From left: Jyron Lee, Nadia Lee (Houston Police Department) and Nancy Reed (McCoy and Harrison Funeral Home).
A Texas man will spend decades in prison for murdering his 2-year-old daughter and dumping her body in a bayou before then killing his girlfriend.
Jyron Lee, 29, was sentenced on Monday to 56 years behind bars for the 2022 slayings 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 that would have sent him to prison for life.
Love true crime? Sign up for our newsletter, The Law&Crime Docket, to get the latest real-life crime stories delivered right to your inbox.
Houston cops started investigating on Oct. 18, 2022, when they discovered Reed’s body in a long-term stay motel. She had been strangled to death. It was then that detectives realized that Nadia was missing and further investigation revealed that she was also likely deceased.
Investigators searched Lee’s apartment, where they found bloody clothes, sheets and towels, along with a bloodstained Minnie Mouse bed with an “indentation” and human hair on the wall next to it, a probable cause arrest affidavit said. In an interview with detectives, Lee claimed he left Nadia in his unlocked apartment when he went to take out the trash. When he returned, he said she was gone and assumed Reed had come to the apartment and taken her.
More from Law&Crime: ‘I shot them all’: Enraged man states he’s ‘not proud’ after he murdered wife, stepson and bedridden mother-in-law, cops say
Cops learned Lee, in an earlier interview, said Nadia was with Reed’s relatives. But the relatives said they last saw Nadia some four days prior to 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 stayed since July 2021.
A search of Lee’s phone found more sinister actions. After he picked Nadia up from the foster care home, he texted Reed, “My family will be completed when you come back f—k whoever you with right now give me my family.” Surveillance video from Lee’s apartment showed Nadia was last seen alive with him on Oct. 16, 2022. Cops believe she was killed on this day.
Cops also found concerning Google searches on his phone including “is whooping your child a sin?” is whooping kids a sin?” and “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 found Nadia’s body in a bayou not far from his apartment. Cops never publicly divulged Nadia’s cause of death.
