Inset: Jason Sessoms (Van Buren County Correctional Facility). Background: Extended Stay motel in Kansas City, Missouri, where Sessoms allegedly murdered his parents (Google Maps).
A Missouri man killed his parents while they were sleeping in a motel because he believed his mom stole some of his money to rent the room, authorities say.
Jason C. Sessoms, 20, stands accused of two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of his 42-year-old father Marvin Sessoms and 38-year-old mother Maleeka Sessoms. Cops discovered the couple dead from gunshot wounds around 3:45 a.m. Friday in the Extended Stay motel in the 4300 block of North Corrington Avenue in Kansas City.
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According to a probable cause statement obtained by the Kansas City Star and local NBC affiliate KSHB, Kansas City police detectives quickly homed in on the younger Sessoms as a suspect and had him in custody some 600 miles away in Paw Paw, Michigan, by day’s end. Michigan law enforcement originally arrested him on home invasion and other unrelated charges. Missouri authorities filed the murder charges on Monday, records show.
Cops interviewed the suspect’s 10-year-old brother who told them that his older brother had murdered their parents, the affidavit reportedly said. The defendant and his younger brother were captured on surveillance camera packing up a black Mitsubishi in the motel parking lot before driving away, per police. It’s unclear if the 10-year-old witnessed the shooting.
Investigators later learned that the Sessoms family had been traveling to Georgia to visit Marvin Sessoms’ sister. They were on their way but returned to the Kansas City area to pick up the youngest son’s laptop. The sister also said the family had been fleeing the area because Jason Sessoms believed someone “put out a hit on him,” the affidavit reportedly said.
At some point the victims had stopped answering their phones, per the affidavit. Once Jason Sessoms answered his mother’s phone, and his father’s phone was located in Illinois. The sister filed a missing persons report on Friday which led to the discovery of her brother and sister-in-law, cops said.
Post-Miranda, the defendant reportedly initially denied killing his parents, blaming the murders on a “tall and buff” Hispanic man. But he eventually copped to the shooting, saying that he believed his mother stole some of his money to pay for the motel room where they were staying, the probable cause statement said.
Jason Sessoms is currently at the Van Buren County Correctional Facility in Michigan on a $2 million bond awaiting extradition to Missouri.
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