Internet Date Leaves Two Dead in Marrero.

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  • JBP55

    La. CHP Instructor #409
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    Walker
    12/09/2020
    Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office detectives suspect Jamal Harris shot and killed Jessica Troulliet and her father, Robert Templet Jr., leaving their bodies in her SUV in Marrero, after his internet date with the woman didn’t go as planned.

    Investigators can’t say for sure what set off their suspect in the October double homicide. But from text messages and a statement that Harris, 36, gave them, they pieced together that the pair argued at Troulliet’s home during the date after she tried to get rid of him by pretending she had a rendezvous planned that night with another man, homicide detective Steven Keller said during a court hearing.
    Jamal Harris
    Jamal Harris was arrested and booked with two counts of first-degree murder in the Oct. 3 shooting deaths of Jessica Troulliet, 35, and her father, Robert Templet Jr., 56.
    “She said he did not look like his profile pic, and she [said] he looked like a pumpkin head,” Keller testified Tuesday of Troulliet’s texts. “She told him she had another date, and he had to leave.”

    Harris, a New Orleans resident, is facing two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Troulliet, 35, and Templet, 56, both of Westwego. The hearing, in Magistrate Court to determine whether authorities had probable cause to arrest Harris, provided new details about the killings and the prosecution's case.

    Troulliet and Templet’s bodies were discovered inside her black Mercury Mountaineer after a passerby spotted it Oct. 3 at 1:51 a.m. on the side of the road near the intersection of Fourth Street and Garden Road. Troulliet was in the driver’s seat, her father next to her in the front passenger seat. Both had been shot in the back of the head.
    Relatives told detectives that Troulliet had planned to go on a date with a man named “Jamal,” Keller testified. Investigators identified Harris through phone records.

    Harris admitted meeting Troulliet two or three days earlier on the dating app Tagged, Keller said. He told investigators the two met in person on the night of Oct. 2, and he went to the Westwego home she shared with her father, Keller said. But Harris said the night ended early after a disagreement.
    “He admitted being upset with her because she was speaking to another individual on the phone,” said Keller, who testified that Harris said he was insulted because he was there to be with Troulliet that evening.
    Harris told investigators that he left Troulliet’s home about 9:30 p.m., walked to his father’s house in Marrero and had his cousin, Jamal Gabriel, 34, pick him up, Keller said'
    But mobile phone records for both Troulliet and Harris refute his version of events, Keller testified. Records show the pair didn’t begin communicating on the night of Oct. 2 until 9:37 p.m. Texts and GPS records show Troulliet picked up Harris in her SUV in Marrero about 10:12 p.m., Keller said.
    Things quickly went downhill, according to Troulliet’s texts messages. Between about 10:15 and 10:20 p.m., she began texting a male friend for help to get rid of a date who was refusing to leave her home, Keller testified. Troulliet expressed that she didn’t find the person attractive.

    “She asked her friend to come to the house to help get him out,” Keller said.
    The friend declined to get involved, even as she continued texting and disclosed that her plan to get the date out of the house had failed.
    During that time, Harris and Troulliet’s phones were “married up,” Keller said, meaning they were pinging off the same signal towers, evidence that Harris was with her and not at his father’s house.
    The two phones continued pinging off the same towers even as they left the area of Troulliet and Templet’s home and began traveling down Fourth Street about 1 a.m., towards the homicide scene, Keller said.

    Detectives think Troulliet had agreed to drive Harris back to the spot where she’d picked him up, and that her father was along for the ride. Based on business surveillance videos that recorded the SUV after she left home, detectives suspect father and daughter were killed some time after 1:10 a.m.Harris and Troulliet’s phones then moved south, towards the West Bank Expressway and Ames Boulevard, before her phone was powered off at 1:37 a.m., Keller said. Detectives suspect Harris ran from from the crime scene, with Troulliet’s phone, to Acre Road and Ames Boulevard, just over a mile away, where his cousin admitted picking him up, authorities said.
    Investigators are confident Harris was the person who stole Troulliet’s phone from the murder scene because her phone pinged one more time near his, several hours after her death, Keller said.

    At about 8:30 a.m., records show, Harris’ phone was at his Mistletoe Street home in New Orleans’ Hollygrove neighborhood. The last location of Troulliet’s phone was recorded at 10:16 a.m. near the intersection of Mistletoe and Colapissa streets in New Orleans, about five blocks from Harris’ home, Keller said. Troulliet’s phone has not been found.
    Harris was eventually arrested Oct. 21 at Gabriel’s residence on Avondale Garden Road in Avondale. Gabriel was booked with being an accessory after the fact to first-degree murder.

    Harris' defense attorney, Richard Bourke, argued there wasn’t probable cause for first-degree murder.
    “This is a completely circumstantial case,” said Bourke who stressed there were no witnesses or direct evidence that linked Harris to the shootings. “All of it is based on GPS records.”
    He also argued that mobile phone location data isn’t an exact science, especially because phones don’t always ping off the closest towers.
    “He could have left before the shooting. Someone else could have been the shooter. There’s a lot of things that can happen,” Bourke said.

    Assistant District Attorney Doug Freese said Harris had motive and opportunity to kill.
    “When given the opportunity to discuss his whereabouts, the defendant made statements that were demonstrably false,” Freese said.
    Bourke asked the court to set bond. But Criminal Commissioner Paul Schneider ruled there was indeed probable cause to hold Harris and ordered that the defendant continue to be held without bond.
     

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