Jayna Murray | Truth About My Murder | FilmRise True Crime | Forensic Files

[soft tapping] [loud crack] - [Richard] When a murder's committed, it's always a race
against time. To find the truth, to separate fact from fiction, to catch the killer and to make sure that justice is served.
But what happens when the truth vanishes with the victim? I'm Dr. Richard Shepherd and I've spent my entire career
as a forensic pathologist, performing nearly 23,000 autopsies. I've learned that the dead don't hide the truth
and they never lie. Through me, you'll be hearing directly from the victim. With the aid of a state-of-the-art laboratory,
using groundbreaking technology, I'll be investigating a series of intriguing crimes,
where from the victim's bodies I'll reveal to you the truth behind these murders.
[camera clicking] In March, 2011, the manager of the Lululemon clothing store in an upmarket shopping center in a suburb of Washington, DC
arrived to open up for the day, but once inside she found herself faced with a terrible scene.
[suspenseful music] [radar beeping] - [John] The manager of the store, Rachel, came over to open the store.
When she got there and she began to push the door open, it went open. It had not been secured, it had not been locked.
She glanced inside of the store and saw some racks that had had clothes on them had been knocked to the side.
There appeared to be maybe slightly a moan or something coming from the back room, and the lights were on
in the store. [phone dialing] - She was afraid to enter the store by herself, so she walked outside
and there was a young man waiting for the Apple store to open. She walked over to him, this young man, who she didn't know,
and said, "Look, can you do me a favor? Will you walk in my store for me? Something's not right."
So the young man walked in, she waited at the door. He walked in and he found a young woman
laying on the ground in the women's bathroom, and she was bound both by her feet and her hands.
Her face was bloody, her clothes had been ripped and torn in multiple areas, and she appeared to be unconscious.
- [Richard] That woman was Brittany Norwood, a 29-year-old employee at Lululemon.
She was still alive, but appeared badly injured. Brittany Norwood had cuts to several parts of her body.
She had a laceration on her forehead. She had a small laceration on her right hand
parallel to her thumb, and she had multiple superficial abrasions on her abdomen.
It looked like she'd been sexually assaulted because her trousers were torn and her hands were bound together by zip ties.
But there were no injuries to the neck, to the back, or to the extremities. At first sight it had all of the hallmarks of an assault,
but there was worse to come. [siren wailing] With the police on their way, the man who'd found Brittany
continued to search the premises. - He pushed through a side door that led to the back
of the store, and he found a second person, and he couldn't even open the door 'cause when he walked,
he pushed the door open, it hit against the body of a person who was laying on the floor.
He glanced inside, saw the body on the floor, quickly ran out, and the police came
and basically made the same discoveries he had made. It was very clear that the body that was behind the door,
that individual was deceased. - [Richard] Brittany was rushed to hospital with signs of life for treatment.
The deceased victim was quickly identified as the store's duty manager, 30-year-old Jayna Murray,
who had been working the previous night. Police found her in a pool of blood with a rope
around her neck and her clothing torn. - This was a brutal killing. The number of injuries that were documented at the time
of autopsy in this case were the largest number of injuries that the medical examiner's office in this state
had ever found on a single body. - [Richard] It was now up to the postmortem to determine
exactly what had happened to Jayna. When faced with a body like Jayna Murray's with so many injuries, the first question is,
where do you start? And the answer is, there are no shortcuts. As a pathologist, I examine the whole body methodically,
starting at the head and working my way right the way down to the toes. Sometimes when there's an injury that looks very likely
to be the cause of death, it can be all too easy to ignore everything else. But if you only focus on the obvious,
you can miss the truth. In Jayna's case, she was found with a rope around her neck
and there were some injuries to the chin and a ligature mark. So the most obvious conclusion
was that she'd been strangled. But if she had been strangled, you'd expect to see far more evidence in the muscles here and bruising
and damage to the blood vessels and the other structures in the neck. In Jayna's case, there simply wasn't enough damage
to her neck to explain her death. So the next step is to examine all of the other injuries,
more than 300 of them, to determine which was the fatal blow. [suspenseful music]
With fatal strangulation ruled out, an investigation was launched. A violent killer was potentially on the loose
in the small suburb of Bethesda. [music continues] [graphics thudding] - First of all, you are trying to maintain
the integrity of the crime scene. They put some crime scene tape up up front. They called out the tech services unit of scientists
that do forensics and take photographs and video. [music continues] Now, the processing of the crime scene, you know,
they did some initial work. Take DNA samples. In this case, we also took evidence of footprints track.
