BALTIMORE — A Baltimore man responsible for a deadly string of violence last September will spend the rest of his life behind bars.
On Monday Jason Billingsley pleaded guilty to the brutal attempted murder of April Hurley and her boyfriend, Jonte Gilmore, at their Edmondson Avenue apartment.
Now he's admitted to killing 26-year-old tech CEO Pava LaPere inside her Mount Vernon apartment complex.
While addressing the judge before sentencing, Billingsley said he takes full accountability and sincerely apologizes to the families but knows “nothing [he] say can make her family feel better.”
The judge responded with these remarks...
“I try not to judge people by their worst acts but nobody in any community will be safe while you are free.”
The judge's words highlight the horrific nature in which Billingsley carried out his crime spree, landing him three life sentences.
It all started September 19.
Billingsley forced his way into Hurley and Gilmore's apartment, bounding the couple at gunpoint.
Court documents say Billingsley targeted the couple, while working maintenance at their complex.
The now convicted killer slashed Hurley's throat before raping and lighting her on fire.
Hurley and Gilmore suffered second and third degree burns to the body.
Detectives identified Billingsley as the suspect through surveillance footage and several pieces of evidence left behind at the scene, including a knife, handcuffs, duct tape, and hoodie that Billingsley reportedly wore the day prior.
Following the incident, then Acting Police Commissioner Richard Worley refused to specify why Hurley and Gilmore were targeted.
"We know pretty much why he wanted that house on Edmondson Avenue and why he committed those acts," Worley said at the time, while declining to provide further details.
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The couple wasn't the first or last of Billingsley's victims.
Just three days later he murdered LaPere, leaving her body on the rooftop of the Congress apartments on W. Franklin Street. At the time of discovery, LaPere had already been reported missing.
The medical examiner ruled her death was caused by strangulation and blunt force trauma to the head.
Surveillance footage showed LaPere letting Billingsley into her building before they got on an elevator together.
About half-an-hour later Billingsley was spotted exiting by the stairwell. After a week on the run, police captured Billingsley at a train station in Bowie.
In the days following LaPere's murder, an arrest warrant was issued for Billingsley in Baltimore County accusing him of stealing a handgun.
Aside from being a killer, Billingsley is also a registered sex offender.
His criminal history dates back years.
In 2013 he sexually assaulted a woman in West Baltimore, a crime he was ultimately convicted of in 2015.
The woman in that case was strangled by Billingsley and threatened with a gun.
As result Billingsley was sentenced to 14 years in prison, but "good behavior" allowed him to be released in October 2022.
"This defendant should have never been released into the community following a first-degree sex offense conviction to inflict immense trauma, pain, and sorrow on so many individuals in such a short amount of time," said Baltimore City State's Attorney Ivan J. Bates.
Billingsley's early release prompted Maryland's General Assembly to pass the Pava LaPere Act, which eliminates diminution credits for first-degree sex offenders.
