Days before her killing by James Ray III in Montclair, family urged victim to 'Get out'
In the days before she was killed by James Ray III in their Montclair home, Angela Bledsoe’s sister and cousin grew increasingly worried about her safety and urged her to leave, they testified this week in a Newark courtroom.
On Oct. 12, 2018, 10 days before she was shot to death, her sister, Lisa LaBoo, texted, “ANGIE, YOU NEED TO GET OUT OF THERE ASAP. I’m worried about you. You’re not safe there.”
Ray has admitted to shooting Bledsoe to death on Oct. 22, 2018, but says he acted in self defense when she picked up one of the handguns he’d been cleaning in their living room and pointed it at him.
LaBoo’s concern, and that of their cousin Brooke Dean, was heightened by Bledsoe’s descriptions of Ray’s “strange behavior,” and his threat to “beat (her) up and the guy” she was seeing, according to texts they read aloud in court.
“So now he’s threatening you,” Bledsoe’s sister texted. “So how long will it take for your eyes to be opened. I pray you don’t wait for him to bring you harm.”
In her Oct. 12 texts, Bledsoe described waking up that morning to see Ray sitting on the edge of their bed staring at her. Saying he’d been up all night, he told her that she was “demonstrating signs of cheating.”
Bledsoe and Ray were not married, but had a 6-year-old daughter who lived with them in Ray’s six-bedroom house on North Mountain Avenue. Beginning in October 2017, Bledsoe had several long-distance romantic trysts with a fellow alum of Florida A&M University named Bakari Burns, a health care executive who is now an Orlando city official.
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LaBoo said that “a chill of fear” went through her when she saw the messages from her sister.
Her cousin texted, “Girl, I’d be in a hotel if I caught him sitting there and staring at me while I slept.”
Later, Bledsoe texted her cousin that Ray knew “everything.”
“How is that possible?” Dean texted. “Did you keep incriminating stuff on your phone?”
“I did,” Bledsoe texted back.
Ray, Bledsoe discovered, had gotten her password from their daughter.
Following Ray's threat, LaBoo and Dean urged Bledsoe to file a police report, but she hesitated. Ray denied threatening her and Bledsoe began to doubt herself. “Most likely I will, though I’m a little confused by what he said initially,” she texted.
She also vacillated about moving out, telling her sister and cousin she needed to first find a house to buy. When her cousin urged her to move temporarily into a rental, she said she didn’t want to have to move twice.
“Anything’s better than his crazy ass,” her cousin responded.
Bledsoe also wavered because their daughter “enjoys having both of us in the same house," she told her sister.
On Oct. 13, LaBoo, another sister named Deidre and Dean had a 45-minute “conference call” with Bledsoe, urging her to “get out” and to file the report.
During this period Bledsoe was writing in a journal, excerpts of which were read, at times tearfully, by her sister.
When weighing "the pros and cons of staying and the pros and cons of dissolving," in her journal, Bledsoe didn't seem to find many, if any, reasons to stay. She wrote that Ray was critical and contemptuous of her and spoke to her in a harsh tone using insulting language, often in front of their daughter.
In a section headed "The Life That I Desire," she wrote that she wanted a "mutual loving relationship with a man who appreciates me and speaks to me in a loving voice and does not argue with me in front of our child... who is not a dictator, who values my feedback and intelligence and sees me as an equal in everything."
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In another journal entry, Bledsoe expressed regret at getting involved with Ray, who was married when they met in 2009 and when she moved into the house in 2015 where he and his wife had raised their children.
While cross-examining Dean, defense attorney Brooke Barnett suggested that Bledsoe was a gold digger whom Ray had hired to work in his insurance firm and supported when she was having trouble meeting the mortgage payments on her Brooklyn brownstone. Ray had an MBA and law degree and had his own law firm as well as the insurance brokerage.
In her journal, Bledsoe wrote: “[Traveling with my sister] reminds me of the life that I could have had had I listened to her when I was in my 20s. I would have moved to Florida, purchased a very nice house and built a practice. (Bledsoe had an MBA and was a financial advisor.)
“Often I feel that God is trying to show me what I’ve missed, what he might have had for me had I ... not engaged in a relations with a [married man.]"
Reading Bledsoe’s words, LaBoo became so overcome that the trial had to be temporarily adjourned and the jurors ushered out. When they returned, Judge Verna Leath instructed them that they must decide on the facts and testimony, "without bias, prejudice or sympathy."
Soon after the family conference call, LaBoo left on a weeklong cruise with her husband and was not in touch with Bledsoe. When she returned on Oct. 23 it was to the news that her sister was dead.
While LaBoo was away, Bledsoe's cousin continued to urge her to move out, until the day before her death. On Oct. 21, she texted, “Y’all are just dragging this out.” Bledsoe responded, “u think so? I feel sorry for him cuz he really seems to be trying. I find it hard to tell him I don’t love him.” She texted that when she tried to bring up the subject of separating, “He starts throwing a fit and crying.”
Later that day, Bledsoe called her on the phone but Dean missed the call.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Days before killing in Montclair, family urged victim to 'Get out'
