Criminology - The Lululemon Murder

Episode Date: April 30, 2023

In March 2011, two women who worked at a Lululemon store were attacked, and one was killed. Police arrived to find 30-year-old Jayna Murray dead, with over 300 injuries, and 29-year-old Brittany Norwood wounded but still alive. Police found size 14 bloody shoe prints around the store, and the money was missing from the safe. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss what has become known as the Lululemon murder because it occurred in a Lululemon store. Brittany Norwood told the police that two men came into the store after hours and attacked her and Jayna. She gave them somewhat of a description, but it was tough because they were wearing all black and had their faces covered. But Brittany soon went from a sympathetic survivor to the prime suspect after the police found evidence and holes in her story. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 255 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Morford, man. How are you? I'm doing good.

I'm better now that I've digested this bug that I swallowed. We were joking before we started recording. I inhaled a bug this morning and it didn't match well with my coffee. some sort of recovering over that. How you doing? You know, I've had a rough week. We had, we lost our, our oldest dog and, you know, the family's struggling. I talked about it on T-Cat and Unsolved and everybody who has gone through that, they know what I'm talking about. It's so rough when you lose a family pet. Oh yeah. They're one of the family. We've been the same way with our pets and sorry to hear that. But, you know,

cherish the memories and then we move forward. That's what you got to do. Hey man, let's go ahead and give our Patreon shoutouts. We had Laura Lee Dominguez, Erica Miller, Jesse Provenock, and Inkel Duss 0897. So a lot of great new support. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you so much for taking the time to support the show. It means a lot to us.

And for anyone that would like to support criminology, you can do so by going to patreon.com slash criminology. You know, it's hard to believe. We're almost into the month of May. And that means one month closer to our favorite true crime vent of the year, CrimeCon, the world's biggest and best true crime convention. Yeah, you've heard us talk about crime before. It's only your one-stop shop for meeting up with all your favorite true crime celebs and hanging out with your favorite podcasters like Mike and I on Podcast Row. And you can catch up with all your true crime friends. And it's happening September 22nd through the 24th, in Orlando, Florida at the World Center Marriott.

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Let's jump into this week's case. And this week we're covering a murder case that was given a couple of different monikers, including the Lulu Lemon Murder, or the yoga shop murder. We're talking about the murder of Jana Murray. Now, Janus case really doesn't have much to do with Lulu Lemon or with

yoga. And she was not the victim of some random serial killer going around attacking yoga shops, although Jana's murderer would have liked us all to believe that. As we'll discuss, Janus killer went to great lengths and put together

an elaborate set of lies, trying to get away with the crime, a crime which took place in a Lulu Lemon Athletica store. So let's talk a little bit, a background about this chain of stores. Lulu Lemon Athletica Inc. is a Canadian retailer that sells products all over the world. The company was founded in 1998. As a retailer of yoga pants and other yoga wear, the company sells products online and has almost 600 stores internationally.

One of those stores is located in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Bethesda Maryland. And that's where this case unfolded. And my family has been wearing Lulu Lemon for years. My wife and two daughters, it's almost all they wear. And, you know, it's a pricey brand, but man, they make really good clothing. I never thought much about it other than my family wears them. Well, a couple of Christmases ago, my wife bought me a men's pair of joggers. And I thought, Okay. I'll try them out. And now it's like the only pair of pants I want to wear. They're that good. Now, not doing an ad for Lulu Lemon. I'm just saying they made good stuff. Yeah, so they're like a comfortable athletic fitting type of clothing?

Well, for me, they're joggers. They're loose. Now, for my wife and daughters, they're always, they're more like yoga pants. Just after 8 a.m. on March 11, 2011, a Saturday morning, A woman named Rachel, the manager of a Lulu Lemon Athletica in Bethesda, Maryland, arrived to start her shift and opened the store for the day. But she immediately noticed that the door was unlocked. She entered the store and could tell something wasn't right. The store appeared to have been ransacked and furniture had been knocked over. Rachel heard a quiet moan come from somewhere in the back of the store. Unsettled, she turned around instead of investigating the source of the noise and ran out of the building, calling 911.

according to the Washington Post, she said, I hear someone moaning in the back and it looks like it's been vandalized and I'm just really scared to go in. So I'm picturing more if this scene kind of play out in my mind. It reminds me of, you know, some type of horror movie where there's often a time in those types of movies, whether it's horror, thriller, whatever, where somebody hears something and they have to make the decision. Do they, go towards the noise or do they run away? And when it comes to horror movies, you know, we're all in the audience saying don't, don't go in there, don't go towards that, run away. That's what this woman did. But I think it would come down to every individual. How would

you react in that situation? Yeah, we've covered a lot of cases I can think of that there was a crime and a store, usually a murder where either a customer or another employee comes in and finds, you know, a crime has occurred there. And they look around, they find a person that's been killed. Sometimes they're just so scared, they go right out of the store. So it doesn't seem unusual. In this case, that Rachel, you know, her natural instant was to go away and call 911, not take any chances. No, because, I mean, from her point of view, she doesn't know what's going on. on. Now you're hearing some type of moan. Okay, somebody's there. You know that. And they're most likely injured, but you don't know if the person who injured them is still in the store. Is there

