The Pin at Apartment 210

0:00Tonight on Dateline. She loved her family. She put everything she had into being there for everybody else. A couple of days go by and I hadn't heard from her. She called me and she's like, have you heard Jasmine's missing? What was it about that post that stood out to you? The photos. That's not something she would put out there of her in lingerie. I pulled up her phone record. She has not made any phone calls. It's Tuesday night, and someone has been resetting her passwords. Her family catapulted the investigation. They took matters into their own hands. We could see the pin drop from Jasmine's phone.

0:46We found a way in the apartment complex. He said, I heard a scream that was so startling that I wrote the time down. So this was right next door? Exactly. Are you thinking Jasmine could be inside? Yes. we forced the door open, terrified of what you're about to find. Could a family's all-out effort to find their missing daughter actually derail their fight for justice? I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

1:24Here's Blaine Alexander with The Pin at Apartment 210.

1:33How far would you go for your family? For the people you love most in the world? When you're desperate, you just don't stop moving. Especially if one of them was in trouble. It's been messing for four days. This family went to the ends of the earth. What can we do? And the edge of the law. You can't investigate anything in there that you found. They'd only find out later if they had gone too far.

2:09Chattanooga, Tennessee, 2022, just two days before Thanksgiving. Jackie White and her family were heartbroken. The family matriarch, Granny, had cancer, and the prognosis wasn't good. It was hard, and the cancer had metastasized. It went from, hey, let's figure out what's wrong, to she's going to die very soon. That fast? Yes. So it was really quick. It was really unexpected. The family all gathered at the hospital, including Jackie's cousin, Jasmine Pace. Jazzy, as the family called her, adored granny. How was Jasmine during all of that? She kept it together because that's what we do in my family.

2:57We're strong for each other. But when I got there, she was outside alone having her breakdown. So she was devastated. I mean, devastated, absolutely devastated. Everyone had their own moment with her, and she passed as soon as I started praying. Jackie grieved with her cousin Jazzy. The two worried about their moms. Granny had raised them both. So they made plans for the family to gather on Thanksgiving, just two days away. Jazzy helped lead the charge. She offered, you know, I can bring stuff. Our moms are not going to want to have Thanksgiving. But Granny will haunt us if we do not. She's like, we have to get everyone together.

3:52even if we're all in pajamas and crying. Yeah. So that was the plan, to kind of recoup the day in between and figure it out. And then all get back together on Thanksgiving. The day before Thanksgiving, Jackie texted Jazzy to see how she was holding up. And you got a response. I did. Saying what? I just need some time alone after everything that happened. Was that a normal response from her? For an emotional event, yes. I think my whole family's that way. We kind of retreat inwardly and like to process alone. So I thought maybe that's what was happening. But then Jazzy texted to say she was spending Thanksgiving with a friend instead of the family.

4:44And said, you know, I'm going to South Carolina with Emma for her family's Thanksgiving. I just need some time away from everyone after everything that happened. Jackie couldn't believe it. Her not coming to Thanksgiving, it upset me. I mean, I'm like, girl, be here, you know, and I tried to call her on Thanksgiving and it went straight to voicemail. Jazzy's half-sister, Gabby Pace, also found it strange. Especially when she got this Snapchat from Jazzy, a photo with the message, Baby, I'm good. What did you think? Odd, because they were old pictures. It didn't look like the most recent Jazzy.

5:34By that Friday morning, worry started to creep in. Jazzy's mother Katrina realized Nobody had actually spoken to Jazzy in three days Since the night Granny died When she couldn't reach her on the phone by the day after Thanksgiving It was like, no, something's wrong She's not picking up the phone She's not checking on me She knows her daughter She does And it's very unlike Jasmine To not be there for everyone Her mom called Emma, the friend Jazzy said she was visiting. Emma actually told her, my family's not in South Carolina, so I don't even know where that came from. And there was more. Jazzy wasn't with her on Thanksgiving.

6:23And that's when it was like panic stricken. She knew something wasn't right. And she's like, what do I do? And I said, she's 22. She's on your phone plan. Who is she talking to? Like, let's unravel this. The search for Jazzy would force the family to go places and do things they never imagined. What can we do? At this point, I mean, I'm not saying... It sounds like you all went into full investigation mode. Mm-hmm. You know, it's not her. We know it's not her. And from that moment on, it was just digging. Like, where is she spending money? Who is she talking to? You're terrified of what you're about to find.

7:15November 26th, 2022. It had been four days since family and friends last saw Jasmine Pace. It was totally unlike Jazzy to disappear like that. Her family started tracking her down. It's 2022. Everyone has an electronic footprint. There are clues everywhere. Especially, they figured, for a bright and fun 22-year-old who was normally in constant touch. What was she like? Sweet. Sassy. So easy to talk to. She had a lot of friends. Definitely kind of an old soul. She liked to read, and as social as she was, she was a homebody too. And also outdoorsy. She liked walking along the banks of the Tennessee River.

