Boyfriend arrested three months after mysterious death of Outer Banks woman, DA says
Warning: Links to videos in this article contain graphic content.
A 38-year-old woman was found unconscious in her bathtub on the Outer Banks of North Carolina this summer and died in the hospital, according to police and local media reports.
Now three months later — after a private investigation and a public crusade for justice — police have made an arrest.
John Curtis Tolson was charged with second-degree murder in the death of Kitty Hawk resident LeeAnn Fletcher and arrested in Bangor, Maine, on Monday, First Judicial District Attorney Andrew Womble said in a statement, The Outer Banks Voice reported. Tolson was dating Fletcher, according to family members.
Fletcher died July 25 — three days after she was found unconscious in her home, the family said in a GoFundMe page. The fundraiser was created to help pay for medical bills and a funeral as well as set up a trust fund for Fletcher’s two children.
But the circumstances surrounding her death were murky.
According to a series of YouTube videos family members posted on the channel “#JusticeForLeeAnn” that contained the 911 recording, it was Tolson — who also goes by Jay — who found Fletcher in the bathtub on July 22.
“My friend, she’s laying in the tub, she won’t wake up,” he said during the call. “I think she fell last night, I’m not sure. There’s blood coming out of her nose so I can’t get her to wake up.”
First responders arrived on scene just before 9:30 a.m. and Fletcher was taken to Norfolk General Hospital, according to one of the videos. She died three days later.
Trisha Cahoon, Fletcher’s cousin, told WTKR “things just weren’t adding up.”
“The trauma surgeon told us there was holes in the story, that the injuries didn’t come from a fall,” she said, according to the TV station. “So we hired a private investigator to collect evidence because we felt the Kitty Hawk Police Department were not doing their job.”
Family members returned to Fletcher’s house with the private investigator and collected video footage of a bloodied mattress, pillows and clothing, which was shown on the YouTube channel. Police had already reportedly taken a comforter, fitted sheet and pillow, but the family said they felt law enforcement had “no sense of urgency.”
They took to social media with the hashtag “JUSTICEforLeeAnn.”
The Kitty Hawk Police Department responded in a Facebook post on July 27, saying “it would be inappropriate and counterproductive for us to provide a finding based solely on social media posts or media reports that may or may not be supported by the evidence gathered in this ongoing investigation.”
Police added they were working with the District Attorney’s Office and asked people to “please be patient and allow us to conduct this investigation in an objective and thorough manner.”
On Aug. 10, the DA’s office issued a statement saying it was waiting for the autopsy report from the medical examiner’s office in Virginia before filing criminal charges, the Island Free Press reported. It received that report on Oct. 12.
The autopsy revealed Fletcher died from “a blow to the head that could have been accidental or intentional,” the Associated Press reported. The cause was undetermined.
Two weeks later, a Dare County grand jury returned a true bill of indictment against Tolson. He was arrested without incident in Maine, and the next session of Superior Court in Dare County will be Nov. 30, WTKR reported.
“Everybody give yourself a pat on the back because if it wasn’t for us, and pushing this and pushing this and pushing this, we would not be where we’re at right now,” Cahoon, Fletcher’s cousin, said in a video on Facebook Monday. “...We got him, y’all.”
This story was originally published October 26, 2020 at 8:06 PM with the headline "Boyfriend arrested three months after mysterious death of Outer Banks woman, DA says."