with them? It's just waiting for you to come back so that they can get you. So a little bit more about this particular Lulu Lemon Store. It was located at 4856 Bethesda Avenue, sandwiched between a stationary store called papery and an Apple store whose employees were winding down from the release of the new iPad 2. 26 year old Ryan Haw was sitting on a bench outside waiting to be the first person to get into the Apple store to buy an iPad 2 that day. It was his second try. He had missed out the day before release day and he was not going to let them sell out for a second day without one of them being his. He had been sitting there since 7.45 a.m. Rachel was the first person. He had seen coming or going from the Lulu Lemon store. Clearly Rachel was freaked out by something she saw or

heard inside the store. So Ryan approached her. And according to the Washington Post, he asked her, do you want me to go in? Ryan recounted what happened to the Washington Post. He told them that as he walked into the store, he noticed bloodstains on the floor. Ryan, called out. Anybody here? But he didn't get a response. As he got to a door in the back, he noticed there was a lot more blood at the bottom of the door. He pushed on it, but it would barely open. Through the crack, he could see a body. Someone was lying face down in a puddle of blood. Ryan shouted out to Rachel, there's somebody back here. It looks like they're dead. As he turned around to head back to the front of the store, he saw someone else in the doorway of one

of the store's two bathrooms. He yelled out, there's somebody else in here as he ran to the bathroom. It was a woman. She was lying on her back. Her hands and ankles were bound with zip ties, and she had blood on her face. Her arms were up over her head. Ryan asked her, Are you okay? And she only moaned in response, but she was still alive. Rachel called 911 a second time to update them in the call. Rachel told 911, there's two people in the back of my store. One person seems dead and the other person is breathing. First responders arrived and began assessing 29-year-old Brittany Norwood's condition and she was rushed to the hospital. Brittany was one of the store's employees.

30-year-old Jana Murray, another employee of the Lulu Lemon store, was dead. Both women were still fully clothed. Bloody shoe prints, size 14, trailed around the store. All of the money. that had been in the safe underneath the register was missing. Police were able to talk to Brittany in the hospital. She told police that she and Jana had been attacked the previous night. They both worked together and closed up the store at 9 p.m.

And both left around 9.45. But they ended up back at the store because they each had forgotten something. Jena forgot her laptop and Brittany forgot her wallet and couldn't get on the metro to get home. Jana had the keys to the store so Brittany needed her to be able to get inside. they popped back into the store. It was supposed to be quick, so the alarm was off and the door was unlocked, but Brittany couldn't find her wallet. According to Brittany, Jana helped their look for about 10 minutes before offering up her own metro card for Brittany to use, since Jana had driven her car to work. Before the two women could leave together, Brittany said that two men appeared inside the store without warning and attacked them.

Brittany was able to describe the attackers, but it wasn't much of a help to police. The two men were wearing gloves, dark clothes, and had their faces covered by ski masks. One of them was six feet tall and the other was much shorter about five foot three. According to Oxygen.com, Brittany told Detective Mackie, who worked a case that they sounded young and they sounded white. They hit Jane in the head with a hammer and took her to the storage room in the back of the store, dragging her by her hair. There were chunks of Jaina's hair on the floor. In the back hallway, Brittany was hit in the head and dragged into the bathroom, zip tied, and sexually assaulted.

According to Brittany, the men hurled racial slurs at her. As they attacked her, Brittany claimed that they then fled from the store, leaving her dazed and disoriented. In short, police didn't have much to go on. Based on what Brittany told them, Britney was very emotional after the attack, telling Detective Mackey, it's my fault. And more if I talked earlier about a horror movie, a thriller movie,

I mean, this description of what happened is, you know, kind of right out of a movie. It's horrifying to think about two men suddenly appearing, you know, dressed all in dark clothing and they start attacking with a hamper. The police have to work on this case using a lot of what information Brittany was able to give them. And unfortunately, it wasn't much to go on. But I do want to kind of dissect a little bit the information that she did give. She gave estimated heights. One person was six feet tall.

And then the other was five three. So, you know, big difference there. And five three is is fairly short. If we're thinking that this is a. male. She also added that they sounded young and they sounded white. Now, she's going by the sounds of their their voices, but if accurate. Okay, that's pretty good information. Young, white, that helps narrow it down some, not a lot. But I think, you know, for me, the big thing from this is that, you know, with their faces covered by ski masks, she would never be able to

identify these attackers, even if police brought in suspects, put them in a lineup, you know, it just wouldn't happen. Yeah. And then you have on top of everything the racial slurs that she says they used against her, that could open up the possibility that there's some kind of hate crime that maybe these guys are some kind of racist. Yeah. And maybe even lead you in the direction that they belong to, you know, some type of white supremacy

group, a hate group. Something like that. I think at this point, you can't rule anything out. Word immediately spread about the attack, and businesses in the area quickly saw a steep drop-off in profits, as shoppers were too afraid of the mass killers being on the loose in the area. They didn't want to risk shopping at stores there. In an interview with the Washington Post, Lulu Lemon Athletic Regional Manager, Carolyn Manning, called Brittany and Jaina Great People. Jane was from Texas and was attending a dual master's program at John Hopkins University. Brittany's family was from Seattle.

