SWAMPSCOTT — The 39-year-old man accused of killing a Swampscott woman in 2014 is expected to change his plea to guilty of a lesser charge on Friday in Salem Superior Court.
Jason Fleury, a former Lynn resident, was arrested in Virginia in August 2015 and charged with first-degree murder. He is accused of killing 25-year-old mother Jaimee Mendez, who was last seen on Nov. 6, 2014. Her son is now 9 years old.
Fleury, a Level 3 sex offender, is expected to plead guilty to manslaughter, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, the Essex County District Attorney’s office confirmed.
If he doesn’t change his plea and the case goes to trial, which would begin on April 3, he would be facing life in prison without parole if convicted on a first-degree murder charge, prosecutors said. The plea agreement was first reported by the Salem News.
Fleury’s attorney, Michael Phelan, told the newspaper his client would face 17 years in prison under the terms of the deal. Phelan did not return phone calls from The Item seeking further comment.
“It is the defendant’s decision to plead guilty,” said Carrie Kimball-Monahan, a spokeswoman for the DA’s office. “We cannot compel a defendant to plead guilty … We expect that he’s going to plead guilty, but he could change his mind. It’s entirely up to him.”
The Essex County District Attorney’s office has also confirmed that new remains found on Saturday on King’s Beach in Swampscott also belonged to Mendez, according to a preliminary investigation by the medical examiner. Swampscott Police received a phone call from a person who found them on the beach. Previously, remains belonging to Mendez were found tangled up in lobster traps on Jan. 28, 2015 after months of searching.
There have been no details released on how Mendez died — there were some prior inaccurate media reports that said Mendez was beaten to death, which was a mistake based on the standard language of a murder indictment, according to the DA’s office.
Monahan said she couldn’t speak to whether details on how Mendez died will come out during Friday’s hearing.
Fleury told The Item in an exclusive interview in November 2014 that he was with Mendez on the night of her disappearance but denied that he killed her. He said Mendez was a go-between for drug deals. He described himself as a heroin addict, but not violent.
Mendez’s family has said they last saw her on the evening of Nov. 6, but she was later in the company of a man whom she said made her feel nervous and she called a friend to pick her up. The friend showed up, but Mendez was nowhere to be found, the family said at the time.
Crystal Brown, 25, a friend of Mendez, said she and the family were devastated by the plea deal.
“It’s not what anyone wanted,” Brown said. “We were hoping for answers. That’s something that we’ll never get. It’s just mind-blowing really. We were kind of banking on this trial to at least get a little bit of closure.”
Brown believes the remains, which she said was a jawbone, found in the same timeframe of the decision for the plea deal shows that Jaimee was making her presence known.
“(Jaimee’s) not happy about it either,” Brown said. “That’s how me and her mom look at it.”
Brown said Mendez may not fit the profile of what prosecutors view as a productive member of society. Fleury told The Item that Mendez was a drug addict, but Brown said her friend was a good person. But she said it doesn’t matter what type of person Mendez was really, because no one deserves to go out the way she did. She added that she has no doubt Fleury committed the crime.
“I couldn’t even imagine what she endured,” Brown said. “She didn’t deserve this and to have no justice, that’s definitely not deserved. That’s not OK.”