John “Jay” Tolson, who pled guilty on Aug. 31, 2023, to voluntary manslaughter in the July 2020 death of Kitty Hawk resident LeeAnn Fletcher has a projected release date from the Pender Correctional Institution on May 31, according to the NC Department of Adult Correction.
The 2023 manslaughter plea came during the fourth day of a Dare County trial in which Tolson, now 33, faced charges of second-degree murder. The plea carried a sentence of 56-80 months, minus the roughly three years he had been in detention prior to the plea. While incarcerated, the records show Tolson engaged in several infractions, including a fight.
Fletcher, a 38-year-old mother of two, was found unresponsive in her Kitty Hawk home on July 22, 2020, and she died three days later. Tolson, a Hatteras Island resident, was arrested in Bangor, Maine in October 2020, after an autopsy report from the Virginia Medical Examiner’s office determined Fletcher’s cause of death was “complications of blunt force trauma to the head with hepatic cirrhosis with clinical hepatic failure contributing.”
Tolson’s arrest followed a determined and aggressive social media campaign by Fletcher’s friends and family that expressed concerns that law enforcement was not adequately investigating the case. The high-profile case also generated substantial national media coverage.
Following the end of the case, District 1 District Attorney General Jeff Cruden said that plea agreements are “always difficult,” adding that “obviously, it’s not something we would have done if the family wasn’t 100 percent behind it.” In a later statement, he offered a warning about the “dangers of social media” in such cases.