She went to school in New York after earning a scholarship for soccer and later moved to Washington, D.C. to be closer to her sister. She planned to be a personal trainer and had dreams of opening her own gym one day. Working at Lulu Lemon was the perfect job for her. Based on what was found at the scene, detectives believe this started out to be a robbery. according to Montgomery County police spokesman Captain Paul Sparks, the money in the safes had been stolen after all. One theory police had was that the men had been looking to rob one of the many people waiting for a new iPad too, thinking that they would clearly have money or that they may want to steal

the iPads themselves from someone who had just purchased one. But instead, the attackers noticed that Brittany and Jana were going to, to be in the store alone after hours and took their chance on the Lulu Lemon store instead. The registers in a store and maybe a safe versus an iPad 2 and some pocket change might make it worth their while. And one of the things that I always think about, especially today,

is how many people really carry a lot of cash around? I think the number is much fewer than it would have been, you know, 20, 30, 40 years ago. So we're talking about 2011 here. And, you know, even by that time, the proliferation of debit cards and things like that was causing people not to carry as much cash with them. So to me, you know, to hit somebody outside of an Apple store thinking that they would have money, it's kind of one of those things that doesn't really, you know, ring.

all that true to me because, yeah, there's going to be some people in line that are probably paying in cash, but I would think, by and large, most people are either using their debit cards or their credit cards. Yeah, I think maybe the Apple products themselves could be a good score for somebody looking to make some quick cash, because I remember when they came out, they were all the rage. They still are. There's still huge demand on days when they release stuff. So, you know, maybe going there, stealing the products themselves from customers as they leave the store, could be a potential score. But just like I said about the description of the individuals, I don't think at this point

in the investigation, police can really close off anything. They've got to keep everything open and on the table. Police hope that surveillance video might provide them with some clues. The entire block of businesses, with the exception of the Apple store, had no security cameras. One detective explained Toxygen.com that Bethesda just didn't have any videos because it really was so safe. Looking through what little footage they did have, police spotted two men on surveillance who fit the description given by Brittany. Of the two men that committed the attacks, they were wearing all black and both wearing black knit caps of some sort, walking very quickly

away from the rear of the store. One of them had a backpack on. At that moment, police thought that they had their best clue. But the camera didn't show the loose. Lulu Lemon door specifically, and testing showed that anyone opening the Lulu Lemon door would not have been captured by the footage. There's no way to know if the two men seen on surveillance just came from Lulu Lemon or just happened to be walking by. Knowing that the two men caught on surveillance may be extremely important to the investigation, rookie detective Dimitri Ruvin decided to sit outside the store and see if the men came back to case another store. On March 13th, two days after Jaina was murdered, he spotted them.

Ruben approached them with photos from the surveillance footage. They didn't deny that it was them. They had not come from Lulu Lemon and they were not murderers or thieves. It turns out that they were busboys at a nearby restaurant walking home like they always did. It was disappointing to police. As to that point, it really had been their best lead. Police did have other tips to work with, though. One tip was about a man in the area named Keith, who was homeless.

Keith was known to be aggressive, and he basically vanished after Jane is murder. He had been seen earlier in the day with another man. One tipster described him as looking shady and carrying a backpack. When Detective Riven found this Keith, he wasn't on the run or laying low. He was in a hospital about 10 miles away from Bethesda. He had a black eye and blood on his jeans. He was very incoherent, but claimed that he had been assaulted by a night. another homeless person in Bethesda.

Detective Riven started a doubt that Keith could have pulled off the murder of Jaina and the robbery of the store by himself, and also noticed that the blood on his pants was very fresh, and it seemed to have been deposited after Jaina was killed. He doubted that this was blood from the attack at Lulu Lemon. Keith's closing was seized and his DNA was collected, but detectives didn't hold their breath and kept looking for other suspects. But the more police analyzed the crime scene and the facts of the case, the more suspicion crept into their minds regarding Brittany's version of events. First, they considered her injuries. Brittany was barely injured, especially when you look at what this supposed attackers did to Jaina.

Brittany was bound and had a few superficial cuts. Jaina had at least 331 different injuries, 107 of those being defensive in nature. The injuries were all caused by different things. injuries from a rope, wrench, box cutter, hammer, and a knife. The Daily Mail reported that even a peg used to hold up a mannequin had been used to attack Jana and all these things were apparent during the autopsy. She had been beaten, choked, and stabbed.

Her skull was fractured and her spinal cord had been severed. Her attack was severely brutal. Why would the killer commit such a violent attack? on Jana, yet leave Brittany relatively unscathed. Police were even more suspicious of Brittany when they re-examine her statement about the men potentially being racist. According to Brittany, they hurled racial slurs at her. So why would they take out most of their regression on the white victim? Detective Ruvan told Oxygen.com, the way Brittany's describing these two guys, they're racist, they're rapists, they're robbers,

they're murderers. It's like the worst human being that you could possibly describe, right? They're Obviously terrible people, but they barely hurt her. Why? Brittany claimed that her attacker said to her, you're lucky, you're cute, you're more fun to fuck with, as he threw her on top of Jana's body. Detective Ruvin also said the amount of trauma that Jaina suffered wasn't normal. If this was a robbery gone wrong, why did they spend so much time hurting Jaina? Her face was so damaged that true crime documentaries censor it, but there was also massive trauma to the back of her head. Someone had continued to beat Jaina long after it had become necessary if the only intention was to silence her.

