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Sep 02, 2023

Man Claimed His Ex

John “Jay” Tolson is accused of murdering Outer Banks mother of two Amanda LeeAnn Fletcher Hartleben in 2020 Three years after LeeAnn Hartleben was found unresponsive in her home in North Carolina’s

John “Jay” Tolson is accused of murdering Outer Banks mother of two Amanda LeeAnn Fletcher Hartleben in 2020

Three years after LeeAnn Hartleben was found unresponsive in her home in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, the trial of the man accused of killing her has finally begun.

Hartleben, 38, a mother of two, died on July 25, 2020, three days after being airlifted to a hospital in Norfolk, Va., for injuries she sustained inside her cozy Kitty Hawk cottage.

Three months later, on Oct. 26, 2020, police arrested John “Jay” Tolson in Bangor, Maine, the same day a Dare County Grand Jury indicted him and charged him with second-degree murder in connection with her death.

He pleaded not guilty and has remained held on a $1 million bond at the Dare County Detention Center, awaiting trial.

After many continuances, jury selection began on Monday. A jury of seven women and five men and two alternates were selected, The Virginian-Pilot reports.

Opening statements began Tuesday morning. Hartleben’s family has been waiting for this moment for a long time.

"LeeAnn was a good person,” Hartleben’s cousin, Trisha Cahoon told PEOPLE previously. Saying she hopes justice will be served, Cahoon stressed that her cousin “didn't deserve” what happened to her.

On Monday, Superior Court Judge Jeff Foster ruled on a motion from the defense asking to exclude some evidence, the Island Free Press and The Virginian-Pilot report.

Tolson’s public defender had filed a motion asking the court to exclude all 50 or so photographs and physical evidence in the case, The Virginian-Pilot reports.

The judge ruled that evidence taken from the crime scene immediately following Hartleben’s death could be admitted. This includes a blood-stained comforter, a towel and a pillow that Kitty Hawk police collected on July 24, The Virginian-Pilot reports.

It also includes a shirt with blood on it that a private investigator hired by the family collected and handed over to police on July 31, the newspaper reports.

But the judge said he had “concerns” about evidence collected after that, in September 2020, saying he would rule on that later, the Island Free Press reports.

On July 22, 2020, Tolson, then 29, called 911 to report that he had found Hartleben unconscious at her house.

"My friend, she's laying in the tub, she won't wake up," Tolson told the 911 dispatcher about Hartleben, whom he’d briefly dated that summer.

"I think she fell last night, I'm not sure," he said. "There's blood coming out of her nose, so I can't get her to wake up."

Unresponsive, Hartleben was airlifted to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital on the mainland in Norfolk, Va.

Cahoon and her family were shocked when doctors said the mother of two had sustained blunt-force trauma head wounds that were inconsistent with the fall Tolson described in the 911 call, she says.

Hartleben also had bruises on her neck and arms, Cahoon says.

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Cahoon says she immediately knew something didn't seem right about her cousin's death, saying something seemed "shady."

Her concerns grew when she learned Hartleben's 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, Virginia, confirmed in an emailed statement to PEOPLE.

"The manner of death was ruled as undetermined," the statement said.

Suspecting foul play when Cahoon and other family members found blood in several rooms, they hired a private investigator to help gather evidence, maintaining that law enforcement wasn’t doing enough.

In court documents obtained by PEOPLE, police say they began investigating the case immediately. They also said publicly that they were investigating the case and that Tolson was a person of interest.

But Hartleben’s cousin, Trisha Cahoon, and other family members argued that police were slow to investigate Hartleben's death as a homicide.

"They were saying there was no crime, there was no crime committed," says Cahoon. "That she was drunk, fell, and hit her head, and there you go. And she succumbed to her injuries.

"And we were like, 'There was a crime.' We said, 'Please come investigate. Please do something. There's spots that look like blood.'"

Wanting answers, 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 a YouTube video on the #JUSTICEforLeeAnn YouTube channel.

But, she adds, "The bathtub had no blood in it."

Saying they felt they were being ignored by law enforcement, Cahoon and her family and others went on social media to put pressure on authorities.

In response, on Aug. 10, 2020, District Attorney Andrew Womble issued a statement saying his office was awaiting the autopsy report before deciding whether to file charges, The Coastland Times reports.

Still pushing for answers from law enforcement, Cahoon told the Island Free Press in 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 Times reported.

Hartleben and Tolson met at a party in June of 2020, says Cahoon. He told her he had recently been kicked out of the apartment where he'd been living and needed a place to stay.

Her children were away "and she felt sorry for him," says Cahoon, so Hartleben said he could stay for a couple nights.

"Her worst flaw is that she was too much of a giver," she says.

Their friendship soon turned romantic. Tolson had been living with Hartleben for a few weeks when they hit a rough patch in their relationship, according to Cahoon.

"He had become possessive," among other issues, Cahoon alleges. In response, Hartleben put all of his belongings in bags and left them on the porch and said she was ending the relationship, according to Cahoon.

"That angered him," Cahoon says.

His attorney did not respond to PEOPLE's request for comment.

If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go to thehotline.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.