One Downward Dog From Murder

 Brittany Norwood Saturday, March 12, 2011 at 8:10am a 911 call came in from a woman who says she’s the manager of a Lululemon store. She just arrived to to open the store and found the front door unlocked, it appears the store has been vandalized and she could hear moaning coming from the back of the store. She’s too afraid to go inside. She called a 2nd time at 8:12am to say she and a pedestrian went inside found 2 people in the back of the Lululemon store. 1 woman appears to be dead and the other is tied up but barely breathing. She needs an ambulance to come right away. The store is in the downtown shopping district of Bethesda, Maryland, an upscale suburb NW of Washington DC, that up until then prided itself on having a very low crime rate. Lululemon Athletica is an international chain that sells upscale yoga and athletic clothes. Detective Dimitry Ruven from the Montgomery County Police was called to the scene and told 2 women were attacked and sexually assaulted, 1 is dead in the back of the store and the other was taken to Suburban Hospital, a trauma center that’s part of Johns Hopkins Medicine. The main sales floor had been trashed. There was merchandise and broken glass on the floor, mannequins knocked over, a TV knocked off the wall, and other store décor items and displays trashed and broken. It appeared some kind of fight or altercation had occurred in the middle of the store. The cash register was left open and had been emptied. There were papers and receipts on the floor behind the counter. There was a blood trail starting at the middle of the store leading to the back where the fitting rooms, storage area and bathrooms were. There were several shoe prints in the blood going to and from the back of the store. In the women’s bathroom blood covers the walls and floor. 27-year-old Brittany Norwood, was found covered in blood, injured but alive, lying on her back with her hands and feet zip tied. In the storage room in the back of the store was the body of 30-yr-old Jayna Murray, face down in a pool of blood on the floor. She had been dead for several hours. She was covered in so much blood, it was difficult at first tell what happened. But after bringing Jayna’s body out to the sales floor and laying her on her back, the full extent of her attack was revealed. There was a lot of blunt force trauma to her head. She had cuts on her face, neck and body. A rope was tied tightly around her neck. She had 331 wounds to her body from at leat 5 different weapons, all items presumably found in the store, including a hammer, knife, wrench and box cutter from the store’s toolkit. 105 of her wounds were determined to be defensive wounds. A rage killing. Just an unbelievable about of violence towards this woman who fought her attacker with all she had. Detective Deanna Mackey went to Suburban Hospital to interview Brittany Norwood. Her injuries included head trauma, a big gash in her forehead and cuts across her chest and abdomen. She was traumatized but ultimately would survive the ordeal. Brittany tells the detective she is a sales associate who had just transferred to the Bethesda Lululemon store from the Georgetown store a month prior. Jayna was a keyholding senior employee. Only she and Jayna had been in the store the previous night from 7 to close. Brittany told the detective they had closed the store and left around 9:45pm, but Brittany had gotten to the Metro – their public transportation system - and realized she didn’t have her wallet with her Metro card in it. She called Jayna, who said she had forgotten her laptop at the store as well, so they met back at the front of the store just after 10pm. Jayna had pulled her car up just outside the store and both women went inside, turned off the alarm and went to the back of the store to get their items. Thinking they’d be running in and out, they left the front door unlocked behind them. Brittany said she never found her wallet after 10 minutes of searching, so they went back out to the salesfloor. Jayna walked out first and was immediately hit in the face by a man dressed all in black. Brittany tried to turn back and run towards the back door to the alley because opening that door would immediately set off the emergency alarm, but a 2nd man grabbed her by the hair. She described the 2 men of unknown race, one taller than the other, dressed in all black, with knit hats that pulled down like ski masks and wore gloves. Brittany could hear Jayna screaming and there was a scuffle happening in the store, but the man who had Brittany said if she said a word, he’d slit her throat. Brittany watched as Jayna was dragged kicking and screaming into the bathroom. While he searched for the keys to the safe, he stopped to hit Brittany the head several times and he held her by her hair as he dragged her to the sales counter and took cash from the register. Then he took