OXFORD, Miss. — The murder trial for Timothy Herrington Jr., the man accused of killing University of Mississippi student Jimmie “Jay” Lee is continuing into its second week.
Jurors in this case were back at work on Monday after putting in a full day on Saturday and boarding a bus on Sunday to view key locations discussed in court.
The most detailed testimony came from a detective specializing in cell phone extraction.
“You get a lot of things from that like emails, text messages, call logs (and) location data,” Detective Ryan Baker said.
Detective Baker worked on the Timothy Herrington investigation and was able to determine that Jay Lee did go to Herrington’s apartment twice on July 8, 2022.
The first time, the men had sex, which they learned by recovering a message from Lee to Herrington.
“It says, ‘I just want to say I had you. Be DL (down low)… again fun to have been the first guy.. experiment over,” Baker said.
Baker explained Herrington is not openly gay and encouraged Lee to return but before he did, he made a suspicious Google search.
“At 5:57 a.m., Mr. Herrington does a Google search. How long does it take to strangle someone,” Baker said.
Baker showed several diagrams where police were able to ping Lee’s phone on July 8 and it was placed near Herrington’s apartment.
However, Baker said police never recovered his phone.
That same technology pinged Herrington’s phone from the Oxford Walmart where he bought a roll of duct tape, to the defendant driving a white box truck, heading to Grenada and down a one-way road near his relative’s house.
“At the north part of that neighborhood, it dead ends into a wooded area,” Baker said. “The Yalabusa River runs through that wooded area and so forth.”
Cell phone data pinged Herrington’s phone to his parent’s house where police say he put a shovel and wheelbarrow in the box truck.
Baker testified Herrington made a number of unusual Google searches in the days after July 8, including one under the name of University of Mississippi student Ally Kostial.
Kostial was murdered by her boyfriend in 2019 and her body was found by the Sardis Lake.
The defense argued that none of Jay Lee’s DNA has been found that connects Herrington to his disappearance.
The trial will resume Tuesday morning at 8:30 a.m.