There were a lot of bloody footprints all over this crime scene. So at some point in time, you're processing the,
what they called, "Track and trail evidence" To determine whether or not you could get an idea
from the impressions of the shoe what were the sizes of the shoes that were walking around
in this blood. It may ultimately help you try to identify who the assailant was that caused the injuries
to these two young women. [siren wailing] - [Richard] At the hospital, Brittany was receiving urgent
medical treatment while the scene was processed. - [Angela] It's a really complicated, confused,
and very bloody scene. Jayna would've been left there while the pathologist attended and had a look at her in situ, took some samples.
Took her temperature, for example, took a sample of the fluid from her eye 'cause that's particularly useful in order to try
and determine time of death, look at the extent of rigor. So they would've been doing all of that
to try and work out when this happened, and also give an initial assessment of injuries.
And so everybody could understand generally what they were dealing with. [suspenseful music]
- As they were processing the crime scene they sent a female officer to interview Brittany at the hospital.
She was conscious, they were told, and they were trying to get leads on who was responsible
for this attack on these two young women. - [Richard] In the interview, Brittany told detectives
that she'd been working in the store with Jayna on Friday night. But after locking up and heading home,
she realized she'd left her train pass behind. - Brittany very early on, within the first hour or two,
is saying, "I forgot my card to get on the metro. I called Jayna, she had the keys to the store,
"Can you get me back in there so I can get my card to take the metro home?" As we walked back in, we were followed in by two men
all dressed in black, one taller, one shorter." [suspenseful music] - [Richard] Brittany's account was terrifying,
but for the police, it provided vital leads. Was it possible the two men had been captured on CCTV?
- As it turned out, within the first few hours of the investigation, we found out
that the Apple store next door did have an exterior camera to the rear parking lot of the establishment
and we found a photograph of two men, one taller, one shorter, all dressed in black at about 11:07 PM
in the evening. So we had a picture of two men very early on in this investigation that fit the description
that was being given by the surviving young woman who's then being treated at a local hospital.
- [Richard] The hunt was now on for the two men captured on CCTV. [eerie whirring]
[suspenseful music] On the outskirts of Washington, DC, shop assistant Brittany Norwood told police
that she and her colleague, Jayna Murray, had been the victims of a robbery at the clothing store
where they worked. She said the robbery had turned violent and resulted in Jayna's murder.
[ethereal music] [birds chirping] - ]John] Jayna Murray was an extraordinary young woman.
She, at the time of her death, had earned three master's degrees, worked in four or five different
foreign countries. She came from an affluent family. She was a brilliant young woman on the eve of,
about to get married to a young man. But this happened before. She was probably six weeks away.
[music resumes] Brittany Norwood is a great athlete. She was a great soccer player.
She was the captain of the team. And she went to a school up in Long Island. Full scholarship, soccer athlete, division one school.
[graphics thudding] - [Richard] Violent crime was a rarity in Bethesda. That it should happen to two young women
working in an upmarket clothing store shocked the community. - Bethesda Maryland is an upwardly mobile,
very high-end, expensive neighborhood to live in. Very safe, peaceful area that you would not have thought
twice about letting your adolescent kids to go down there to go to the movies or for you to go out there
for a late night stroll without a care in the world. - [Richard] By Saturday night, police had a CCTV image
of two suspects captured at the back of the store on the night of the murder. The race was on to track them down.
- [John] We sent people out door to door to knock on doors and say, "Hey, did you see anything?
I mean, this was a bizarre, vicious crime against two innocent women. Has anybody noticed anybody in the neighborhood?
You know, are any weird guys hanging around in the neighborhood? Like, can you give us a lead?"
And there were a couple of names mentioned, and the police began to run down those names
of those individuals. - [Richard] One name that kept coming up was that of a local homeless man.
He'd been seen outside the Lululemon store on the day of the murder with two men dressed in black.
- When they found him, he had some cuts and things on his body. He had actually been in the hospital on Saturday
here in the county for treatment for injuries. He claimed that he'd gotten in a fight
with another homeless man and got injuries that required medical treatment. Now, if you're a detective, they're saying,
"Go look at John." You go and you find John and John has physical injuries on him.
This attack are brutal physical attacks, and he's a little bit out there. His story seemed pretty suspect
'cause he was the guy in the neighborhood that was kind of strange. Everybody was like, "Hey, who's that guy?"