Yet Brittany walked away with very little in the way of injuries. She had a cut probably less than an inch long on her forehead and some scratches, clearly from fingernails on her stomach. all of this jumped out to investigators. And more questions bothered them. Why didn't, you know, these individuals bring their own tools to break into any safes or drawers or even for the door to the store? Everything used in the attack had already been inside the store. If the attackers brought any tools, they hadn't used them.

Detective Riven told Oxygen.com, it doesn't say two crazy people off the street. that screams an inside job. So one thing is clear to me at this point. It seems as though, you know, police and especially detective Ruvon have gone from this kind of place of, you know, we're looking for two males, possibly two white males who committed this murder, robbery, assault to doubting Brittany's account of this thing altogether. You know, it's almost as if at this point, they're starting to look at Brittany and saying, after analyzing all the facts, it must have been an inside job. Well, if it's an inside job, then who else was there? Brittany.

Yeah, we've talked about cases before, too, where the police jump to conclusions and don't believe the victim. And I think you should believe the victim until evidence says otherwise. And in this case, it seems like some of the evidence. was contradicting what Brittany said and didn't line up with her version of events. Yeah, I'm absolutely with you. I get perturbed when we cover cases where, you know, victims come forward. They tell their story.

And right off the bat, the police don't believe them. And I don't think that's right. Now, once you start to gather evidence and that evidence kind of flies in the face of what somebody says, okay, then you are well within your rights to start to doubt their story. But to dismiss it right offhand, as we've seen in so many stories, that really bothers me. Because in a lot of those stories, it turns out later that, you know, this person really was a victim. They were telling the truth.

And the police just kind of blew them off. Jana's autopsy proved that she hadn't been sexually assaulted before being killed. and an examination of Brittany proved she hadn't been sexually assaulted either. This made sense to investigators since both women were found wearing their pants. Jana wearing jeans and underwear and Brittany wearing leggings that she had to have been in before she was zip tied. This was another thing in Brittany's story that didn't add up. Her claims of being sexually assaulted weren't true. There were bloody footprints leading to the back door of the store and blood on the handle immediately outside the door.

There was no sign of blood at all. Investigators had initially felt that someone had tried to go out that door and either couldn't or didn't for whatever reason. It soon became clear that it was part of Brittany staging the scene. Two pairs of shoes, one size 14, one, a smaller pair of women's shoes, were found hidden inside a clothing rack in the store. The Lulu Lemon store didn't sell shoes. But they did have two pairs, one men's and one women's, for customers to wear when they were requesting alterations on their clothing. These shoes had blood on the soles and matched the bloody footprints tracked around the store. Crime scene analyst Davis McGill and Detective Riven came up with a theory that Brittany killed Jaina and pretended to be a victim in the attack.

They went back over all the evidence and looked at the zip ties found on Britney for teeth marks. since she would have had to use her teeth to tighten them. The zip tie on her hands did have teeth marks, but the zip tie on her ankles did not. Looking back at the shoe prints in the store, McGill noticed the size 14 shoe prints were always on top of Britney's shoe prints, as if they were covering up her own trail. He told the paper, once we changed the optics of how we were looking at it, all the things that weren't lining up just started lining up. So we mentioned that, you know, the investigation started the shift,

away from two unknown male attackers to possibly being an inside job, meaning that Brittany was involved somehow. So now we have more information. We've got these shoe prints and they found the shoes inside the store. And this notion of the size 14 bloody shoe prints kind of covering up. Britney's shoe prints. Well, if Brittany was a victim, then most likely

she shouldn't have bloody shoe prints going, you know, all around the store. Those would need to be covered up to get away with this crime. I think it's another instance here where the police sort of follow the clues and the evidence and not Britney's story because if they had just gone down that road

and accepted her story from Day one they might not have caught all these little things, including the teeth marks on the zip ties, the small things like that. Well, you know, unfortunately, you and I have to point out in many cases where the police get it wrong. They, they don't do things probably the way that you would want them to be done. So it is always nice when you're able to talk about good investigative work and, you know, really what you just said morph rings true.

The police should follow the evidence and see where it leads them, not try to find evidence that backs up what they believe happened, if that makes sense. Because you can look at one piece of evidence maybe multiple ways. And so if you think a certain thing happened, can you view evidence in that line? and maybe missed that it could also be this other thing. And I think that does happen.

Jane's car was found in a parking lot, three blocks from the Lulu Lemon store, when they initially couldn't find it. Police thought perhaps the attackers had stolen it. An officer recalled seeing a car with Texas plates in a parking lot just blocks from the store. On the night of the attack, the headlights were on, and someone was sitting in the front seat.

