Jennifer Wallace Magee, a 32-year-old female registered nurse, found her life tragically cut short on June 19, 2017, in Pearl River, Louisiana. On that fateful evening, she and her boyfriend, 34-year-old Donald R. Gros, were shot and killed in her home. The couple had been together while Jennifer was going through a divorce from her estranged husband, Jason Matthew Magee.
The separation had lasted for over a year before the violent encounter.
The events leading to the double homicide began with a phone call. Jason Magee had spent the day with his and Jennifer's two children, who were eight and six years old at the time. While the children were saying goodnight to their mother over the phone from their father's truck, one of them asked to speak with her boyfriend, Donald Gros. This seemingly innocent request reportedly enraged Jason Magee. He then drove the children to his parents' nearby home before heading to Jennifer's residence.
Upon arriving at his estranged wife's home, Jason Magee kicked in the door and, with what prosecutors would later describe as 'military precision,' shot both Jennifer and Donald to death in a swift and brutal attack that lasted just over a minute and a half. He fled the scene but later confessed to the crime in a phone call to his stepfather. A manhunt ensued, and the following afternoon, Jason Magee was apprehended without incident by law enforcement, including the U.S. Marshals Task Force and the Pearl River Police Department, after he emerged from a wooded area near Interstate 59.
In September 2017, a St. Tammany Parish grand jury indicted Jason Matthew Magee on two counts of first-degree murder. During his trial in February 2019, his defense attorneys argued that he had acted in self-defense, claiming a scuffle had broken out after Gros pointed a gun at him. However, the jury rejected this claim and found him guilty on both counts. In April 2019, Jason Magee was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences in prison for the murders of his estranged wife and her boyfriend.
