"This individual will kill, and he will rape," said Acting Police Commissioner Richard Worley, who also noted that the suspect is likely "armed and dangerous."
The residents of Baltimore are on edge today after the death of a young tech titan.
Pava LaPere. 26, was found beaten to death in her apartment in the city on Monday, according to Baltimore Police Department (BPD).
Officers now have a suspect in the case and are searching for 32-year-old Jason Billingsley, a career criminal and registered sex offender. Billingsley is also wanted in connection to an attempted murder, arson and rape that occurred on Sept. 19.
Acting Police Commissioner Richard Worley made it clear in a news conference on Tuesday that Billingsley is a threat to the community.
"This individual will kill, and he will rape," said Worley, who also noted that the suspect is likely "armed and dangerous."
Police have not shared how they established Billingsley as a suspect in the case, or if he knew the victim.
LaPere was a beloved member of the community who landed on the "Forbes 30 Under 30" list earlier this year.
A 2019 graduate of Johns Hopkins University, LaPere was the founder of EcoMap Technologies, a company that curates data for a variety of platforms. The company mission is to "make the information around us more accessible, one ecosystem at a time."
Instead of bringing her start-up to Silicon Valley, Austin or Miami, LaPere set roots in Baltimore, where she employed a staff of over 30 workers. That staff is comprised of over 50% women and over 50% people of color, according to EcoMap.
The company had a multimillion-dollar evaluation thanks to clients like Facebook and T. Rowe Investments less than 10 years after LaPere first came up with the idea in her college dorm room.
LaPere's dreams of seeing her company grow all came to an end however on Monday, when police responded to a call for service at her apartment building and found her dead with clear signs of "blunt force trauma."
Then, one day later, BPD applied for and received an arrest warrant for Billingsley.
Court records show that Billingsley pled guilty to first-degree assault in 2009 and received a sentence of five years in prison, but the judge suspended all but two months.
He violated his probation in 2011 according to court records and that same year pled guilty to a second-degree assault charge that resulted in a two-year sentence.
Then, in 2015, he pled guilty to a sex offense and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. The court suspended 16 years of that sentence and then released him in October of 2022, according to the Baltimore County Department of Corrections.
In the wake of that conviction, he registered as a sex offender.
"If you're out there watching, and hopefully you are, every single police officer in Baltimore city, the state of Maryland, as well as the US marshals, are looking for you," Worley said on Tuesday to Billingsley during his news conference. "We will find you, so I would ask you to turn yourself in to any officer, any police station, because we will take you into custody eventually, and then we will turn it over to the state's attorney to prosecute you to the fullest. So please, turn yourself in."
LaPere's company also released a statement about her death that read: "Her untiring commitment to our company, to Baltimore, to amplifying the critical work of ecosystems across the country, and to building a deeply inclusive culture as a leader, friend and partner set a standard for leadership."