This is where the car was found. There was blood on the steering wheel and the gear shift. A Lulu Lemon hat with a bloody spot on it was in the backseat of the car. The spot was directly over where Brittany had suffered a cut on her forehead. Everything seemed to fall into place in regards to the police theory. Even the two busboys that Detective Reuven had talked to fit the police theory because Brittany could have seen those busboys from just next door walking by as they did daily. and knew that men fitting their description could have been spotted by potential witnesses in the area or caught on cameras.

So it would make perfect sense for her to mention being attacked by two men who might fit their description. On March 17th, Brittany requested a follow-up interview with investigators. Her older brother came with her. She claimed she had remembered that the attackers had forced her to look through Janah's bag and jacket and move her car that night. They gave her just 10 minutes to move it and return. Police listened to her story, but they really didn't buy any of it. According to Oxygen.com, Brittany said,

He said if I was to pass anyone and open my mouth, I could consider myself dead. I remember seeing a cop and I was just too scared to even flag him down or do anything. It must have been her in the front seat of Janus car that the police officer remember. seeing that night. And more if this is the part of any case that really intrigues me. You know, when police start to question who they consider to be their prime suspect, and I believe by this point, Brittany was, you know, at the top of their list, seeing or hearing this person start to either change their story or add things onto their story.

because they know what they've said so far is not going to cut it. And my thought is that a lot of people think that they're going to be able to outsmart the police. If I, if I just talk enough, if I explain it in a certain way, eventually the police are going to buy it and they're going to look away from me. It just doesn't usually work. And especially since Brittany is now coming forward saying, oh, by the way, I remembered that they made me go to her car. It just doesn't seem believable.

So these detectives must have been shaking their heads like, okay, we've got her now. Yeah, but you can see what she's trying to do, right? Information comes out. Well, I've got to try to explain why that information doesn't point to me as being the killer. You know, they force me to get in the car. That's why you're going to find whatever you're going to find DNA or whatever of me being in that car. It all has to be explained somehow. But what it normally turns out to be is kind of this rambling, changing story that just doesn't make sense. I mean, investigators most of the time are able to see right through this type of stuff. in the suburbs of D.C. A woman fails to show up for work

and is found brutally murdered. I wonder which emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do

but had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. In the interview room, which is recorded by video and audio, detectives told Brittany that they knew she was lying, but she denied this, and she said she just wanted to go home. While Brittany and her brother spoke alone while police were out of the room,

her brother asked Brittany if she killed Jana, and she says, honestly, I just want to go home. This apparently frustrated her brother. He turned to her and said, Brittany, I'm not going to fucking rat you out, but you need to tell me so I know how to talk to these guys. He explained that they'll... He explained to her that they would need to get her a lawyer and prepare for the media shitstorm. That would come if she did kill her.

Brittany then responded saying, I just don't want to talk about it here. So here's another thing that always gets me. Somebody's in an interrogation room. Do they not understand that they're being videoed, that there's audio that's going to pick up whatever conversation they have when detectives walk out of the room. You know, it's kind of along the lines of the prison phone call. You know, there's a big sign that says prison phone calls are recorded. Yet people continually make phone calls and say incriminating things from the jail. I just don't understand it.

Now, Brittany was at least smart enough to say, I don't want to talk about it. But even the way. the way that she answered it. Honestly, I just want to go home. I just don't want to talk about it here. She's not coming out and telling her brother, no, I didn't have anything to do with this. And it seems very odd. Yeah, I think most of us in her position would be jumping up and down saying, I didn't do this. I didn't have anything to do with this. And here she's just, I don't want to be here, almost trying to escape the situation. And I'm sure at that point, she did just want to go home. She would have done anything to get out of that interrogation room because she was running out of stories to try to explain what happened, explain it in a way that, you know, would put suspicion off of her.

I don't even think she could have done it at that point. So yeah, just let me go home, please. But by this point, detectives felt that Brittany was a flight risk if she walked out of that building. but they also could not arrest her yet. They needed a warrant. State's attorney John McCarthy told Oxygen, I was very hesitant, very hesitant to authorize the arrest of this young woman. He knew how important it was to be absolutely sure that Brittany was the perpetrator

and not an actual victim of this crime before pressing charges or moving forward in public. He added, you've got to get this right. This is a hell of an allegation to make against someone the community has embraced as a victim. Assistant State's attorney Mary Beth Ayers voiced something similar later at trial saying, As humans, we want to believe it's the masked men. We want that. That makes us feel better. With this murder in particular, the true identity of the suspect was shocking.

You don't want to believe that it's the articulate, educated, attractive girl next door. You don't want to believe that because that's someone you might trust. Detective Ruvan told Oxygen.com, if it even gets out that we were even considering her as a suspect, and then turns out we're wrong. It's basically career ending. So, you know,

I kind of want to break this down a little bit. Going back to what John McCarthy said, I feel as though he was absolutely right. right. It is so critical to be absolutely sure before pressing charges, you know, doing anything like that. And especially when you are going to be doing it against someone who the community up to this point has perceived to be a victim in the case. If you are wrong, I mean, the ramifications are tremendous. Well, I think they definitely did a good job doing their due diligence and dotting all the eyes, crossing the T's, checking the boxes, and then finally saying, okay, now we have enough.

