Marrero Double Murder Followed Failed Internet Date, Investigators Say

Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office detectives suspect Jamal Harris shot and killed Jessica Troulliet and her father, Robert Templet Jr., leaving their bodies in her SUV in Marrero, after his internet date with the woman didn’t go as planned.

Investigators can’t say for sure what set off their suspect in the October double homicide. But from text messages and a statement that Harris, 36, gave them, they pieced together that the pair argued at Troulliet’s home during the date after she tried to get rid of him by pretending she had a rendezvous planned that night with another man, homicide detective Steven Keller said during a court hearing.

Jamal Harris

“She said he did not look like his profile pic, and she [said] he looked like a pumpkin head,” Keller testified Tuesday of Troulliet’s texts. {snip}

Harris, a New Orleans resident, is facing two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Troulliet, 35, and Templet, 56, both of Westwego. {snip}

Internet date

Troulliet and Templet’s bodies were discovered inside her black Mercury Mountaineer after a passerby spotted it Oct. 3 at 1:51 a.m. on the side of the road near the intersection of Fourth Street and Garden Road. Troulliet was in the driver’s seat, her father next to her in the front passenger seat. Both had been shot in the back of the head.

Jessica Troulliet

Relatives told detectives that Troulliet had planned to go on a date with a man named “Jamal,” Keller testified. Investigators identified Harris through phone records.

Harris admitted meeting Troulliet two or three days earlier on the dating app Tagged, Keller said. He told investigators the two met in person on the night of Oct. 2, and he went to the Westwego home she shared with her father, Keller said. But Harris said the night ended early after a disagreement.

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Harris told investigators that he left Troulliet’s home about 9:30 p.m., walked to his father’s house in Marrero and had his cousin, Jamal Gabriel, 34, pick him up, Keller said.

Married phones

But mobile phone records for both Troulliet and Harris refute his version of events, Keller testified. Records show the pair didn’t begin communicating on the night of Oct. 2 until 9:37 p.m. Texts and GPS records show Troulliet picked up Harris in her SUV in Marrero about 10:12 p.m., Keller said.

Things quickly went downhill, according to Troulliet’s texts messages. Between about 10:15 and 10:20 p.m., she began texting a male friend for help to get rid of a date who was refusing to leave her home, Keller testified. {snip}

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During that time, Harris and Troulliet’s phones were “married up,” Keller said, meaning they were pinging off the same signal towers, evidence that Harris was with her and not at his father’s house.

The two phones continued pinging off the same towers even as they left the area of Troulliet and Templet’s home and began traveling down Fourth Street about 1 a.m., towards the homicide scene, Keller said.

Detectives think Troulliet had agreed to drive Harris back to the spot where she’d picked him up, and that her father was along for the ride. Based on business surveillance videos that recorded the SUV after she left home, detectives suspect father and daughter were killed some time after 1:10 a.m.

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