5min chapter

Dateline NBC cover image

A mom's desperate search to find her daughter. Tears and fury in an Ohio courtroom. And the latest in the Karen Read case.

Dateline NBC

CHAPTER

A Mother's Desperate Pursuit: The search for Jasmine Pace

This chapter explores the tragic case of Jasmine Pace, who went missing after sending a troubling message to her mother. It follows the mother's frantic search for answers and the ensuing legal battle as evidence against Jasmine's boyfriend surfaces, raising questions about the investigation and the trial.

00:00
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It's
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hard to what I've done. I am glad I got caught.
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In Dateline Roundup, Karen Reed's defense team was back in court this week talking about dogs. And we've got details on new charges filed against the man at the heart of what's been called the real-life Gone Girl case.
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It's the same MO, and it's a very unusual, scary, terrifying.O. Plus,
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a new year could mean an unexpected summons to jury duty. A jury consultant gives us her tips on what to expect.
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Jurors can feel a lot of sympathy and even empathy for the defendant while also finding him or
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her guilty. But before all that, we're heading to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where a highly publicized murder trial is about to get underway. And the mother of the victim has faced questions about what she did to try to find her daughter and whether she went too far. In the early morning hours of November 23rd, 2022, 22-year Jasmine Pace sent her mother an unsettling text message. There were no words, just a pin drop sharing her location. Jasmine never came home after that. Sensing something was wrong, Jasmine's mother Katrina and her family went into investigation mode. They went to the location of the pin drop, a condo complex where the family forced open the door to an apartment. Katrina took several items she found there, including Jasmine's phone, license and credit cards, and was left with a bad feeling. What
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was your reaction when you found those? I
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knew I wasn't good. A few days later, Jasmine's body was found stuffed in a suitcase. She'd been stabbed 60 times. Police had already zeroed in on a suspect, Jasmine's boyfriend, Jason Chen. He was charged with murder and abuse of a corpse. He has pleaded not guilty. But in the more than two-year run-up to Chen's trial, the unauthorized investigation by Jasmine's desperate mother has come under heavy fire from the defense.
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It's normal for you to break into other people's apartments.
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How might it all impact the trial set to begin next week? Here to bring us up to speed is Grayson Gordon, a news reporter from our NBC affiliate WRCB Local 3 News. Grayson, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for
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having me. This
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is such a sad story. To start, can you just tell us, tell us about Jasmine Pace and who was she? What was she like? What have you learned about her?
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We know that she was very loved by her family. Whenever you're listening to testimony from her mother, Katrina, you can hear how close they were and how much they talked. And having that communication with her and her family, how close she was with her mother was really the way that her mother was able to know that she
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was not okay as quickly as her mother was able to figure that out. And what do we know about Jason Chen and how they met?
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So we know that they met on a dating app a
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few months before she went missing. They were both college students. So her mom sort of turns investigator, right? Because, you know, it's unlike Jasmine to
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not check in with her mom. Absolutely. And, you know, you can understand a mother pleading and doing everything in her power to try to find her child. She gathers her family and she realizes that her daughter had sent her a, dropped her a pin. That pinned location took them to Jason Chin's apartment.
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So Jason's not there in the apartment and they gain entry. And that's when they say they found Jasmine's phone, credit cards, and driver's license. So obviously very scary for the family to not know where their daughter is and to walk
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in and find that. So they do call the police whenever they find this evidence. We watch body camera video so far at these pretrial hearings. When the police go in, they spend about three minutes kind of just scanning Chen's apartment. Then they get a search warrant. And once they get the search warrant, they do find traces of
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blood. And police also say during the search, they found blood spatter on the bathroom wall, cleaning supplies, a large amount of blood that had been cleaned up in the living room. This is a very disturbing scene. Absolutely. Parents taking matters into their own hands. You understand that. If your child is missing, you will do anything. The defense has made this a big deal. This is what the defense has been using, the potential
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tarnish of a crime scene and the way that the evidence was gathered in order to try to exclude evidence from being used in the trial. The defense's worry is that it could have potentially been planted. And that's what those pre-trial hearings have been. Right. And
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that all makes sense from a defense perspective. Katrina, the mom, was actually cross-examined on the stand. What did she have to say about her actions and gaining entry to the apartment? It
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was obviously very emotional. And the defense attorney for Jason Chent, he asked her on the stand, is it normal for you to break into apartments? And Katrina said no.

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