- [Richard] While detectives quizzed the homeless man, back at the crime scene, the police stepped up their search
for clues, and they quickly discovered many objects that might have been used in Jayna's murder.
- Knives. Rope. Hammers. Box cutters. Look, I think that were probably close to 10 different
instrumentalities that were used. - [Richard] These weapons appeared to have come from
a red toolbox belonging to the store found on top of Jayna's body. But the postmortem would reveal the truth
about which one had killed her. [suspenseful music] [pen scratching] Jayna's body was found with more than 330 injuries
all over her body. There were cuts, bruises, abrasions, lacerations, all of which could have been caused by the hammer, wrench
and knife that were found at the scene. We know that Jayna fought back because more than a hundred of the injuries were defensive,
revealing that she was using her arms and her legs in a vain attempt to protect herself.
But she would've been very quickly immobilized by this sustained and savage attack
that left her covered in blood and bruises. Bruising and bleeding occur when the heart is still beating,
so these hundreds of injuries must have been inflicted when Jayna was still alive.
So the question remains, what was it that finally killed her? The ferocity and number of injuries certainly supported
the working theory that one or two men had overpowered and attacked her. To help build up a picture of what had actually happened,
the police began photographing the bloodstains found at the crime scene for experts to interpret.
Dr. Angela Gallop is one of the world's leading forensic scientists and has studied the details
of this case. - [Angela] Blood pattern analysis is one of the most powerful forms evidence we have
in trying to work out what happened at a crime scene. When blood is shed from the body, it can form
so many different kinds of patterns and each different kind of pattern tells you something
about how it arose. - [Richard] Of most interest to investigators were the blood stains in the storeroom
where Jayna's body was found. - You can see really large blood stains, which are too large
to contain the amount of blood that's in them. So you see these elliptical stains with these vertical runs,
and that tells you that they have come from a breached artery, so presumably from some of the knife wounds
that Jayna suffered. And so they've been pumped out of the body so they're under that kind of internal force.
Jayna was still alive at this point, obviously. And so you get these big heavy droplets
coming out on the wall, and because they're so heavy with blood, the blood can't just stick on the wall
so it runs down in vertical drips, so they're really characteristic. And then there are a lot of stains of varying sizes,
but a lot of them very small, which are what we call impact spatter. So they've been created by blood being split up
by some external force. And here we know that there were sort of blunt instruments used.
So as the implement struck Jayna's head, probably it forced blood out into these droplets
and forced them away onto the walls. - Look, if you look at where Jayna was found
and you look where the blood is at about the six foot level, there's almost none.
She was standing when the attack occurred, probably facing her attacker, went to her knees
'cause it was quite a bit of blood at about the three and a half foot level. She was probably on her knees for a while.
Then she went down to the ground probably protecting her head. And the vast majority of the injuries, she is down,
probably not even facing her attacker, but the blood spatter tells you all of this.
- [Richard] The blood pattern analysis supported the pathologist's findings. Jayna had suffered a prolonged and vicious attack,
and it matched the description Brittany had given from her hospital bed. [suspenseful music]
- [Richard] The horror of Jayna's ordeal was slowly being revealed. So what else did the blood patterns show?
- [Angela] You also have got large amounts of pooled blood, which is what happens when a body lies there
and is just draining out, the blood's draining out of it through the injuries. And connected with that you get, in this case, very clear
shoe marks, so marks of whoever was around at the time, walking in some of this pool blood and then walking
to different parts of the premises. So you also get that. So lots of interesting and connected patterns.
- [Richard] And it was from those connected patterns that the police would uncover their next piece of evidence.
- [John] There's blood everywhere, but there within the blood there are clearly two different distinct
shoe impressions. One of those shoe impressions is a man sized 14 shoe. - [Richard] Could those prints have been from the shoes
worn by the tall attacker? It seemed possible until one of the detectives moved a table
to reveal a shelf and two pairs of trainers. - [John] A Montgomery County detective found these shoes,
looked at them, and he looked at the bottom of the shoe, looked at the impression on the bottom of the shoe,
goes, "That impression exactly matches that blood impression over here on the floor."
So now you have what appears to be the shoes that caused the impressions, but they're cleaned
and they're put away on a shelf. Now, so you're beginning to say, "Would a person do this vicious murder,
assault these women, walk all over this crime scene with shoes they found in the store, wash them off
and put them into this shelf?" No. - [Richard] Something just didn't add up about this crime scene.
