Victim used last breaths to help her mum find her

Jasmine Pace was killed and stuffed into a suitcase by a "predatory sociopath"

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It was a few days before Thanksgiving 2022 when Jasmine Pace sent a surprising text to her mum, Catrina Bean.

Jasmine, 22, told her that she was going to stay with a friend for the rest of the week. Catrina thought it was odd as they’d planned to spend the holiday together as a family. But after the death of a loved one, she assumed her daughter, known as Jazzy, needed some time away.

Jasmine was a student at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and also worked in the office at her family’s construction business. She lived with her mum, and adored her four cats, but while she was outgoing and the first to help her friends, she was also a private person. Jasmine had been dating Jason Chen, a fellow student at the university, for a few months, after meeting on a dating app, but she hadn't introduced him to her family yet.

When Jasmine’s great-grandmother died on 22 November, the family were devastated. Catrina didn’t know that grieving Jasmine had gone to Chen's apartment later that evening. Then Jasmine sent her mum the text saying she’d be staying at her friend's. It was the Tuesday before the Thanksgiving weekend, and they usually spent it together.

In the early hours of the next morning, Catrina got a text from Jasmine’s phone. It was a pin drop of her location, but at the time, Catrina didn’t notice the message.

A few days later, on 26 November, a photo appeared on Jasmine’s Facebook page captioned, “Enjoying Thanksgiving with my baby!!” Her family were instantly suspicious. The picture was Jasmine taking a selfie in a revealing outfit and was nothing that she would have posted publicly.

The caption wasn’t the way she spoke — but more disturbingly, a distinctive tattoo on her right shoulder was missing, which meant that the photo was several years old.