8:16Family friend Brianna Edge had known Jasmine since she was born. She always wanted to be where the adults were. She could be five, six years old, and Jasmine wanted to know what was going on, be part of it. As she got older, Jazzy wanted to be a part of the family business, too. She started working at her mom and stepdad Scott's construction company. She was still in college, but worked for that company, so it was all day, every day on the phone with them. Jazzy had always been someone they could lean on in times of crisis. Her number one, I would say, was her family. Now, Jazzy might be the one in crisis.

9:01Her family kicked into high gear. Not only were they determined to find her, they were tech savvy. They went to the Verizon store and pulled Jazzy's phone records. One call in particular caught their attention. It happened on the day Granny died. A 71-minute call to a number they didn't recognize. The next day, her phone turned off. They couldn't ping her location, but they thought of something else. Every car has a computer, mostly after 2015 now. And so we would be able to track her car location through that. But in order for us to be able to do that, we had to log in through her email. So we had to transfer her phone number over to a new phone to be able to access all of that stuff.

9:49Once they got into Jazzy's email account, they found out that the passwords to her bank and social media accounts had been changed. It sounds like you all went into full investigation mode. I think that idea was out there of let's use what we can. By now, the family had accessed Jazzy's car app. Since the last time the family saw her, her car had been to two locations and it was still at one of them, Mountain Creek Road. Jazzy's mom and stepdad raced over. Gabby arrived shortly after. And there it was, in the parking lot, Jazzy's SUV. But no sign of Jazzy. Jazzy's mom called the police. Hello.

10:39And before long, a patrol officer showed up, body cam rolling. So what's going on exactly? That's mom Katrina on the left, stepdad Scott on the right. They told the officer everything they'd learned so far. She's been missing for four days. So Tuesday night at 1127, she left our house and went to a place on Fraser Avenue. Wednesday, it left Fraser Avenue, came right here. It hadn't been moved since. It hadn't been moved since. I pulled up her phone record. She has not made any phone calls since Tuesday night. Okay. No data has been used because I had her phone line transferred to a new device so I could track her stuff.

11:20And someone has been resetting her passwords. You know, it's not her. We know it's not her. Just then, while the family stood in the lot, Jazzy seemed to emerge. A racy photo popped up on her Facebook account. That's when I got scared. You saw that post. I did. I felt like that's someone that wants to humiliate her. That's not something she would put out there of her in lingerie on social media. What can we do? At this point, I mean, I'm not saying it's not weird circumstances, because that definitely is, I can get her listed as missing. Jazzy's mom wanted more. She asked them to pull any security footage from that parking lot.

12:06See if she actually drove this car here. I know the courtesy officer that does work here, but as far as this time of night, I don't imagine I'd be able to get anything until tomorrow. Can we try? As Jazzy's family waited on that security footage, her mom remembered that long call Jazzy made the day Granny died. When she didn't recognize the number, she had called Jackie, who was helping from home. So on the phone with me. I mean, she pulled up her Verizon and started scrolling through, and she said the last person she was on phone with, it's this number. Jackie got right to work. While still on the phone with Jazzy's mom, she ran the number through one of her mobile payment apps.

12:52And I put it in Cash App, and I said, Jason Chin, do you know that person? She said yes, and she hung up on me. Katrina knew Jazzy had been casually seeing a guy named Jason Chen for a few months. Maybe he could help find her. Hello? So there, right in front of police, Katrina called him. No one has seen or heard from her since Tuesday night. What would he have to say?

13:32Jasmine Pace's parents were busy tracking her digital footprint, trying to determine her movements since they last saw her. They learned she'd had a phone call with Jason Chen, a guy she'd met on a dating app. The two had been casually dating for a few months and had gone on a trip to Chicago together. Now, Jazzy's mom was on the phone with him. and you seen last time you seen her was saturday

14:04jason told katrina he hadn't spoken to jazzy since that monday but she knew that wasn't true and you haven't talked to her since then hang on one second hang on one second i just muted him he just lied he talked to her for 71 minutes Tuesday afternoon. He would remember that. Jazzy's mom pressed him. Hey, Jason, I just called off her call log, and I have it on here where she talked to you for 71 minutes Tuesday afternoon while her granny was in the hospital. Jason said he did remember talking to Jazzy that day. He'd simply forgotten. For police, it wasn't much to go on. I can document that, but as far as...