Now we feel confident that she's the perpetrator and not a victim. On March 18, 2011, a week after the crime, Brittany Norwood was arrested in charge with the murder of Jana Murray. Jana's brother Hugh later told Oxygen.com how surprised her family was by the arrest, saying, My family was very concerned for Brittany. We wanted to send her flowers in the hospital. We wanted to show our sympathy for Brittany. And to hear that she killed Jana so brutally is shockingly distressing.

It later came to light that astonishingly employees at the Apple Store heard the commotion caused by Brittany attacking Jana. Surveillance footage from inside the Apple Store. shows employees standing by a back wall listening before then going about their business. Just after 10 p.m., according to WJLA News, Apple employee Jaina Sverso could hear two women having some sort of argument. She made out the words, talk to me. Don't do this. Talk to me. What's going on before she heard more indistinguishable arguing, yelling, and screaming. She could also hear some sort of noise, like something heavy being dragged. Finally, before she walked away from the wall, she heard someone say, God help me, please help me. Bethesda Apple store manager, Ricardo

Rios was also seen in the video listening to the commotion after Jane called him over. He thought what they were hearing was just drama. Just six minutes after the first noises, they could hear through the wall. Everything was silent. According to Jane, the voice that said, talk to me, and the voice that said, please help me, were two different people. It's not clear why these Apple employees didn't report what they heard to police when they found out about the murder happening next to them. Jane's brother Hugh told WJLA News, I still can't understand why they didn't do anything. Judge Robert Greenberg would later point out the callous indifference the Apple Store employees showed that night by not calling the police. The surveillance video from the Apple Store as well as the testimony from Sverso and Rios helped to poke holes, very large holes in Brittany's story, and painted a clearer picture of what really happened that night.

And eventually the truth came out. And you said, Morf that the judge later, you know, called this callous indifference by the Apple Store employees. I get it. You know, you hear something. You're not exactly sure what it is. maybe you don't want to go over there and check on it. Maybe you don't even want to call 911 because you're not sure it's an emergency. But I think at the very least, people, you know, have thought pick up the phone and call the police,

even if it's not the emergency line and say, you know, I don't know what's going on over there, but it sounds like there's a fight, there's something going on. Can you send somebody out? Yeah, we don't know that them calling the police would have saved Jaina, but we'll never know because it never happened. They didn't call police. But perhaps maybe the police would have caught Brittany red-handed, so to speak, before she had time to concoct a story or plant clues and really try to lead police down the wrong path. Investigators determine that Jaina caught Brittany shoplifting merchandise from the Lulu Lemon store. Brittany had been working at the store for about a month.

The night she and Jaina closed the store together, Jaina found a pair of Lulu Lemon pants in Brittany's purse the very day she was killed. The store apparently had a policy of mutual bag checks at the end of the day to prevent theft by employees. Brittany told Jana that a different coworker had checked her out earlier in the day and that she had paid for the pants. What Brittany didn't know is that Jaina had immediately. immediately called that coworker to verify the story, and when the coworker denied ringing Britney up for any merchandise, she reported the theft to the manager. Brittany tried to get Jaina back to the store alone to talk to her, or maybe threaten her,

so that she wouldn't report the theft, but it was too late, and Jaina may have told Britney that. At this point, Brittany knew she would lose her job, or maybe have criminal charges pressed against her. Nothing else really mattered at that moment, and she apparently lost it. Some people who knew Brittany say this revelation wasn't surprising. One of Brittany's former soccer teammates, Megan Healy, said to ABC News. Other girls on the team told me things like, watch your locker, keep it locked. She's been known to steal things. At Britney's trial, her defense attorneys didn't even dispute the fact that she had killed

Jana Murray that night and lied to investigators about what had truly happened in order to throw off the investigation. They instead tried to argue that Brittany had not premeditated Jana's murder so that she could not be found guilty of first degree murder, which would carry a possible life sentence with no parole. A second degree murder conviction would mean a maximum of 30 years with parole possible in just 15 years. So hearing this, you know, it really does sound as though Brittany's defense team was resigned to the fact that they weren't going to be able to get her off completely. They weren't going to get an acquittal.

So their strategy became, you know, how do we get her the lesser charge so that she doesn't spend the rest of her life in prison? Because, you know, when you look at it, second degree versus first degree, there's a very stark difference in the sentencing guidelines. You know, 30 years, maybe out in 15 versus life in prison with no parole. Those are two very different things. Yeah, I think her attorney saw the writing on the wall on this one. There was just no chance that they were going to be able to just get her off completely.

So I think they were just sort of cutting bait and trying to get her the best outcome that they could. Yeah, and sometimes that's what a defense. attorney, you know, has to do. A lot of times you think of a defense attorney is trying to get every client off. And I'm sure they would love to be able to do that. But it's not always like you see in the movies or the television shows, you know, it's not like Perry Mason is going to swoop in and find that piece of information that makes the jury find his client not guilty. Not every case is like that. Forensic analyst William Voresburg explained to Oxygen.com that in most crimes of extreme violence, hatred, and rage, somewhere around 50 strikes is where most people run out of gas.