her to the back of the store again where she was shocked to see everything covered in blood. She could still hear Jayna screaming from the back of the store, but her voice was growing faint and weak. Brittany was dragged to a bathroom at which point she thinks she blacked out. When she came to, the man who had been with Jayna was now with her, zip tying her wrists and ankles. He started dragging a blade across her stomach and chest. She said he hit her in the head and then made a comment about “oh I’ve never been with one of these dirty (insert racial slur)” and started to sexually assault her with objects like a hanger. After, he asked Brittany how to get out of the back door without setting off the alarm, and she told him which key would turn it off. He left her lying on the floor of the bathroom where she faded in and out of consciousness, worrying about Jayna, upset she couldn’t help her, and thinking the whole thing was her fault because she forgot her wallet. Police at the scene noted that the alarm had been turned off at 10:05pm, found the store keys still in the keyhole of the back door alarm and blood all over the back door push bar. Luminal sprayed in the sinks showed someone had tried to clean up a lot of blood. The shoe prints appeared to be from 2 different sized shoes, 1 measuring about a men’s size 13 or 14. This was a highly unusual crime for Bethesda. This was an upscale shopping district. The extreme amount of violence in the attack had the public freaking out. There are 2 extremely violent mad men on the street. The attack against these women was so violet, police wondered if it was personal, someone the women knew, or who knew one of them and had targeted them. So police start looking into their victims. Jayna Murray was a pretty blonde woman, very athletic, had been a dancer and loved all kinds of outdoor activities like hiking and water skiing. At the time of her death she was working out, preparing to be in a marathon, so she was in great shape. She had a bubbly personality, her family had moved around a lot when she was growing up, including Australia at one point. She was very easy-going, made friends easily. And intelligent - she was attending Johns Hopkin’s University MBA program, getting a dual master’s degree in communications. She was working at part-time at Lululemon at the suggestion of one of her professors, because Lululemon was known for its corporate model, and it would be a great topic for her dissertation. Brittany Norwood was an attractive, smart, young Black woman originally from the Seattle area. She had been an athlete in school, a star soccer player. She moved from Washington State to Long Island, NY to attend college on a soccer scholarship. She aspired to one day own her own gym. There was nothing in either woman’s life, no disgruntled ex-boyfriends or stalkers that police could focus on. And during the investigation police learned Jayna had not been scheduled to work that Friday night, she was covering last minute for a coworker whose boyfriend had surprised her with a weekend trip. There were no video cameras inside the Lululemon store. However, the Apple store next door had a camera facing the parking lot behind the store that caught 2 males leaving the area at 11:07 pm – 1 shorter than the other - dressed all in black, one had a backpack, but it was shot from above, so you couldn’t see their faces. The police reached out to the public for help and tips started coming in on their hotline. A number of people called in about a suspicious Black man named Keith Lockett, who was known to harass women in the area. He’s known to local police and had a rap sheet, bounced around to different homeless shelters, and frequently walked the downtown Bethesda area at night and would sometimes yell at people on the street. He was known to be kind of unstable. Police know the bar that he’s goes to every night, and learn he was not there the night of the murder. The owner of another store in the area had seen Keith Locket with an unknown white male who had a backpack, walking around acting suspicious together, and that stood out because Keith was usually seen alone. So Keith Lockett became a person the police wanted to speak to. Police learn he had been admitted to a local hospital to be treated after suffering injuries from a fight. He had a swollen, bruised eye as well as other bruises. Keith tells them he wasn’t involved in the murder at the store, he had gotten into a fight with another homeless man. Police brought him in for questioning and got a search warrant for his DNA, but it wasn’t a match to anything at the scene and he was eliminated as a suspect and released. With no other leads, detectives went back to the evidence collected from the crime scene and there were several confusing factors. 1. There were bloody shoe prints tracked through the store, but none leading outside. One set matched the shoes Brittany was wearing, they were still working to identify the others. 