And as time ticked on, the pressure was mounting to find Jayna's killer. - There are so many little loose ends all over the place
in this case, and forensic scientists and investigators absolutely abhor loose ends.
[graphic thuds] [siren wailing] - Back in 2011, police were chasing all possible leads
into the killing of a young shop assistant in an upmarket clothing store on the outskirts
of Washington, DC. This case became known as the Lululemon murder. At the crime scene, whilst police continued to search
for clues in their hunt for the killer of Jayna Murray, her coworker Brittany Norwood was in hospital,
revealing to detectives the horror of the attack. - [Richard] Brittany's torn clothing
seemed to support her story. And in the store room nearby, Jayna Murray had also been
found with her trousers cut open. So did she suffer a similar fate? - Brittany is telling us, besides the fact that she was not
in a position to help Jayna because the man was attacking her sexually, but she could hear effectively
and essentially the same thing happened to Jayna with the other man. They sort of divided them up, one with her
and one with Jayna. - [Richard] So were Brittany's claims backed up by the medical evidence?
- There was a sexual assault nurse expert who did in fact examine Brittany Norwood.
This is the hangar that she said she was being sexually assaulted with. It was a scary looking instrumentality.
If what had happened to her had happened, there would've been massive internal injuries.
And despite her description of what happened to her, she had no vaginal injuries whatsoever.
She could present a certain presentation, but the expert testimony did not support the version
of her story about what had happened to her. - [Richard] The police were becoming suspicious
of Brittany Norwood. So did the pathology confirm her claims about Jayna Murray?
Norwood told police that two men had raided the store and that they'd sexually assaulted both her and Jayna.
And when Jayna's body was found, a hole had been cut in her leggings, but an internal examination showed there was no evidence
of a sexual assault. So Jayna's body revealed that Norwood was lying. What else had she lied about?
With suspicions mounting about Brittany Norwood, the police reviewed their evidence,
beginning with the first photos taken of her on the morning of the attack. And to the experienced eye, something didn't add up.
[graphics thud] - Her story is, the initial story was she was attacked, assaulted, tied up, and then left there
and she slipped into unconsciousness on the floor. Well, but when you looked at her that day,
there was no blood in her hair. If you lay like this, gravity will make some blood seep down into your hair.
No blood in her hair. And the blood went straight down her face. Now, the only way you get blood this way is if I'm bleeding,
I stand up, the blood goes down this way. But if I'm this way, the way she claims she was,
the way she was in the picture, the blood would be in her hair and the blood would've flowed back into her hair this way.
It would not be this way, 'cause that's what we jokingly say that even in Bethesda gravity works.
[suspenseful music] - [Richard] Meanwhile, further examination of the shoe patterns found at the crime scene had revealed
more confusing results. There were only two present. Brittany's shoe print and the size 14 trainer,
and neither followed a believable pattern. - Well, I think there is the thing about the footprints
and purpose, you know, where the footprints went at the scene and whether that reflected
what was supposed to have happened there according to Norwood. Oh yes, they went there.
This is what happened there. And then with blood on their soles, they went there and did that, they went there and did that,
and then they escaped there and they had to do this to get out of that. You know, here I'm not quite so sure
that it's as coherent as that. - [Richard] Investigators discovered that the size 14
trainer prints mysteriously ended at the sink in the bathroom where Brittany was found.
But why? They'd have to use a specialist chemical enhancement technique to find out.
- There are a wide range of different sorts of enhancement techniques, and some of them are used for fingerprints,
just bringing up fingerprints that you can't see because of the sweat that they contain.
You can get that to react with certain sorts of chemicals and it can give you a color change
and make it much more visible to the naked eye. And the same is true of blood. You get it to, you know, different chemicals
to react in a different way. - [Richard] In this case, a purple chemical stain showed instant results.
The sink had been covered with blood. Could this have been where the size 14 trainers were cleaned
before being put back on the shelf? It was yet another puzzle for the police to solve.
- So I think as, you know, you think about this, who would've known about that? Who would've known about the toolbox
and all the weapons that were available? You know, all of these things make you wonder
whether or not it wasn't just an inside job. - [Richard] With evidence mounting, the police continued
their door-to-door inquiries, keeping an open mind about who might have been responsible
for this shocking crime. - We now interview manager and the assistant manager of the Apple store directly next door.
And they give us a piece of information we didn't have before. The woman who was the assistant manager heard an argument,
a verbal argument between two women. She heard things like, "Tell me what's going on.