14:49Putting him as a suspect, we don't know. Okay, I'm just letting you, please document it. Katrina pushed them to do more. Could we possibly go to a local business that you have to pass to get these apartments and ask them to pull up footage so we can see if she's driving her car? But they're not just going to pull it out for you. I understand that. But I can't just not... I understand. I'm just, I'm... I'm trying to explain to you the extent of what I can do. Eventually, the officers left. If police wouldn't follow the leads, the family would. When you're desperate, I think that's what you do. You just don't stop moving.

15:35It's like you're trying to lean into anything you can that you think is going to bring you some kind of answer. They went to the address they had for Jason, but all they found was an abandoned house. Frustrated, Jazzy's mom went back through Jazzy's texts from that night. And suddenly Katrina realizes she has a text on her phone. She sees the pin drop and realizes, oh. She sent a message. Yes. At 2.18 a.m. on the night she disappeared, Jazzy had sent her mother a pin with her location on it. Katrina was grieving Granny's passing and never saw it. How shocking was that for her? It was scary. I think that that's when I think fear really set in.

16:30You could tell immediately that a message like that was a cry for help. Yes. No other explanation. I mean, there was no, for 30 o 'clock in the morning or 2 o 'clock, whatever time it was. That pin led them to yet another apartment complex. The family made their way into the building. Just started knocking on every single door. What are people telling you? At first they said, no, we haven't seen that girl. No, we haven't seen that girl. And we almost gave up on knocking on the doors because we were coming to dead ends. So you're just trying to narrow down which floor, which apartment. Yes. And then finally we realized that her pin drop had coordinates to it.

17:09So then we would walk near every door and down the hallway, just brushing up against the side of the wall, trying to get as close to the coordinates as we possibly could. Finally, they got the perfect hit. Apartment 210. You knock on the door? Yes. What happens? Nobody answers. So they knocked on the next door, apartment 212. A couple answered. The family asked if they'd seen anything. Seen? No. the couple said, but they had heard something. He said, I heard a scream that was so startling that I wrote the time down. So he went and got the paper and I want to say it was in three to four minutes of that pin drop that he heard that scream.

18:00Mm-hmm. The neighbors clocked that scream at 2.15 a.m., just three minutes before Jazzy dropped that pen. They said it sounded like it came from next door, apartment 210. Are you thinking Jasmine could still be inside? Yes. She could need help. Yes. Jazzy's mom was fearless, maybe even a little reckless. She went down and got her credit card out of her car, and they got in. They popped the lock with the credit card. The family slowly made their way into the small one-bedroom apartment. Right away, something caught Katrina's eye. They had found my sister's to-go bag, like a night bag that she takes to go and stay places.

18:50As you guys continue looking around the apartment, what else did you see? In the desk drawer, they found my sister's credit cards and her driver's license all stacked up neatly in a pile. Also on the desk, a notebook. They opened it and saw a name, Jason Chen. And then we proceeded to call the police. For the second time that night, police met the family. The officer told them an investigator had already been assigned to the case. So I've talked with the investigator. That was news to the family, who said they'd not been contacted by anyone.

19:51that along to the investigator. But she's the one that has made the call that she's not responding out here tonight. The police issued a warning. Do not go back into the apartment. Thanks for finding this. Yes, let us take it from here. We had no confidence whatsoever in the police, because up to this point, it was like, we can't be, it's a holiday weekend. How'd you get my number. She's fine. She's posting on social media. So at this point, you're like, it's up to us. Absolutely. Did your family go back? Absolutely. Because what have you guys done for us this far? Anything we thought could be a clue to help us find her, we were chasing that.

20:46Jasmine Pace's loved ones had done all they could, and maybe more than they should, to find her. They'd broken into an apartment, then defied police instructions and gone in again. What was it like to just be inside that apartment? Very anxious because even though you know that you're in the right direction, you're terrified of what you're about to find. You have no idea what you're going to find. And you don't want to find certain things. So it's just a lot of anxiety, a lot of adrenaline, a lot of, you know, being scared. They didn't find anything new, but they were convinced Jazzy had been there.

21:29What's more, they were sure Jason Chen, the guy Jazzy had been seeing, lived in the apartment. His name was on the notebook and a neighbor confirmed it. Jason was the son of Chinese immigrants who owned a restaurant. The family lived 30 minutes outside of Nashville. But Jason moved to attend the University of Tennessee Chattanooga, where he majored in computer science. That's where Ryan Barrett met him in the summer of 2020. Initially, we were the first two people at the dorm. So we spent about the first three or four days just us together, really just getting to know each other, just figuring out general interests that we both like, you know, playing video games.

22:10Ryan says he and Jason became good friends, that he was fun to be around. What was his demeanor like? More quiet guy, but he was pretty funny. He'd always kind of come in with those, you know, little jabs at everybody. The two got along so well, they became roommates and even landed jobs at the same place, a soap company. Summertime was great. I mean, we were going, we spent Fourth of July together at the park downtown. town. Now Jazzy's family was convinced Jason had something to do with her disappearance. They took everything they'd gathered that could be used as evidence, Jazzy's driver's license and credit card, the cell phones and a tablet, and gave it to the police.

