was pretty funny he'd always kind of come in with those you know little jabs at everybody

Speaker 14 the two got along so well they became roommates and even landed jobs at the same place a soap company summertime was great I mean we were going we spent fourth of july together at the park downtown

Speaker 14 Now, Jazzy's family was convinced Jason had something to do with her disappearance.

Speaker 14 They took everything they'd gathered that could be used as evidence - Jazzy's driver's license and credit card, the cell phones, and a tablet, and gave it to the police. And they didn't stop there.

Speaker 14 They had their family lawyer reach out to the district attorney general asking for help.

Speaker 19 I received a phone call from my supervisor. He called and said that we were going to come in and assist our missing persons

Speaker 19 unit with the Jasmine Pace missing persons investigation.

Speaker 14 Detective Zach Crawford headed to the apartment. When you got in there, how did you find the apartment? Was it clean? Was it messy?

Speaker 19 I would say that it was a clean apartment.

Speaker 19 It appeared that things may have been slightly out of place in terms of where they were located, and you could smell a little bit of a cleaning product inside of the apartment.

Speaker 14 It smelled like it had possibly been recently cleaned.

Speaker 27 Correct.

Speaker 14 Considering everything that you know up until this point, When you smell something like that, does that raise your antenna? Do you pay attention to that?

Speaker 19 Yes, it's something that is notated. Along with smelling it, you're also looking for a potential sheen on the floor to see if

Speaker 19 this was a crime scene location, if anything had been altered in terms of cleaned up, wiped, or anything like that.

Speaker 14 Then he noticed something.

Speaker 19 Just on the right of the futon on the floor on the hardwoods, I saw what appeared to be blood transfer in the form of a hill print on the floor. Blood transfer on the floor.

Speaker 14 When you say blood transfer, you mean like a bloody footprint?

Speaker 19 Essentially a bloody footprint.

Speaker 14 So the crime scene unit comes in. What do they do?

Speaker 19 They first document the scene by photographs and video. We asked for certain items to be collected that we observed in our walkthrough.
I also asked for Blue Star Reagent to be applied to that scene.

Speaker 19 Blue Star Reagent is a forensic tool that will show the presence of wiped, cleaned, or invisible blood to the naked eye. that could give further details of how much blood we are dealing with.

Speaker 14 What do they find?

Speaker 19 So we requested during the application of the Blue Star to be present upon first spray it illuminated essentially a third of the living room area what did this show this showed an extremely large amount of volume of blood the largest that i had seen to that point in terms of blue star reaction in my career i vividly remember looking at sergeant emery and detective seach and we all said we have homicide

Speaker 12 I got a call at work from Katrina.

Speaker 9 Hey, get here to the police station now. They're calling us in.
They have an update. So we rushed there

Speaker 9 and they told us, seeing what we believed to be the crime scene, there's so much blood that was lost that it was not survivable. So this is no longer a missing person's case.
This is a homicide.

Speaker 9 So that's a strange thing because

Speaker 9 I think in the back of your mind, we still were like, well, are you 100% it was her blood? You know, maybe

Speaker 9 she did somehow survive it. You're telling me she's gone,

Speaker 9 but we don't have her.

Speaker 14 You still had hope at this point.

Speaker 9 I think maybe we wanted to cling to that.

Speaker 9 I mean, we all accepted what they were telling us. Yes, we know that this person you loved

Speaker 9 died, and we know it was pretty brutal, but we don't really know what happened after that.

Speaker 14 It would now be Detective Crawford's job to find out.

Speaker 14 I mean, is your next step find Jason Chen?

Speaker 27 Yes.

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Speaker 14 Detectives searching for missing Jasmine Pace found so much blood evidence, they knew they had a homicide on their hands. What they didn't have was a body or a suspect in custody.

Speaker 14 It was now their mission to find both.

Speaker 19 There's multiple avenues that are happening. Evidence that we're finding at the crime scene location is providing further follow-up.

Speaker 19 We also have search warrants being conducted on the phone records of Jason Chen.

Speaker 14 They homed in on the day after Jasmine disappeared. Jason's phone records revealed he went to Walgreens and Walmart, and security footage showed someone resembling Jason buying cleaning supplies.

Speaker 19 He was wearing a very identifiable hat. It was a red and white hat called Hennething Goes.

Speaker 14 Once Jason Chen left his apartment on November 23rd, he never went back. Detectives continued to track his phone.
Ultimately, where did you find Jason Chen?

Speaker 19 We ended up locating him in Nolansville, Tennessee at his parents' address.

Speaker 14 So he comes down, what happens?

Speaker 19 He was wearing items of clothing that were consistent with what we observed him wearing during different stages of the investigation.

Speaker 14 What does that tell you?

Speaker 14 It gives us further details of confirming um that is jason chen in the video footage we see so to be clear when you found him at his parents' house he was wearing the same hat that he was wearing when he went to go buy those cleaning supplies correct

Speaker 19 was that surprising to you we were more excited that he was wearing it so we didn't have to search for it police arrested jason chen and charged him with first-degree premeditated murder But we attempted an interview with Jason at the Owens Old Police Department, and he invoked invoked his right to counsel, so we were unable to get an interview with him that night.

