A North Carolina man charged withmurder following the death of his ex-girlfriendin July 2020 pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter on the fourth day of his trial on Thursday.
John “Jay” Tolson, 32, was facing a charge of second-degree murder in the death of Amanda LeeAnn Fletcher Hartleben, 38, who was found unresponsive in the bathtub of her Kitty Hawk cottage in the Outer Banks on July 22, 2020.
Suffering from severe wounds, the mother of two was airlifted to a Norfolk hospital, where she died three days later, on July 25, 2020.
Tolson pleaded guilty to the lesser charge as part of a plea agreement with the District Attorney’s Office.
John Jay Tolson.Bangor, Maine Police Department
Saying Tolson had “no significant criminal history prior to this case” Foster sentenced him to 56-80 months in state prison,The Virginian-Pilotreports.
The judge ordered that credit be given for the time Tolson served in jail awaiting trial after his Oct. 28, 2020, arrest.
Foster said he hoped that while Tolson serves his sentence that he “be provided the opportunity to receive counseling and treatment for any substance dependencies that he may have,” according toThe Virginian-Pilot.
Hartleben’s family was not entirely satisfied with the outcome.
“We definitely have mixed emotions,” Hartleben’s cousin, Trisha Cahoon, tells PEOPLE. “Justice in this case was not served to the fullest it could have been.
“I feel like we were kind of pressed into the whole plea deal,” she says. “We feel that he would have been found guilty of second-degree murder 100 percent."
LeeAnn Fletcher Hartleben.Facebook
After the proceedings, she says “a juror contacted me saying without a doubt he was guilty of second-degree murder.”
Amber Younce and Jennifer Bland, the District 1 assistant district attorneys who represented the state, “did an excellent job," says Cahoon. But she believes former First District Attorney Andrew Womble, who is now a Superior Court Judge, and Chief Assistant District Attorney Jeffrey Cruden may have pushed for a plea deal because they “did not want their office or the Kitty Hawk Police Department" potentially criticized for not being more aggressive with the case had the trial continued, she says.
Womble did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s requests for comment.
But Bland says that when it comes to cases where families have lost loved ones, “Very seldom do families feel like justice has been done."
She adds, “Anything short of death or the death penalty for the defendant makes them feel like justice has not been served.”
“Once the evidence started coming out in trial, the family understood the risks of taking the case to a jury and that ultimately we were risking a lesser verdict – lesser than voluntary manslaughter and a possible not guilty verdict," she says.
She and her colleague, ADA Amber Younce “would not have made that decision unless the family was 100 percent on board with taking the plea and that this was going to be our best result, even if it went to the jury,” Bland says.
“Mr. Cruden had nothing to do with way trial was done,” she added. “The only directive he gave me in doing this trial and this case is you do not do at unless the family.”
In a statement Friday, Cruden defended his office and the police department, saying, “this was a difficult case from the very beginning.”
He said his office, “with the assistance from the Kitty Hawk Police Department and the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation worked tirelessly on this case to give the jury the information they would need to convict Mr. Tolson.”
After the third day of the trial, he continued, “the possibility of a plea to Voluntary Manslaughter was discussed with the family. If the family had not agreed to the plea, we would have continued to trial to verdict.”
He also noted that the case “underscores the dangers of social media,” saying that people who were unfamiliar with the case “were nonetheless convinced of the defendant’s guilt.”
The State’s Evidence
During the trial, Younce said prosecutors believed that Hartleben was injured on July 20, 2020, two days before Tolson called 911,The Coastland Timesreports.
Tolson was the last person she called on the afternoon of July 20, 2020, Younce said during the trial,The Virginian-Pilotreported.
After that, Hartleben went “radio silent,” she said.
Investigators discovered that on July 21, 2020, Tolson then made Google searches on his phone for topics including “how bad are concussions” and “what if someone won’t wake up from a concussion,” Younce said, the newspaper reported.
On July 22, he called his ex-girlfriend at 4 a.m. but she didn’t answer. When he reached her at 9:24 a.m., she told him to call 911, Younce said, according toThe Virginian Pilot.
She also told the court how Tolson gave “inconsistent” statements to police about what happened, saying that at one point, “he and LeeAnn were in a tussle,” Younce said.
While Hartleben was fighting for her life in the ICU, Tolson “never called the hospital to check on her,” Younce said.
A Family’s Fight for Justice
From the start, Cahoon and her family claimed that police were slow to investigate Hartleben’s death as a homicide.
Right after the incident, “They were saying there was no crime, there was no crime committed,” Cahoon said. “That she was drunk, fell, and hit her head, and there you go. And she succumbed to her injuries.'”
After finding blood all over Hartleben’s house, “We were like, ‘There was a crime.’ We said, ‘Please come investigate. Please do something,'” she says.
Hartleben’s family also became suspicious of the injuries she sustained, especially when the cause of death was ruled as “complications of blunt force trauma to the head with hepatic cirrhosis with clinical hepatic failure contributing,” the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Norfolk, Va., confirmed previously in an emailed statement to PEOPLE.
During the trial, Dr. Nicole Masian, a forensic pathologist and the assistant chief medical examiner for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Virginia, said the bruises and other injuries on Hartleben’s body were “not consistent with medical interventions,”The Virginian-Pilotreports.
She had also sustained what Masian described as defensive wounds to her forearms and the backs of her hands,The Virginian-Pilotreports.
Hartleben had no drugs or alcohol in her system when she died, according to the toxicology report, Masian testified.
Wanting answers, in 2020, Cahoon and her family hired a private investigator, who went to Hartleben’s house with Cahoon. There, they videotaped what they say were blood stains they could readily see and those that were illuminated with a chemical agent on the doors and walls in several rooms and on Hartleben’s mattress.
“It was like a massacre,” says Cahoon, who posted their findings in aYouTube videoon the#JUSTICEforLeeAnnYouTube channel.
Subsequently, on Aug. 10, 2020, then-District Attorney Womble issued a statement saying his office was awaiting the autopsy report before deciding whether to file charges,The Coastland Timesreports.
Still pushing for answers from law enforcement, Cahoon told theIsland Free Pressin an Aug. 26, 2020 article that she and her family had started the #JUSTICEforleeann campaign and marched to the Kitty Hawk Police station.
During a subsequent city council meeting, speakers criticized the police chief and the district attorney for their handling of Hartleben’s case,The Coastland Timesreported.
The Defense’s Arguments
In court, Tolson’s public defenders argued that prosecutors had no proof that their client killed Hartleben.
Public defender Jennifer Wells told jurors that police did not secure Hartleben’s house after she was taken to Norfolk and that none of the witnesses “can tell you a crime occurred,”The Virginian-Pilotreported.
“Unsecured, undetermined, unproven,” Wells told jurors at the start of the trial.
After Tolson entered his plea, his other public defender, Christian Routten, said the defense would have had a forensic pathologist and a forensic neuropathologist testify that Hartlben’s brain injury “did not match the actual presentation” from the prosecutors, theOuter Banks Voicereports.
In the end, she added, “it would have been a case of the jury deciding which expert they believed,” and Tolson was concerned about putting his fate in the hands of 12 strangers.
Routten did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
Life Without LeeAnn
As Tolson begins his sentence, Hartleben’s family — including her two children — are still trying to pick up the pieces after her untimely death.
“She will never get to see her children graduate or walk down the aisle,” says Cahoon.
“Everyone who met her loved her,” says Cahoon. “She had her whole life ahead of her. Then she had it all ripped away.
“LeeAnn wanted to live.”
If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go tothehotline.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.
source: people.com
