A Texas man will serve decades in prison for murdering his 2-year-old daughter, dumping her body in a bayou, and then killing his girlfriend.
Jyron Lee, 29, was sentenced to 56 years in prison on Monday for the 2022 murders of his girlfriend, Nancy Reed, and their 2-year-old daughter, Nadia Lee. He pleaded guilty to murder in exchange for prosecutors dropping the capital murder charge, which would have landed him in prison for life.
On October 18, 2022, Houston police began an investigation after discovering Reed’s body in a long-term stay motel. She’d been strangled to death. Detectives discovered that Nadia was missing, and further investigation revealed that she was most likely deceased.
Investigators searched Lee’s apartment and discovered bloody clothes, sheets, and towels, as well as a bloodstained Minnie Mouse bed with a “indentation” and human hair on the wall next to it, according to the probable cause arrest affidavit. In an interview with detectives, Lee claimed that he left Nadia in his unlocked apartment while going to take out the trash. When he returned, he said she was gone and assumed Reed had come into the apartment and taken her.
Cops learned. In an earlier interview, Lee stated that Nadia was with Reed’s relatives. However, the relatives said they last saw Nadia about four days before Reed’s murder, when she left her grandmother’s house with Lee. He had picked her up that day from her foster parents’ home, where she had lived since July 2021.
A search of Lee’s phone revealed more sinister activities. He texted Reed after picking up Nadia from the foster care home, “My family will be completed when you come back f—k whoever you are with right now give me my family.” According to surveillance video from Lee’s apartment, Nadia was last seen alive with him on October 16, 2022. Police believe she was killed on this day.
Cops also discovered inappropriate Google searches on his phone, such as “is whooping your child a sin?” and “is whooping kids a sin?” Furthermore, “in the Bible, is it a sin not to spank a misbehaving child?” He also looked up “how long it takes for a dead body to smell?”
While investigators had enough evidence to charge Lee with Nadia’s murder in December 2022, it wasn’t until March 2023 that authorities discovered her body in a bayou near his apartment. Police never revealed Nadia’s cause of death to the public.