Speaker 14 Jason refused to tell investigators anything. As news of his arrest spread across Chattanooga, one person listened with particular interest, his former roommate, Ryan Barrett.

Speaker 14 How unbelievable was it that your former roommate was wanted for murder?

Speaker 6 Insane.

Speaker 26 I just, he had done a lot of crazy things to me, but murder was not what I was expecting.

Speaker 14 Ryan and Jason had their own strange falling out a few months before Jazzy disappeared. Ryan's online accounts were hacked.

Speaker 14 He suspected Jason was behind it, since he was the only one who had easy access to Ryan's phone.

Speaker 26 Nearly all of my like Venmo accounts, any social media accounts were all locked out of. Same with my personal email.

Speaker 14 He even got fired from his job, he says, after some messages and social media posts from his account saying what just like very aggressive messages to managers that i would have never sent ryan says he doesn't know why jason would do that to him but he'd had enough and moved out when i went back to grab my last few items it turned out jason had disengaged the lock manually reset it to where my code wouldn't let me into the apartment So you couldn't get the last of your things?

Speaker 26 I couldn't get the last of my things. I spent probably about an hour banging on the door.

Speaker 14 Ryan says they never spoke again. The day after Jason's arrest, Jasmine's family was on edge, desperate for the one thing still missing, her body.
Talk to me about that process.

Speaker 9 It was painful.

Speaker 9 You know, it was really painful. We all

Speaker 9 stayed together and just waited.

Speaker 9 But by the second day, I was like, if they don't find her today,

Speaker 9 going looking. Like, we had come up with a game plan to kind of just look on our own because we needed that

Speaker 9 closure. We needed that piece of

Speaker 9 putting her to rest.

Speaker 14 Detectives continued to search for clues as to where Jazzy's body might be. Location data from November 23rd put Jason on the banks of the Tennessee River.

Speaker 14 On December 1st, 2022, they searched the area and found her.

Speaker 9 If there was anywhere that she had to be for that many days,

Speaker 9 she loved it there.

Speaker 14 That was a special place to her.

Speaker 9 She told him that he should go and see it before the leaves fall.

Speaker 14 So she had told him about that place?

Speaker 9 She did.

Speaker 14 And that's where he ultimately chose to dump her body?

Speaker 9 Yes.

Speaker 14 When you all heard that detail,

Speaker 9 It just turned my stomach.

Speaker 9 I mean, it's sick. It's sick.

Speaker 14 Jasmine had been stuffed in a suitcase. She was handcuffed.
And it got worse.

Speaker 19 This was not something that was quick. It was something that was cruising.
It was violent.

Speaker 14 60 stab wounds in all.

Speaker 14 As the family grieved, the man accused of killing Jasmine Pace sat behind bars.

Speaker 14 Thanks, in large part prosecutors said to her family how crucial was her family's involvement in all of this extremely hamilton county district attorney general cody womp i don't know how the police department would have ended up getting a search warrant had it not been for her family

Speaker 14 crucial absolutely but it was also a ticking time bomb Jason Chen's attorney, Josh Weiss, says the entire crime scene was compromised the moment Jazzy's family stepped inside.

Speaker 18 This isn't one of your run-of-the-mill cases.

Speaker 2 Usually, police officers get a search warrant. In this case,

Speaker 2 Jasmine Pace's parents illegally broke into Jason Chen's apartment and searched that apartment.

Speaker 14 Police warned Jazzy's family about it that night.

Speaker 20 We legally can't investigate anything in there that you found

Speaker 20 because it wasn't found legally.

Speaker 20 That's not my role. That's the state of Tennessee.
That's his case law.

Speaker 9 So that was torture, just feeling like,

Speaker 9 did we make a mistake? It was a constant just pit in your stomach of

Speaker 9 there were times Katrina would call me and just say

Speaker 9 he's not going to get away with this, right?

Speaker 14 Two years after Jasmine Pace was killed, her family gathered in a courtroom to see Jason Chin stand trial for her murder.

Speaker 14 Jason's parents and brother were there too. What was it like for you to be in there to be in that courtroom and be in the same courtroom as Jason Chen?

Speaker 10 I think I'm more so just numb to everything that at first you feel just so much anger.

Speaker 14 By now, the judge had ruled to allow in evidence from Jason's apartment. Armed with that, prosecutors laid out their theory of what happened that night.

Speaker 14 The couple fought, and Jason launched a vicious, drawn-out attack. This wasn't heat of the moment, they said.
It was premeditated murder.

Speaker 14 Prosecutor Paul Moyle, what would you identify as the challenges in this case?

Speaker 16 Anytime you have a first-degree murder case, the challenge is premeditation.

Speaker 16 How do you show that there was an opportunity to reflect on

Speaker 16 your conduct before committing the murder?

Speaker 14 They began by hammering home the brutality of the crime.

Speaker 9 This is the suitcase

Speaker 9 in which

Speaker 9 Jason Chin

Speaker 9 stuffed the 98-pound body of Jasmine Biggs. You know, he didn't just stab her 60 times.

