His killers, Brent David Kabat and Jeremy Shawn Bentley, were arrested two weeks later after being stopped at a roadblock in California. They were still driving Tolbert's Nissan Xterra. It's not clear if the crime was in any way related to the victim's sexuality.
Equality Mississippi (EM) was founded in response to the murder of Jamie Ray Tolbert, a Laurel, Mississippi native and referred to as a friend by EM founder and executive director Jody Renaldo. Tolbert was a gay man visiting the now defunct gay nightclub Joey's On The Beach in Biloxi, Mississippi on New Year's Eve 1999. He was abducted from the bar's parking lot.