Tell me what's going on. Don't do this. Oh my God, somebody help me." She heard this, but the voices were of two women.
[suspenseful music] - [Richard] The argument seemed to be coming from Lululemon next door.
What happened next was captured on the Apple store's internal CCTV at 10:14 Friday evening.
- [John] And she went and summoned the manager of the Apple store and said, "Look, should we call somebody?"
At some point in time, for whatever reason, those two individuals who heard that conversation
discussed it, and ultimately the decision was made, "It was just an argument between two employees,
we're staying out of it" And they did nothing. - [Richard] This revelation stunned police.
Was this an argument between Brittany and Jayna? And if so, had the men caught on CCTV
been a red herring all along? - [John] We found those men. They were two gentlemen who had just gotten off of work.
They worked at a Tex-Mex restaurant that was on the corner. They were dishwashers
and they were on their way to their cars to go home at the end of their shift. They had nothing to do with the crime.
- [Richard] Not only that, but the police also released the homeless man they'd been questioning
after they tracked down the man he said he'd fought with and confirmed his story.
But there was another twist to come, this time involving a phone call on the night of the murder
from Jayna Murray to Rachel, the manager of the Lululemon store. - Jayna Murray, who was our victim,
who died this terrible death here. When she left the store, she immediately called Rachel
and said to Rachel, "I caught Brittany stealing tonight from the store." And she claims that she, that, you know,
I'm making this name up, that Mary sold her these shorts. She had just stuck them in her bag
and she was stealing them. And so I think that there was a failed attempt by Brittany to convince Jayna that everything was fine,
that she had paid for the items that she had. Jayna could not confirm that, but brought it immediately to the attention
of the store manager when she got to her car that night to drive home. - [Richard] Despite being found apparently unconscious,
covered in blood and then claiming to have been attacked and sexually assaulted, it seemed Brittany Norwood
was fast becoming the prime suspect in this brutal murder. - I'd say Saturday, Sunday, Monday.
I think this entire community embraced Brittany Norwood and felt awful for this young woman who had suffered
what appeared to be an unspeakable terror at the hands of a stranger when she was simply going back
to get a train card. But the story began to unravel when you heard about it was a fight between women.
When you see that the shoes that are involved are there, that she was accused of theft,
bit by bit by bit the story began to crumble. - [Richard] Meanwhile, the police had found Jayna's car
half a mile from the store, and there were traces of blood in it they suspected were Brittany's.
To test their theory, the lead detective invited Brittany to the station for what he said was routine fingerprinting.
But they'd set a trap. [suspenseful music] [graphics thudding] - And he asks a very simple question,
"Do you know what Jayna's car looked like?" And her exact response is, "Well, I think I saw it once,
but I'm really not sure." She leaves. Police let her leave. The next day she calls and says,
"Look, I need to tell you something. Something I've not been truthful with you about."
And they said, "Well, come on down." She comes down, her brother drives her there.
And she now says "Something I've left out." [suspenseful music] [suspenseful whirring]
- In Maryland, police investigating the Lululemon murder were closing in on Jayna Murray's killer
as her body finally began to give up the truth about what and who had killed her.
- Thanks for coming back in. - [Richard] Six days after Jayna's murder, her coworker,
Brittany Norwood, was at the police station to explain what she knew about Jayna's car.
It had been found with traces of blood inside half a mile away from the crime scene.
The police suspected it had been moved from outside the store by the killer. Brittany still claimed that was one of the two men
who had attacked them. - [Richard] With Brittany sticking to what police knew was a false story, they brought her brother and sister in
to the interview room and spelled out what they believed had happened. - [John] She was never overly emotional.
She was quiet. Probably the most that she ever left her guard down. And this is a police tactic.
"I'm gonna leave you alone with your brother." And when she talked to her brother, which is beautiful,
the brother says, "Don't worry about it. They're not allowed to listen in. I looked around, there's no cameras here."
We were filming the entire thing. - He did a brilliant job of interrogating his own sister
as we watched. - [Richard] But the motive was clear. Brittany had been exposed and reported by Jayna
as a shoplifter. - Without any question, Brittany asked Jayna to come back. She said she had forgotten this bus token
to get onto the train. I think that was a complete lie. I thought she called her back to basically say to her,
"Look, I'll put the pants back. Please don't report me." Jayna comes back in and she said,
"It's too late, I've already called." And Brittany goes nuts on her. That was when the decision was made
that she had to be arrested. - [Richard] The police charged Brittany Norwood with first degree murder.