He also explained that to go over 300 and with different items meant walking away to find the items, coming back, using the items. It takes a long time to do that. in a great deal of persistence on the part of the assailant. He estimated that Jaina's murder took upwards of 10 minutes. And, you know, it really is heartbreaking to hear that Jaina was alive for this entire ordeal. It was the last blow inflicted upon her that severed her brainstem and killed her. Montgomery County State's attorney John McCarthy echoed those sentiments to the Washington Post saying, this was a brutal slow attack.

And I think you and I have talked about cases before where, you know, someone swung an axe X amount of times. Somebody, you know, committed X number of stab wounds, just the sheer energy alone that it would have taken to inflict over 300 injuries with different items. I think that really puts this crime into a certain category. It puts it into, you know, perspective of just how extremely brutally it really was. Yeah, I think it clearly shows rage and just anger to continually go away to get other items to attack Jane and with. It's not, clearly not a case of, you know, somebody snaps and they happen to.

be holding something and they strike someone and they realize they make a mistake and it's too late. Here she's going away, getting items coming back and continuing this assault. So it definitely seems very troubling that she had that much hostility and anger in her. And the other thing that it tells me is that she wasn't going to stop until she was sure that Jaina was dead. You know, to your point, this wasn't a blow struck out of anger. And then, oh, my gosh, what did I do? This was blow after blow trying to find different implements that would kill this woman. And I think what it does for me is it really paints Brittany Norwood in a certain light. Now, obviously, it's not a good light, but it really tells you,

a lot about her and what she was capable of doing. Defense attorneys argued that Brittany trying to cover up the crime doesn't indicate premeditation, but it's hard to ignore the fact that Brittany asked Jane to meet her alone in a private location when she could have just texted or called her about the shoplifting, if that's all she wanted to talk to Jana about. And a jury must have agreed because on November 11, 2011, just nine months after Jana was killed, Brittany was found guilty of her murder. murder in the first degree. Brittany's defense attorney, Doug Wood, was surprised. He told the Daily

Mail, I think that we were surprised that this happened so quick. I thought we had established a pretty good case for second-degree murder. At least one juror, Donnie Nepper, spoke publicly about the verdict, telling the Daily Mail, there's no argument that this was anything other than first-degree murder. So that is a telling statement. At least for Donnie, he was extremely confident that this was first degree murder. I want to go back and talk a little bit about premeditation because we don't have all the details of the trial, but I assume that what they were trying to argue, the defense was that Brittany just wanted to talk to Jaina. That's why she asked her to meet her alone. And then it got out of hand. Not that Brittany asked Jana to meet her back at the store with the intention of carrying

this murder because that's a big difference. In the eyes of the law, it could mean the difference between first and second degree murder. The problem for Brittany was that the jury didn't buy it. They obviously thought this was premeditated. She asked Jaina to come to the store with the forethought that she was going to hurt her, kill her. Brittany Norwood was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. At her sentencing hearing, Judge Robert Greenberg said to her, You're one hell of a liar, ma'am. In April 2015, the Maryland State Court of Special Appeals denied Brittany's appeal stating that the evidence of Britney's guilt was overwhelming. You know, what's scary about this case is that Brittany may have been close to getting away with murder.

If she had hidden the weapons, threw away or, you know, destroyed. the shoes she used instead of leaving them in the store to be found later, she might have gotten away with it. There really weren't any witnesses. And if she would have stayed away from Janus Carr, she may have been able to escape suspicion. But by inserting herself as a victim and talking to detectives, Brittany just created more evidence against herself. There's no mention that we could find as to whether the missing money from the safes were ever found. Perhaps Brittany stashed it when she left to move Jane's car. But if so, it's no use to Brittany now.

And the first thought that I had here, Morph, was, you know, what if Brittany had not decided to talk to detectives? You know, she talked to them from the position that she was a victim in this case. and I'm sure she thought they were going to view her as such and so that whatever she said was just going to play into that. Obviously it didn't. We know that. My question is, what would have happened if she had chosen not to talk to the police, if she had retained an attorney and not set a work? Would the police still have been able to put together enough evidence against her to take her to trial to get a conviction.

I think it's an important question to ask. From the looks of it, she put a lot of thought into covering the crime up. In the hours after that murder happened, you know, she's taking the time to leave these fake footprints around. She's zip tying herself staging this scene. It seems like she really thought out a lot of different stuff in advance. and, you know, thought about the two different guys, maybe used the busboys that she had seen as, you know, potential witnesses in case anybody else saw them walking. So she put a lot of thought into it. So it's possible that she could have gotten away with it.

But then there were things that we mentioned where she's just coming forward with these glaring inconsistencies. And that helped solidify in the minds of police that something didn't add up in her story. So the more she talked, the more they had to. work with to build this case. I think at the end of the day, if Brittany had retained an attorney, the attorney may have advised Brittany to stay quiet and that may have stalled the investigation. Yeah, it's entirely possible. Now, we're glad that, you know, some of these perpetrators feel so confident that they can talk to police because, you know, ultimately in many situations, it leads to their downfall. And that's what we want. We want these people to be caught.

