Dateline: Secrets Uncovered-Who is Travis Stay and where is he now?

An episode from Dateline: Secrets Uncovered from 2019, which aired again on October 25, 2022, covered the brutal death of Joel Lovelien and the trial of the accused Travis Stay, who met Joel for the first time on the fateful Halloween night of 2007. Almost 15 years ago, someone beat Joel Lovelien to death in the parking lot of a bar the weekend before Halloween. The killer is still at large.

Travis Stay, one of the party-goers from a group that had chartered a bus to visit the many bars and pubs in the small city of Grand Forks, was initially implicated in the crime. However, a lack of forensic evidence and general misinformation about the timeline of the crime led the jury to declare Travis Stay as innocent.

Stay was a nursing student at the time but never went ahead with the career-path. Instead, he became a lawyer and now hopes to change the legal system, at the hands of which he suffered as a young man.

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What happened to Joel Lovelien and how is Travis Stay involved?

Travis Stay was the chief suspect in the case after 38-year-old Joel Lovelien was brutally beaten to death outside the Broken Drum lounge and casino in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Joel was visiting the pub on Halloween with his fiancée, Heather Eastling and was dressed in a hockey jersey. He went outside to take a call at around 11:30 PM and came back soon after to tell Heather that someone was left outside by a party bus and needed help.

Soon, another man entered the bar, screaming that someone needed help outside. The injured person turned out to be Joel, and by the time police arrived, he had died from choking on his own blood. The bones of his face were badly broken, and the only piece of forensic evidence that was found on him was a foot or a paw of a costume soaked in blood.

After getting some descriptions from the people at the bar, the authorities scrambled to get the four people others had seen around Joel: a clown, a cowboy, a gangster, and a construction worker.

The following day, interviews with potential witnesses revealed that the lion in their bus got into a fight with a hunter, and was left behind. The lion was Travis Stay, a 23-year-old nursing student. Travis walked into the police station himself after hearing that the authorities were looking for him.

Travise explained that he got into a fight with the hunter but was so drunk he did not remember the events completely. All the while, however, he maintained that he had nothing to do with Joel's death.

DNA results from the costume soon revealed that Joel's blood was on Travis Stay's costume, and he was immediately arrested. After a trial where prosecutors tried to paint Travis as an angry loser, the jury saw holes in the theories and acquitted him of all charges. Another major revelation came from blood spatter experts, who claimed that the blood on Travis' costume could have come from anywhere.

Defense attorneys also worked well to redirect the suspicion to other costumed party-goers and succeeded in getting Travis free. Detective Mike Sholes, who was originally heading the case, still believes Travis is the perpetrator.

Travis Stay went on to become a lawyer and has since remained low-key. Not much is available about him online.