2. The zip ties used on Brittany were the same as ones used at the store, so they were more of a tool of convenience rather than pre-planned and brought by the killers. 3. The items used to beat the women appeared to all be items that were in the store, not weapons brought by the assailants. 4. And the weirdest one was that rape kits on both women came back negative. Then police located Jayna’s car about 3 blocks from the store. There was blood found on the gearshift and the steering wheel that was a match to Brittany. A week after the attack, Brittany is reinterviewed at the police station. Police ask if she could remember any more details that would help them. They ask her if she’d ever been in Jayna’s car and she says no, but something isn’t adding up. The next day Brittany calls and asks if she can come back and talk some more. She tells them that there was one thing that happened that night she left out. She was in Jayna’s car. The 2 attackers were worried someone would see Jayna’s car (maybe it was parked illegally) Infront of the store and it would call attention to them, so they made Brittany move the car. One show I watched had video of this interview and I was instantly struck by her demeanor and body language in this interview. What do you picture when you think of the victim of a physically and sexually assaulted woman 1 week after a brutal attack where she witnessed someone being murdered and the madmen who did it are still on the loose? Brittany was sitting slumped back in her chair, one leg propped up, so her legs are spread open. The detective asks her walk them through everything that happened that night again starting from when they went back to the store, and Brittany sounds exasperated and says “Do I have to go thru it again?” but she sounds more annoyed or exasperated not like someone who just went thru a trauma and doesn’t want to relive it. So they ask her to just go over the part about her moving the car. She tells them that just before they sexually assaulted her, they asked where Jayna’s keys were. So Brittany searched Jayna’s coat and found her car keys. They told her to move the car from the front of the store) and that they’d be watching so she better not do anything stupid like try to get help or they’d kill her. They were going to time how long she was gone. Brittany said she walked out the front of the store and walked to Jayna’s car, drove it down the street to a parking lot, left it there and went back to the store. After she walked back in is when they zip tied her and sexually assaulted her. You can tell the detectives are like, this doesn’t make any sense and Brittany complains saying “do you know how many times they hit me in the head?” She said she was so scared, and they said they knew where she lived and they’d come after her so she did whatever they said. The detective asked if she saw anyone when she left the store and she said she remember seeing a couple walking on the street and she passed a cop car driving down the street in the opposite direction she was driving. Detectives insist there’s more Brittany isn’t telling them. But she swears that’s the only thing she left out. They tell her they’re troubled by the fact that that Jayna was violently killed but Brittany’s injuries were far less severe. The cuts on her body were superficial and parallel, suggesting they were self-inflicted. She insisted she didn’t do anything, and the detective starts to lay into her saying there’s no way these 2 guys would let her walk out of the store, that she passed people covered in blood, that she didn’t flag down that cop, and that she went back to the store so they could killer too. She needs to tell the truth. She’s crying and denying everything – but her body posture never changes. They tell her they know there was a fight between her and Jayna, because employees from the Apple store next door who heard a loud argument thru the wall they shared with Lululemon around 10:15 pm that night between 2 women. One employee called another over to listen. They distinctly heard 2 female voices one crying and the other saying “What’s going on?” But they chalked it up to drama between 2 women. They never heard any male voices. The detectives encourage Brittany to tell the truth, there were no men there that night. Just her and Jayna, that she killed Jayna. But Brittany just cries, and says I’d never do that, then asks to go home. They say not yet, but they’ll let her older brother Chris come in and talk to her. Video is still rolling on them. Chris says her “did you?” and She said “I don’t want to talk about it here, but I plan on telling you everything.” So he says,” just nod your head if you did”. She’s quiet for a minute and she mumblies “I’m sorry.” He says “don’t apologize” and she says “I’m going to ruin our whole family” He says “I’ll