OXFORD — In the hours after a judge sentenced Sheldon Timothy Herrington Jr. to 40 years in prison for the murder of Jimmie “Jay” Lee, many of Lee’s friends and family contemplated the parallels between the two men. 

Both came from religious families. Lee’s father was a pastor and Herrington’s grandfather the founder of a church in Grenada. 

Both were hard workers. Lee was known for organizing supply drives, and Herrington operated his own moving company. He would later use the company’s box truck to transport Lee’s body to a rural dumping ground near his parents’ home. 

Both were young Black men who had just graduated from the University of Mississippi. Some of Lee’s final Instagram posts before he went missing on July 8, 2022, were of photos taken at his graduation; same for Herrington weeks before his arrest.

But there was a crucial difference between the two men, said Braylyn Johnson, a friend of Lee’s who also knew Herrington from college: Before the murder, Lee lived authentically and proudly as a gay man and Herrington did not.

“Jay Lee and Tim were identical in their education, their achievements, their family, their church life,” she said. “They were a lot alike. … Jay Lee trusted Tim. He saw something in Tim. I’m not sure what it was, but he trusted him.” 

Herrington first went to trial for Lee’s murder in 2024, before detectives had located Lee’s remains. During that first trial, the state’s theory of the case was that Herrington killed Lee to preserve the secret of their sexual relationship. Lee had gone to Herrington’s apartment the night before he went missing, and they’d had a fight, prosecutors alleged. 

Only one living person knows exactly what happened in the apartment that night – Herrington. He pleaded guilty Monday to second-degree murder and tampering with evidence.

Aafram Sellers, a Jackson-area defense attorney who became counsel for Herrington after the first trial, said he had spoken with Herrington about taking responsibility and grieving the life that he, at 25 years old, might’ve otherwise had. 

Gwen Agho, a Hinds County prosecutor brought onto the case by Lafayette County District Attorney Ben Creekmore, also wanted people to know that Lee lived his life openly and Herrington did not. 

“What’s done in the darkness will always come to light,” she said. “All of this happened to cover something up and everyone found out anyway.” 

Indeed, Oxford Police Chief Jeff McCutchen said one of the Carroll County deputies who found Lee’s remains earlier this year told him that it was as if the sun shined down on a gold nameplate necklace bearing Lee’s name – the first sign they had finally found him years after he went missing. 

“They were just digging and looking and a piece led to a piece led to a piece,” he said. “They didn’t stop.”

At a press conference after the sentencing, McCutchen said his force spared no resources and didn’t stop looking for Lee until officers found him. 

“This case highlights everything special about policing, and each one of you should feel like a hero today,” he said. 

Lee’s mother Stephanie Lee cried as she thanked the Oxford Police Department and the prosecutors for their work securing justice in the case and finding her son. She said McCutchen told her this was not an ordinary case for him. 

“OPD has been faithful from day one,” she said. 

A queer, young Black man, Lee falls into a demographic of people whom, when they become victims of violence, police have long been scrutinized for disregarding. 

But McCutchen said his force treated the case as if Lee was their own missing child. He choked up while recalling the moment when, one month into the search for Lee, a detective’s wife asked if he would take a break to get dinner. 

“The detective responded, ‘If that was our kid missing, would you want that detective to take a break and be with his family, or spend every moment trying to find our child?’” McCutchen said. “To which that wife responded, ‘Don’t you come home until you find him.’” 

McCutchen said the police fought for Lee’s phone records, they scoured for security camera footage across Lafayette and Grenada counties, and they worked with state and federal law enforcement to scope out Herrington’s cellphone – then searched every possible place they believed he might have dug a grave. 

“This was not just another homicide,” he said. “This case became our life.” 

But all the technology in the world did not find Lee. During Herrington’s first trial, the absence of a body proved a hiccup in the case, and was partly to blame for the hung jury, a TV news outlet reported.

Instead, detectives found Lee’s remains by chance in rural Carroll County, after a property owner whose land is used as a dumping ground reported he’d found a skull wrapped in duct tape and a blanket. 

“You cannot in a hundred years convince me otherwise that God did not have a hand in Carroll County when that property owner called the Carroll County Sheriff’s Department and said, ‘I think I have human remains,’” Creekmore said. 

For as much effort as McCutchen says his force expended, the Oxford police faced community pressure, too: From a small but mighty group of Lee’s friends who used social media to organize a movement in Oxford called Justice for Jay Lee. 

Its members have come and gone from the transient college town, but two of Lee’s close friends powering the group saw the case to its end – Johnson and Jose Reyes, who performed drag alongside Lee as a fellow member of Oxford’s LGBTQ+ community. 

“We’ve watched people transition these past three years, we’ve watched queer couples meet each other in Justice for Jay Lee and get married and graduate,” Johnson said. 

Johnson and Reyes kept the town’s and the media’s attention on their friend through colorful Instagram posts displaying a count of the days Lee had been missing. Their advocacy for Lee pushed the police to acknowledge the fear his disappearance had incited in Oxford’s LGBTQ+ community. 

Reyes summed up their role in the case in two words: “Accountability and awareness.” 

The two view Justice for Jay Lee’s role now as carrying on Lee’s legacy. Before his death, Lee was preparing to begin a graduate degree in social work. His friends have been trying to establish a scholarship at the University of Mississippi in Lee’s honor, because Johnson said that higher education was important to him. 

“Jay Lee was raised with love,” she said. “He didn’t go through the world thinking that people were going to do him wrong. Jay Lee went through the world very optimistic and with a loving outlook and part of me thinks he tried to share that with Tim.”