James DeJarnette Jr., nicknamed DeJay, was a kind, well-loved twenty-nine-year-old who lived on New York Avenue in Virginia Beach, Virginia. He sang in a gospel choir at church, and was very active in his community, helping to run before- and after-school programs for neighborhood children.
His friends and family were shocked, then, when James’s roommate came home early on the morning of March 15th, 2000 and found the young man dead of a gunshot wound in their Oceana Gardens duplex.
The murder had likely occurred sometime the night before or in the wee hours of the morning; the last time James was known to be alive was at approximately nine-thirty-five p.m. on March 14th when he was on the phone with a friend.
Some items were stolen from the home, indicating that robbery was at least a partial motive, and James’s vehicle was found abandoned a short distance away about a week after the murder.
The case went nowhere for nearly a decade, but in 2009, new detectives were assigned to the case. During their reassessment of the evidence and search for fresh leads, they uncovered some new information: namely, that a witness claimed to have seen someone getting into James’s car with him outside a 7-Eleven convenience store only hours before the victim was found dead.
The individual seen with James was described as a black male in his early twenties with very short hair. He stood about five feet nine inches and weighed around one hundred ninety pounds. This individual was considered a person of interest, as it was assumed that he had been the last person to see James alive.
Despite their efforts, however, authorities never located the man they sought, and as of this writing in February 2025, the murder of James DeJarnette Jr. is still unresolved.
Crime Immemorial 