take that as a yes. Why?” and she mumbles “I don’t know how it happened.” He asks if it was a shoplifting thing, she says no. so he says “then why would you fight this girl?” She says “are you sure they can’t hear us, Chris?” He says “I looked around for listening devices, there’s nothing in this room. And even if they did there’s nothing they can use in court.” He says” you’ve got 2 options, some kind of temporary insanity, or we’re going to have to concoct a story that she attacked you. But that doesn’t look good because you tried to cover it up” So the detectives go back and ask her again what happened, she says she still has nothing to say. But they tell her they heard everything she and Chris said that it was recorded. Brittany Norwood was arrested and charged with Jayna Murray’s murder. 1 week after the murder. Prosecutors dug further into Brittany’s background and found that she had a sticky finger problem that went back several years. She had lost her scholarship and was expelled from college for stealing from her teammates and other students. She had an ex-boyfriend who accused her of stealing from him, but he never pressed charges. So certain people knew she was a bit of a kleptomaniac, but nothing where she had a police record that they would have seen when they first looked into her. Then they learned Brittany was transferred from the Georgetown Lululemon store was because she had been fired for buying more than she was allowed to with her discount. But they ended up hiring her back but moved her to the Bethesda store. Soon after she started there, the manager noticed items being shoplifted and cash disappearing and she knew Brittany had been suspected of stealing from the Georgetown store, but there was no proof. On the night of her murder, Jayna had called her manager from her car at 9:46pm asking if she had sold Brittany some cropped pants. Because before they closed for the evening, they are supposed to check each other’s bags - like many retail stores, Lululemon had a policy where employees check each other’s bags for merchandise before leaving. Jayna found merchandise in Brittany’s bag. The manager said they now had proof of Brittany’s theft, but she’d deal with it in the morning. Then Jayna got the call from Brittany asking to go back to the store for her wallet. October 26, 2011 Brittany goes on trial for 1st degree murder. The prosecution’s case is that Brittany panicked that Jayna was going to report her for stealing, she made up the story about leaving her wallet to get Jayna back to the store to kill her. It was premeditated because they had already locked up and left and she lured Jayna back to the store to kill her. Then she spent the night covering up the murder and planning the story of 2 male attackers and making herself a victim. Surveillance video from inside the Apple store was shown, with the 10:17pm time stamp of the employees standing by the wall listening to the argument next door. The 2 men in black that had been caught on video leaving the area were identified as dishwashers who worked at the TexMex restaurant next door. There was no proof that anyone other than Brittany and Jayna had been in the Lululemon store that night. Testimony was given that the 2 sets of bloody shoe prints in the store came from the shoes Brittany had been wearing, and the other from a size 14 men’s Reeboks. Investigators discovered a pair on a shelf in the store with trace amounts of Jayna’s blood on the soles. The Brittany must have put them on, walked thru the blood, washed them off and put them back. Pictures of Brittany’s wounds taken at the hospital were shown and a forensic expert testified that they were all superficial and how they were likely self-inflicted. And that the blood on her face, from the cut on her forehead, had dripped straight down her face, suggesting she had been upright most of the night, not laying on her back for hours semi-conscious on the floor. Also DNA analysis confirmed that Jayna’s blood was on found on Brittany’s clothes, shoes, and socks, when according to Brittany, they were separated the whole time, with Jayna being beaten and killed in the back where she couldn’t help her. The jury heard all the details of the torture Jayna endured. They saw pictures of her mutilated body, and of the hole that was cut into her pants to give the impression she had been sexually assaulted, but her autopsy showed she had not. Brittany’s defense decided not to argue there were 2 male attackers. Instead they said she killed Jayna during an argument. It was not premeditated, but a 2nd degree crime of passion. It took less than an hour for the jury to find Brittany Norwood guilty of 1st degree murder. She was sentenced to life in prison with no parole. Sources: Murder in the 21st, S1 episode 4 “The Brutal Truth” Forensic Files II, S4 E2, “Men in black” Seattle times .com Crime Scene Cleanup .com Wikipedia .com