We don't want them to be super smart and make all of the right decisions because it could lead to them getting away with murder. In December 2017, the Lulu Lemon store where Jaina died was moved to a different location nearby. A stained glass window featuring the word love had been installed at the old location as a memorial to Jana. During the relocation, they preserved the stained glass window and gave it to Jana's family. Jana's brother Hugh told NBC News Washington, it obviously means a lot to us, as it represents Jaina. We definitely wanted to preserve that and have it in our home. Jana's family created the Jana Troxel Murray Foundation, which has provided scholarships since being created. Jana's mom, Phyllis Murray, told ABC News. People have always commented that it was her

smile and it was her hugs, whether she knew you for two seconds or years. Those were her greetings. She wanted people to feel comfortable and happy. Jana's father, David Murray, added, Janah was one of the most fearless people I've ever known in my life. And that's as objective as a father can get, saying, I really admired her for everything she did and everything she represented. Jana's obituary read in part, Jana loved animals, dance and travel. She also carried with her an extensive volunteer resume involving many different organizations, Jaina loved life on the edge and to the fullest. Multiple adventures in all phases of completion

described the way this incredible young woman lived her life. Sadly, it was a life that was cut way too short by Brittany Norwood, apparently over a pair of pants that Brittany shoplifted. So there's a lot of incredibly sad things about this case. You think about Jaina's family. She was this incredible young woman. She was volunteering. She had her whole life in front of her that they'll never get to experience with her.

But it's this last line that really jumps out at me. Obviously, we know Brittany Norwood murdered Jana Murray, but over a pair of pants. I mean, you know, when you boil it down to that, it is. so hard for me to fathom. Now, I get it. Nobody wants to be accused of shoplifting. Nobody wants to lose their job, but you're going to murder a young woman inflict over 300 injuries to try to cover that up. I mean, you know, so many murders are senseless. All of them are essentially senseless. This one, man, it might take the cake, though. Yeah, especially if you consider what consequences

Brittany would have faced had she been confronted about the shoplifting. You know, maybe she certainly would have been fired, I would think. But as far as criminal charges, I mean, I don't know what that carries with it, but I would think probation or something like that. It's not like a hardcore crime. So she could have, you know, started over and said, okay, I've got to learn from this and moved on. and at this point she'd be a free woman and Jaina would still be alive.

It seems like there's something else going on with Brittany that maybe just happened to come to the surface with Jaina and that maybe down the line this would have happened with someone else because to commit this brutal of a crime, the overkill that was involved, I think there might be something else going on and this shoplifting was just a tipping point. Yeah, I actually understand what you're saying and I agree with you. with you, it seems odd to me that Brittany Norwood would commit this type of devastation, this type of brutality over this pair of pants. Now, they're expensive pants. Lulmin, they don't make cheap stuff. They're expensive. But one pair of pants is not going to rise to

the level of some serious, serious charge. It's not going to do it. But, you know, it's not going to do But so, you know, I'm with you in thinking that it could have been that she was just kind of a ticking time bomb. Like there was something simmering under the surface with her that was going to come out at some point. And it just happened to be this accusation of shoplifting, the thought that she was going to be turned in that caused her to explode. But if not this, probably something else, right? Is that what you're thinking? Yeah, for the amount of rage that was involved in this crime, I think there was something else going on.

And I just think, and we may never know unless Britney opens up, but maybe she was prone to this kind of violence, and it just happened to surface on this day. So as we wrap this one up more, if I want to go back to the police, the investigators, really kind of following the, evidence because I do think it's so important. And we cover a lot of cases where we see that they don't, you know,

always kind of do it that way. They get locked in on a suspect and, you know, sometimes we've seen where pieces of evidence that lead in another direction have been ignored. And obviously that's not good. It doesn't seem like that happened here. Now, I don't think that we are dealing with a. criminal mastermind in the form of Brittany Norwood. Yeah, she did a lot of things to try to cover up what she did, but she was sloppy.

She wasn't great at it. And police were able to fairly quickly discover the evidence that kind of pointed in her direction. Yeah, I think the biggest clue that she overlooked was those shoes that she had stashed in the store. to be found later on with blood on them. And they were obviously the shoes that made these prints that they found in the store. Had she ran them out to a dumpster or something, disposed of them someplace else?

That was a big clue that maybe wouldn't have tied everything together as much as it did. But that definitely solidified it, in my mind, at least, that she was involved in this crime. It's just another example to me of, you know, how some of these people think that, they're much smarter than what they really are. So, you know, trying to cover the, the footprints. I get that. But then just stashing them in a clothes rack thinking, well, you know, I'm the victim. They're not going to be searching.

They're not going to find it. I just think, you know, she thought she was smarter than what she was. She thought she could outsmart the police and she was wrong. But that's it for our episode on the Lulu Lilloo. Lemon murders, Brittany Norwood, and the murder of Jana Murray. If you love the show and you haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, give us a five-star rating. You can leave a review. Also keep telling your friends, word of mouth about the podcast is absolutely huge.

If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at CriminologyPod. You can also find us on Facebook by going to facebook.com slash criminology podcast or by joining our Facebook discussion group, Criminology podcast discussion and fans. So that is it for another episode of criminology. But Morph and I will be back with all of you next Saturday night with a brand new episode. Until then, for Mike. And Morph. We'll talk to you next week.

Take care, everyone.