'It was a scream I will never forget': Witnesses take the stand

Jan. 15—Editor’s note: This story contains elements that some readers may find disturbing.

The last phone call of Jamie Wilson-Spray’s life ended abruptly in screams of terror.

Melissa Berry, executive chef at Spokane’s Women and Children’s Free Restaurant and Community Kitchen, had called Wilson-Spray for a job interview, and the conversation was “going great,” she testified in court Tuesday. Wilson-Spray was a qualified candidate, Berry told the jury, and the two were asking each other questions.

She was in the middle of asking the 25-year-old another question when screams rang out and she heard “scuffling” and rapid movement.

“It was a scream I will never forget,” Berry testified. “I will hear it … I can still hear it.”

Jacob Spray, a 36-year-old former sorority chef at University of Idaho’s Alpha Phi, is on trial in Whitman County this week for the rape and murder of his estranged 25-year-old wife. Spray was working at Alpha Phi but was employed by the company Greek House Chefs.

Jamie was three weeks from completing her master’s degree at Washington State University and working as a chef, looking to eventually open her own restaurant. She was a loving aunt, goal-oriented, liked to try new things, was crafty and continually chased new opportunities until her life was cut short, her family previously told The Spokesman-Review. On March 26 she was found strangled in her travel trailer in Pullman.

Prosecutors claim the killing was a tragic ending from a fit of jealous rage when Jamie asked for a divorce after seven years of marriage and began seeing someone else. Jacob was distraught over the breakup, so much so that he went out and got a tattoo of a broken heart on the left side of his neck, Whitman County Chief Deputy Prosecutor Dan LeBeau told the jury Tuesday. Jacob also left a secret camera inside Jamie’s home and continually bombarded her with texts and calls in the days leading up to her death, he told the jury.

“Jacob Spray made a decision that because he couldn’t have his estranged wife, nobody else could,” LeBeau said.

Jacob’s attorneys, however, claim that Jacob’s DNA was found on Jamie because the former couple had consensual, rough sex the night of her death. Multiple unknown suspects are to blame for Jamie’s death instead due to unidentified DNA that was also found on her body, according to Jacob’s defense attorney, Steven Martonick.

“Jamie was cooperative,” Martonick said of the sexual encounter. “Maybe reluctant, but she was cooperative.”

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The night before Jamie’s death, prosecutors claim, Jamie met with a man on a dating app, and the two had sex in her trailer. The two intended to see each other again.

Jacob grew increasingly angry that his estranged wife was not replying to his texts and began to interrogate her about it, asking her what kept her up until 2 a.m. She replied she went to bed early, LeBeau said. Jacob continued to call and text her the next day, March 26, until she revealed to him that she had met someone else the night before.

Other chefs on UI’s Greek Row noticed Jacob becoming angry, cussing into the phone and constantly sending out texts at work. He was so distraught that a chef at the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority told him to “call his parents.” Then, he left work earlier than normal at 4:55 p.m., LeBeau said.

That day, prosecutors said, Jamie spoke to her sister, telling her, “I wish (Jacob) would just leave me alone.”

When she got home from work, she ordered a pizza from Domino’s around 5 p.m. and sat down to begin the job interview with Berry.

When Berry knew something was wrong, she called Spokane’s Crime Check, and then was transferred to Whitman County dispatch, where she asked for a welfare check on Jamie.

“It was the element of terror,” Berry said.

Police drove to Jamie’s trailer and attempted to call her, but they could only hear her phone ringing from inside, according to court records. Officers opened a window and climbed in as they were hit with extreme heat from a propane stove burner that someone left on at full power. Jamie was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m., even though first responders attempted to resuscitate her for over half an hour, LeBeau told the jury.

The man who delivered the pizza to Jamie’s house that night testified that a man, who he identified in court as Jacob, took the order from him and shut the door. He described his demeanor as “upset.”

The pizza was later found uneaten.

LeBeau said Jacob had called his father Randy Spray and told him, “I killed my wife.” Jacob begged him not to call the police, but his father did anyway.

Police received the report of the elder Spray’s phone call while they were on the scene investigating Jamie’s death. An officer texted Jacob, who invited them to his home to interview him while he drank beer. He claimed he hadn’t seen Jamie all day, but suggested she could have died from an overdose or carbon monoxide poisoning, LeBeau told the jury.

When police confronted him about what he allegedly told his father, Jacob fled inside his duplex. Officers tackled him, and he tried to steal their handguns, court records say, but he was subdued with a stun gun and arrested.

LeBeau said Jamie’s autopsy found she had blunt-force injuries to her head, contusions on her neck, scratches on her body and alcohol and marijuana in her system. Her cause of death was determined to be strangulation by compression of the neck, which took “four or five minutes,” the coroner found at the time.

It also found she was sexually assaulted, possibly with an unknown object.

DNA found on Jamie’s neck was determined to be Jacob’s, prosecutors say. Forensic scientists also found Jamie’s DNA and the DNA of her sexual partner from the dating app inside of Jacob’s underwear.

Once Jacob found out the DNA on her neck was his, he allegedly told people in jail that the two had “rough sex.”

“Now the story has changed,” LeBeau told the jury.

During Martonick’s opening statement, he said Jamie “wanted to experiment” and wanted an “adventure” because she wasn’t satisfied with her sex life. Martonick claimed Jamie was teasing Jacob about the other man she was seeing, so Jacob went to her trailer to “prove himself.”

Jamie’s neighbor took the stand Tuesday and testified that she saw a car believed to be Jacob’s outside Jamie’s house that night. A bit later, she heard a scream, but didn’t want to call the police out of fear of overreacting — although the scream scared her enough to call her ex-boyfriend, she said.

Martonick said the scream was instead “a scream of excitement,” because Jacob was attempting to “fool around” with her.

“No one agreed on what the scream meant,” Martonick said.

After sex, he claimed, Jamie passed out because she drank too much. Jacob thought she was OK, so he drove home, Martonick said.

Other unknown DNA found on Jamie’s body is that of the people who likely assaulted and killed her, he told the jury.

Jamie’s family, however, believes Jacob is responsible for her death. When they found out she was killed, they suspected her ex immediately.

“I dropped to the floor and knew he had something to do with it,” Jamie’s sister, Jessica Schneider said in a previous interview. “I knew.”

Jacob Spray faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if found guilty.

Editor’s note: This story was changed on Jan. 15, 2025 to add more information about Jacob Spray’s employment.

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