Police have arrested a man wanted in connection with both the brutal murder of Baltimore tech CEO Pava LaPere and a separate, near-fatal attack and rape less than a week earlier, authorities said.
Jason Dean Billingsley, 32, was taken into custody around 11 p.m. Wednesday at a train station in Bowie, Maryland, northeast of Washington, D.C., The Baltimore Banner reported, citing U.S. Marshals, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Baltimore Police Department said it plans to share more information on the arrest at a press conference scheduled for later Thursday morning.
Billingsley’s capture came one day after Baltimore police named him as a suspect in the murder of LaPere, who was found dead with blunt-force injuries at her apartment building late Monday morning. A suspected motive for the attack has not been released.
Police on Wednesday then revealed that Billingsley was additionally wanted in an earlier attempted murder, arson and rape that occurred at a home on Sept. 19, six days prior to the discovery of LaPere’s body.
Police said evidence gathered during that earlier investigation connected Billingsley to LaPere’s death.
In that earlier attack, a man and woman were reportedly critically injured, and a 5-year-old treated for smoke inhalation, after a fire was set at their home.
The couple was allegedly ambushed by an armed man posing as a maintenance worker who kicked in their front door and then handcuffed and duct-taped them, The Baltimore Banner reported, citing a source with knowledge of the investigation.
The woman was allegedly raped and her neck cut. She and the man were then doused with some kind of liquid and set on fire, the Banner reported.
Billingsley was released on parole last October after serving several years of a 30-year sentence ― with all but 14 years suspended ― for a first-degree sex offense to which he pleaded guilty in 2015. He had separately pleaded guilty to first-degree assault in 2009 and second-degree assault in 2011, The Baltimore Banner reported. Billingsley is listed on Maryland’s sex offender registry.
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott has said that Billingsley never should have been out of prison.
“There’s no way in hell that he should have been on the street,” the mayor said at a press conference Tuesday. “We are tired of talking about the same people committing the same kind of crimes over and over again.”