A San Antonio man who used a dating app to lure two men to their deaths on back-to-back days in April 2023 was handed four consecutive 50-year prison sentences last week — a verdict that closes one of the more chilling cases to emerge from the city’s recent crime history.
Jer Auntey Pleasant, now 25, was sentenced on March 9, 2026, by Judge Kristina Escalona in Bexar County after being convicted on two counts of first-degree murder, aggravated robbery, and the aggravated sexual assault of a child. The four concurrent 50-year terms amount to a de facto life sentence, with Pleasant unlikely to see freedom for decades — if ever.
A Deadly Two-Day Spree
The murders happened fast. On April 14, 2023, Pleasant — posing under the alias “Derek” on the gay dating app Grindr — arranged to meet Larry Wilson, 54, at the Banyan Tree Apartments in San Antonio. Wilson was shot and killed. The very next day, Pleasant met Joseph Quinton West, 22, through the same app and shot him in the head inside his apartment. Two men. Two days. One suspect.
It’s the kind of case that sounds almost too grim to be real, but investigators pieced it together with methodical precision. Fingerprints lifted from condom wrappers found at both crime scenes matched Pleasant. Ballistic analysis tied the same 9mm firearm to shell casings recovered at each location. And the Grindr messages, showing Pleasant’s digital trail, helped lock the timeline in place.
He was arrested later that month, at just 22 years old, and charged with two counts of first-degree murder.
More Than Two Victims
The murders weren’t the beginning of Pleasant’s criminal conduct — they were, it turns out, part of a broader pattern. Prosecutors presented evidence of an aggravated robbery in March 2022 and, perhaps most disturbing, the sexual assault of a 13-year-old child in July 2022 — crimes that now form part of his conviction record alongside the killings.
That context matters. It means Pleasant was allegedly committing serious crimes for more than a year before Wilson and West were killed. The question of whether earlier intervention could have changed the outcome is one that will likely hang over this case long after the sentencing.
A Family’s Grief, Unresolved
For Larry Wilson’s family, the verdict doesn’t fully settle the pain. His brother, Johnny Wilson, had long resisted the narrative that Larry simply walked into danger. “I feel in my heart he was set up,” Johnny told local CBS affiliate KENS — a sentiment that speaks to the calculated, deliberate nature of the crime rather than any spontaneous act of violence.
He wasn’t wrong, exactly. Prosecutors argued — and the jury ultimately agreed — that Pleasant didn’t stumble into these encounters. He engineered them.
Prosecution and Law Enforcement Respond
Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales was measured but pointed in his remarks following sentencing. “I would like to commend our law enforcement partners and prosecution team for their tireless effort in ensuring that accountability would be achieved in these cases,” Gonzales said. It’s the kind of statement that reads like boilerplate until you consider what “tireless effort” actually looked like here — cross-referencing app data, matching forensic evidence across two separate crime scenes, and building a case strong enough to secure convictions on all four counts.
The evidence trail, while damning, wasn’t simple. Fingerprints on condom wrappers are the sort of detail that requires careful chain-of-custody handling. Ballistic matches require expert testimony. And Grindr records require cooperation from a private platform. The prosecution pulled it off.
What It Means
Cases like this one have prompted renewed conversations about safety on dating apps — particularly for LGBTQ+ users, who already navigate elevated risks in certain social environments. Still, the case is less an indictment of any platform than it is a stark reminder of how predators can exploit the architecture of trust that makes apps like Grindr function.
Pleasant will serve his time on four concurrent terms — meaning all 50-year sentences run simultaneously, not stacked end-to-end. He’ll be eligible for parole consideration, though with a conviction record that includes child sexual assault and two premeditated murders, that path is narrow at best.
Larry Wilson was 54. Joseph West was 22. Whatever future they might have had ended over two days in April 2023, arranged through a handful of messages on a phone screen. The man responsible is now 25 years old and won’t breathe free air — realistically — until he’s well into his seventies, if at all. Sometimes justice is slow. This time, at least, it arrived.