Speaker 9 He then put her body in trash bags. He then put her body in a suitcase.

Speaker 14 The first witness up for the prosecution, Jasmine's mom, Katrina.

Speaker 9 Were you concerned at that point about a police investigation?

Speaker 9 I wasn't thinking about a police investigation. I was just trying to find her.
I was

Speaker 9 insanely scared.

Speaker 14 Prosecutors knew the stakes. If they couldn't couldn't prove Jason meant to kill Jasmine, the jury could drop it to second-degree murder or even voluntary manslaughter.
All of it was on the table.

Speaker 9 This was prolonged to some extent. We know that she was in his apartment until he leaves with the suitcase to go drop her body by the river.

Speaker 14 After that, prosecutors said Jason abandoned Jazzy's car in that parking lot where her family found it. Jason had pleaded not guilty to premeditated murder.

Speaker 14 So what his attorney, Joshua Weiss, said stunned everyone.

Speaker 9 Jason Chen

Speaker 30 is guilty,

Speaker 30 but he's not guilty of the crime that he's charged with.

Speaker 14 It's certainly not often that you hear a criminal defense attorney say that his client's guilty.

Speaker 2 I wanted to get the jury's attention from the beginning. I said exactly, I'm not here to waste your time.
Jason Chen is guilty of killing Jasmine Pace, but not

Speaker 2 to the degree the state is saying.

Speaker 14 Weiss said Jason did kill Jazzy, but it wasn't premeditated, as prosecutors argued. Instead, he said, the evening began with the couple hanging out and drinking wine.
But then...

Speaker 30 Jasmine goes back into the kitchen to get another bottle.

Speaker 22 And there on the counter is Jason's cell phone.

Speaker 30 Ding ding. Ding ding.
That familiar Tinder ding. Jasmine looked at his phone

Speaker 30 and saw all these messages with other girls. And it sent her in an anger, into a rage when they started yelling, biting.
Jasmine attacked Jason with an empty wine bottle.

Speaker 14 Jason had no choice, his attorney argued. He acted in self-defense, stabbing Jazzy in a fight he didn't start.

Speaker 22 This is a voluntary manslaughter case.

Speaker 14 Prosecutors completely dismissed the self-defense theory and even brought in a forensic tech expert who testified that Jason was not on Tinder at the time Jazzy was killed.

Speaker 14 In fact, the only time he was on the dating app, they said, was the next morning.

Speaker 9 He's on social media, on Tinder, hitting on girls, and Jasmine is dead in his apartment, which really says everything you need to know.

Speaker 14 When it came time to cross-examine Jasmine's mother, Weiss tried to thread a very small needle, showing sympathy while still questioning the evidence.

Speaker 22 You said you would do anything to find your daughter?

Speaker 9 Wouldn't you?

Speaker 31 Of course. Okay.

Speaker 22 But you would break into an apartment?

Speaker 17 To find my daughter?

Speaker 9 Yes.

Speaker 14 Both sides rested. Now, the case was in the jury's hands.

Speaker 32 I tried to remain very objective.

Speaker 14 Sarah Reed was juror number 11. There was no question that Jason killed Jazzy.
The issue on the table was premeditation. Sarah says she was swayed by what prosecutor Moyle said.

Speaker 32 Not only was it 60 stab wounds, there was 120 choices he made, in and out.

Speaker 7 That

Speaker 32 at any point he could have stopped.

Speaker 14 It didn't take long for the verdict to come in.

Speaker 31 We, the jury, find the defendant Jason Chen guilty of first-degree premeditated murder.

Speaker 14 Let's talk about how quickly they came back. I mean, we're talking less than an hour.

Speaker 7 Yeah. Surprising?

Speaker 9 I assumed that they were going to find Jason guilty, but that it might be over a period of hours or days. What we now know is that we had done our job.

Speaker 14 Now, jurors had one more job to do, sentence Jason Chen.

Speaker 14 Before deliberating, they would hear from Jasmine's cousin, Jackie.

Speaker 9 60 stones are in this jar, one to represent every stab wound found on my beautiful, innocent, 22-year-old cousin.

Speaker 14 Jurors had two choices, the possibility of parole in 51 years or life in prison with no chance of getting out.

Speaker 32 That decision came down to a conversation of

Speaker 32 Jasmine doesn't get to come back in 51 years.

Speaker 14 Jason Chen is now serving a life sentence, no possibility of parole.

Speaker 14 Jazzy's family feels like they are serving a life sentence too, a lifetime of missing the beautiful spirit they all loved so much.

Speaker 10 The world needed to hear that they didn't just need to look at her as a victim of a crime.

Speaker 10 They needed to look at her as like this most blessed person that

Speaker 10 would have just shown random acts of kindness to anybody.

Speaker 14 What do you want people to know, to remember about Jasmine?

Speaker 9 She put everything she had into being there for everybody else. She always put herself last.

Speaker 9 I mean, she got joy out of doing for others

Speaker 9 and being a loving, compassionate, kind, warm human being.

Speaker 8 That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again Friday at 9, 8 Central.
And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC News.

Speaker 8 Good night.

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