22:53And they didn't stop there. They had their family lawyer reach out to the district attorney general asking for help. I received a phone call from my supervisor. He called and said that we were going to come in and assist our missing persons unit with the Jasmine Pace missing persons investigation. Detective Zach Crawford headed to the apartment. When you got in there, how did you find the apartment? Was it clean? Was it messy? I would say that it was a clean apartment. It appeared that things may have been slightly out of place in terms of where they were located. And you could smell a little bit of a cleaning product inside of the apartment.

23:30It smelled like it had possibly been recently cleaned. Correct. Considering everything that you know up until this point, when you smell something like that, does that raise your antenna? Do you pay attention to that? Yes, it's something that is notated. Along with smelling it, you're also looking for a potential sheen on the floor to see if this was a crime scene location, if anything had been altered in terms of cleaned up, wiped, or anything like that. Then, he noticed something. Just on the right of the futon on the floor on the hardwoods, I saw what appeared to be blood transfer in the form of a hill print on the floor, blood transfer on the floor.

24:07When you say blood transfer, you mean like a bloody footprint? Essentially a bloody footprint. So the crime scene unit comes in. What do they do? They first document the scene by photographs and video. We asked for certain items to be collected that we observed in our walkthrough. I also asked for Blue Star Reagent to be applied to that scene. Blue Star Reagent is a forensic tool that will show the presence of wiped, cleaned, or invisible blood to the naked eye. That could give further details of how much blood we are dealing with. What do they find? So we requested during the application of Blue Star to be present.

24:44Upon first spray, it illuminated essentially a third of the living room area. What did this show? It showed an extremely large amount of volume of blood. the largest that I had seen to that point in terms of Blue Star reaction in my career. I vividly remember looking at Sergeant Emery and Detective Siege, and we all said, we have homicide. I got a call at work from Katrina. Hey, get here to the police station now. They're calling us in. They have an update. So we rushed there, and they told us, seeing what we believed to be the crime I'm seeing there's so much blood that was lost that it was not survivable.

25:24So this is no longer a missing person's case. This is a homicide. So that's a strange thing because I think in the back of your mind, we still were like, well, are you 100 %? It was her blood. You know, maybe she did somehow survive it. You're telling me she's gone, but we don't have her. You still had hope at this point. I think maybe we wanted to cling to that. I mean, we all accepted what they were telling us. Yes, we know that this person you loved died, and we know it was pretty brutal, but we don't really know what happened after that. It would now be Detective Crawford's job to find out.

26:11I mean, is your next step find Jason Chen? Yes.

26:29Detectives searching for missing Jasmine Pace found so much blood evidence, they knew they had a homicide on their hands. What they didn't have was a body or a suspect in custody. It was now their mission to find both. There's multiple avenues that are happening. Evidence that we're finding at the crime scene location is providing further follow-up. We also have search warrants being conducted on the phone records of Jason Chen. They homed in on the day after Jasmine disappeared. Jason's phone records revealed he went to Walgreens and Walmart, and security footage showed someone resembling Jason buying cleaning supplies.

27:10He was wearing a very identifiable hat. It was a red and white hat called Anything Goes. Once Jason Chen left his apartment on November 23rd, he never went back. Detectives continued to track his phone. Ultimately, where did you find Jason Chen? We ended up locating him in Nolensville, Tennessee at his parents' address. So he comes down and what happens? He was wearing items of clothing that were consistent with what we observed him wearing during different stages of the investigation. What does that tell you? It gives us further details of confirming that it's Jason Chen in the video footage we see.

27:46So to be clear, when you found him at his parents' house, he was wearing the same hat that he was wearing when he went to go buy those cleaning supplies. Correct. Was that surprising to you? We were more excited that he was wearing it, so we didn't have to search for it. Police arrested Jason Chen and charged him with first-degree premeditated murder. But. We attempted an interview with Jason at the Nolan's Old Police Department, and he invoked his right to counsel. So we were unable to get an interview with him that night. Jason refused to tell investigators anything. As news of his arrest spread across Chattanooga, one person listened with particular interest, his former roommate, Ryan Barrett.

28:30How unbelievable was it that your former roommate was wanted for murder? Insane. And he had done a lot of crazy things to me, but murder was not what I was expecting. Ryan and Jason had their own strange falling out a few months before Jazzy disappeared. Ryan's online accounts were hacked. He suspected Jason was behind it, since he was the only one who had easy access to Ryan's phone. Nearly all of my Venmo accounts, any social media accounts, were all locked out of. Same with my personal email. He even got fired from his job, he says, after some messages and social media posts from his account.