Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - This Woman is a Liar // The Brittany Norwood Murder Story

Episode Date: October 14, 2026

Brittany Norwood is a former Lululemon employee convicted of the brutal 2011 murder of her coworker, Jayna Murray, inside a Bethesda, Maryland retail store. 

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is lying to the police and she's really, really good at it. Now the woman's name is Brittany and Britney is 27 during this time living in Washington DC and Britney has a problem. She's a crook. She loves taking things that don't belong to her. Like in college she was on the school soccer team and some of her teammates suspected her of stealing cash and clothes from them from the locker room. She straight up left a salon one time without paying. On another occasion a salon owner at a different salon, accused her of taking $1,000 out of her purse. One time she had a job at a Lulu Lemon store and her co-workers suspected her of stealing from

there, although they couldn't prove it. So anyway, so now it's 2011, and she has a brand new job at a different Lulu Lemon store in Bethesda, Maryland, near where she lives. I guess a new place hired her. Anyway, so the employees there already suspect that she's been stealing and taking things from the store. They just can't prove it at this point. And one day she's at work working a shift and she decides that she's gonna take some shit from here too. And at some point during the shift she takes a hundred dollar pair of yoga pants and puts them in her purse. There are hundred dollars because stuff at Lulu Lemon is just way overpriced. Anyway, eventually the store closes and Brittany and another employee, this woman, Jaina,

they start closing everything out, locking up the front door and getting everything settled to shut down the store for the night. And the last thing they do before they leave is check each other's bags. Because a lot of retail stores have an anti-theft protocol where the employees are required to check each other's bags before they leave for any stolen merchandise. So Brittany looks in Jana's bag, and she doesn't find any stolen items, of course, but then Jaina looks. in Brittany's bag, and there she finds the stolen yoga pants. So she's like, uh, did you pay for these? And Britney lies to her, like, oh, I bought those. I just didn't get a receipt.

And Jaina, she's chill about it. She doesn't make a big scene. She lets Britney leave the store, because she has the keys, and it's her job to lock up behind her. But after Britney leaves, Jaina calls the manager, and she tells her, I think Britney is a little bit of her I think Brittany is stealing stuff. And the manager is like, all right, we'll deal with it in the morning.

And so, Jana's like, cool, and she leaves. Meanwhile, Brittany is walking back to her car, and she's silently freaking out. She knows that Jaina caught her stealing. And if Jana tells the managers, she's definitely going to lose her job. And she decides that she can't let that happen. And she quickly comes up with a plan. First she gets her phone and she calls one of their other co-workers who works there with them and she says, hey, I left my wallet in the store. Can you send me Jaina's number so that she can come

let me in? And so she gets Jana's number and then she immediately calls Jaina and she tells her this made-up story about how she forgot her wallet inside the building and she asked Jana to meet her there so that she can come and unlock the door and then she can get her wallet. And Jaina, you know, she's a good person. She wants to help her get her stuff back. So she says okay. Now here is where the story gets violent. So Jaina drives back to the store and she double parks out front, because she's not going to be there long, you know, just long enough to let her in. Then she goes and she unlocks the door for Brittany. Now, Brittany doesn't know that Jaina had already called the manager. So she starts trying to charm and convince her

to not tell the manager like, hey girl, can we just keep me taking the yoga pants between us? And we don't know exactly how Jaina responds, but she probably tells Brittany something like no, or it's too late. And this apparently

pisses Brittany off. And so she starts screaming at Jaina, and soon they're screaming at each other. And suddenly, pout, Brittany attacks her. And these two get into a fight. With Britney, as the aggressor. And so Brittany

grabs a hammer and she hits her with it. Then she grabs a wrench and then she hits her with it. And then she grabs a metal mannequin peg and she hits her with it. Then she grabs a screwdriver and she stabs her with it. Then she grabs a box cutter and she slices her with it. Then she

grabs a knife and she stabs her. And ultimately Jaina doesn't survive all these attacks. She actually had 331 injuries. That's how bad Brittany messed her up. Now, next door to this Lulu Lemon is an Apple store,

and a manager there and an employee and a security guard were able to hear this whole fight through the walls. That's how loud and chaotic it was. Anyway, now, Brittany needs to cover up this crime, and she decides she's going to stage the scene and make it look like she and Jaina were both attacked by someone else, Like some other random guys just broke in and attacked them while they were closing and then robbed the place. And for whatever strange reason, this particular store has no security cameras during this time.

So this plan might actually work. And so Brittany grabs Jana's car keys and she moves her car about three blocks away to a different parking lot. Because her being double parked might actually poke holes in the story she's about to tell the police. And so after that, she grabbed. grabs a pair of size 14 men's running shoes from the store, and she puts them on, and she walks around the place leaving bloody footprints, trying to make it look like a big man was there. Then she tosses a bunch of mops and brooms and chairs around to make it look like a struggle went on.

After that, she opens the safe in the store, and she removes bags of money from it, and she stashes them somewhere, not sure where, and this is to make it look like a robbery. And finally, she gives herself some superficial injuries so it looks like she was attacked too by these mysterious attackers. And then after everything is all set the way she wants it, she zip ties her hands and feet and she lays on the ground waiting to be found.

Hours later, at 8 a.m. the next morning, the manager shows up, and she sees all the chaos and she calls police. And so police show up and they find Jane his body, but they also find Brittany, who's laying there, zip tied up, pretending to be half conscious. And so she's taken to the local hospital. Meanwhile, police, they're investigating all of this. And to them, it really does look like both of these women were attacked the previous night by some random guys who broke in and took the store's money. And police even put out a

statement publicly telling the public that two dangerous masked men, are loose in Bethesda. And Lulu Lemon even puts up $125,000 reward for any information leading to the finding of these two men. And so it looks like Brittany's plan has actually worked. On two. Once Britney's lion ass pretends to be well enough to answer questions, police question her.

And she bullshuts them, of course, and she says that she left her wallet and went back to the store to get it, and while she was there with Jaina, two masked men followed them in and zip tied them and then sexually assaulted them and then murdered Jaina. And Brittany is in fact a really good liar. I mean, everything they ask her, she has an immediate response for, and she's doing well in this. However, despite how good she is at this, police become skeptical of her story. Because it's just not adding up. Like the bloody footprints, the attackers allegedly left? The men's shoes are still in the store. Like did the attackers

break in and then take off their shoes and leave them in the store and then leave the place barefoot? Also, the Apple store employees who heard the fighting through the walls only heard two women's voices. They didn't hear any men. And probably most damning is the police find some of Brittany's blood in Jana's car. And so, bam, police arrest her. There's a mugshot. And ultimately, Brittany goes to trial, she's found guilty, and she gets sentenced to life in prison.