Newly released evidence in the Lululemon murder case shows how police were able to determine the victim’s coworker and killer was lying.
Police interrogation video shows Brittany Norwood telling the tale she created to throw police off the track in the days after Jayna Murray’s death.
Police began interviewing Brittany Norwood in her hospital room after the March 11 murder of Jayna Murray inside the Bethesda Row store. When Murray was found dead inside the store the morning of March 12, Norwood was at the scene, injured and bound by a zip tie. She told police two masked men dressed in black, one tall and one short, attacked and sexually assaulted Murray and herself the previous night after closing.
On March 18, police charged Norwood. Authorities said Norwood bound herself and staged the scene, putting on men's size 14 sneakers to make large, bloody footprints in the store to represent the tall man she said attacked them.
The interrogation video shows Norwood’s story changing.
Police found Murray’s blood and Norwood’s blood in Murray’s car, which police said Norwood moved after the murder because it was double-parked in front of the store. When she admitted moving the car, police asked why she didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to leave.
“People would probably ask, well, why didn’t you just keep on going and not go back?” a detective asked.
“Because I was scared for my life,” Norwood said.
“OK, if you were in the car and you were driving away …”
“Because I knew they knew where I lived.”
“OK, but then couldn’t you, like, go get a cop or something like that and tell them that these guys are in the store?”
“Yes, I could have. I was scared.”
“Because people will probably ask stuff like that.”
Norwood was sentenced last month to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“I think the interviews were critical to us, and what you saw was an evolving story,” Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy said. “What was being told to us the first day she was found and those first two interviews was not what she was saying the following Friday. It was the evolution of the story and then when you can see these things side by side, members of the public will get to see what the police saw and see those inconsistencies, not the least of which was it wasn’t until the fourth interview on March 16 that she admits for the first time that she had actually moved Jayna’s car at the insistence of the supposed killers.”
