A 30-year-old Chicago-based phlebotomist was found strangled to death in a garage outside her home Sept. 18. The victim – identified as Sierra Jamison – had just appeared in a CBS 2 segment where she spoke to reporter Dorothy Tucker for an investigation about violence against Black women.
According to a press release from the Chicago Police Department, on Sept. 20, 63-year-old Lawrence Curtis Boyle was arrested and charged with one felony count of first-degree murder for allegedly strangling Jamison. During a court hearing Sept. 22, prosecutors claimed that Jamison met her alleged killer when she was 20, and their relationship turned romantic a few weeks before her death, CBS2 noted.
Jamison — a mother to a 6-year-old son with autism — was found unresponsive in her garage near the 7800 block of South Indiana Avenue in Chicago just before 7:30 p.m. Investigators say Boyle was waiting inside the garage where the matriarch parked her Jeep Monday evening.
Her estranged lover – a machine worker— allegedly told prosecutors he strangled the young mother because he thought she had a gun. When he realized she was unarmed, he strangled the phlebotomist until she went limp. Prosecutors said Boyle took her cell phone and covered her body with a green tarp.
After he carried out the egregious attack, the 63-year-old man allegedly ran into Jamison’s brother as he left the garage. He reportedly told him that the mother of one threw her cell phone at him. He then fled to a store, authorities added.
Jamison’s mother found her body in the garage shortly after.
The matriarch was a victim of an attempted carjacking in 2022.
During her interview with CBS 2’s Dorothy Tucker in August, Jamison recalled being threatened at knife-point by a man attempting to steal her Jeep Wrangler in 2022.
“My Jeep, my Wrangler, that was something for a gift for myself because I know how hard I worked for it. I know how many sacrifices I’ve done for my family, my son, because he’s been through a lot,” she told Tucker. “My son had open heart surgery; he has a disability, so he means a lot to me. And I’m not fittin’ let this young man—with a knife at that— take anything I work hard away from me.”
Thankfully, a few female bystanders—who witnessed the attempted carjacking— rushed in to defend Jamison and helped to scare off the carjacker.
During a live news segment on Sept. 20, Tucker reflected on the tragic news of Jamison’s passing.
“I felt like she was so strong, willing to share her story. That takes a lot,” the anchor said. “When I met this woman, I really felt that she was really somebody who was so convicted…to protect something she worked so hard for. She was a beautiful young woman… I never had a story where I interviewed someone, and then a month or so later, they’re dead.”
Boyle reportedly has a lengthy criminal record.
Jamison’s alleged former lover reportedly had a lengthy criminal history. Court records obtained by CBS 2 discovered that the 63-year-old had been arrested in 2011 for domestic violence and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. He was charged in March of that year. The case was dropped a month later.
Boyle was convicted in 1993 of child abuse in North Carolina. He was released from prison six years later in 1999. “In court, it was also revealed that Boyle served two years for breaking and entering into the North Carolina Department of Corrections” and that he had a misdemeanor conviction for the assault of a woman in 1997, the outlet noted.
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