[eerie music] [graphics thudding] At the trial, it was up to the prosecutors to show
that Jayna's murder was premeditated. - Now, as a lawyer, the fact that she changed
instrumentalities, the fact that she struck her as many times, made it easier to make
a premeditated argument. And there were many, many facts that made that argument very easy
and very logical for me to make, and for a jury to understand. The killing had to take at least 20 minutes
because Jayna wouldn't die. Now, the primary murder weapon was a merch peg. It was about eight pounds.
It was about 15 to 16 inches long, Weighed about eight pounds, and it was metal.
It was very sturdy 'cause it would go into a bracket in a wall, and then it would hang like this.
And then you could take a hanger and hang clothes on it. And the merch peg, which was used
like you might use a hammer, but that was what caused the most massive injuries to the back of her head,
which included six skull fractures. And these injuries were vicious. You could literally see the imprint
of this merch peg into her skull. - It had been a brutal and sustained attack. But what did Jayna's body reveal about the weapon
that finally killed her? Of the 331 injuries, 37 were to the head with no less than 26 to the right side
of the face alone. This repeated blunt force trauma to the head has resulted in severe bruising to the brain.
It's the type of injury you might see in someone from a car accident. The skull is effectively a closed box.
So if there's bleeding inside, it creates a huge amount of pressure because the blood has nowhere to go to.
And the effect of pressure on the brain can be devastating. And although it can be lethal,
it doesn't necessarily kill you quickly. The postmortem concluded that it wasn't the blunt force
trauma to Jayna's head that had caused her death. When Jayna's body was found, she'd lost a lot of blood
from her numerous injuries, but only one was clearly the cause of death. At the back of the neck, there was a stab wound
consistent with a large kitchen knife. The knife had been used with such force that it had penetrated the neck, chipping a vertebra,
severing the spinal cord, piercing the skull, and finally terminating deep within her brain.
Severing the spinal cord this high up in the neck will cut the nerves responsible for the most basic functions
of life like keeping the heart and the lungs working. It's simply not a survivable injury,
and Jayna would've been dead within a minute. Jayna's battered body proved that this had been an assault
with deadly intent, and added to the evidence of Jayna's murder being premeditated.
- The last knife that killed her, it was on the other side of the store in a kitchen area,
and they used it to cut bagels. But she had to leave Jayna and go and get the knife,
come back, kneel on top of her, and deliver the final blow. She basically had to finish what she was doing.
- [Richard] With Jayna dead, Brittany had begun staging the crime scene. Opening tills, making the bloody footprints,
and giving herself superficial knife wounds. But she made one final mistake. - [John] She's laying in blood on the floor,
supposedly, right? If you're laying in blood, it should be encrusted and dried on the back of the clothes you have on.
Reality, there was no blood in the back of the clothes she was laying on the floor in, no blood,
which means she created that scene. She went over to where Jayna was, probably with some kind of a towel,
soaked it in Jayna's blood, brought it over, put it underneath where she was. Now she's gonna lay in that blood,
but she's not gonna lay in that blood for 10 hours. By the time she lays in it, it's dry
'cause nothing transfers to her clothing. She never laid down in that spot where she's found
until 10 seconds before the person walked in the store. [graphics thudding] [eerie music]
- [Richard] It took the jury just 18 minutes to find Brittany Norwood guilty of first degree murder.
She was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. - It's one of the cases that I'm most proud of.
Jayna Murray was an extraordinary young woman. She was not the person who was found on the floor
in Lululemon, she was much more than that. She was a very, very special, brilliant young woman.
[music continues] - Jayna Murray suffered appalling injuries at the hands of Norwood.
She sustained over 300 wounds to her body, including blunt force trauma to her skull.
Norwood used weapons like a hammer, wrench, a knife to inflict these injuries, finally killing Jayna
by severing her spinal cord. Norwood will spend her life in prison for what she did.
Despite using all her guile to stage the murder and make it look like a robbery, Jayna's body didn't lie.
It revealed the terrible truth about her murder, ensuring that in the end, justice was served.
[upbeat music] [music continues] [music continues] [music continues]

Dr Richard Shepherd examines the murder of Jayna Murray who on reporting a theft at a clothing store in the Washington D.C. suburb of Bethesda, Maryland, was killed by a co-worker.

In The Truth About My Murder, Dr. Richard Shepherd showcases a state-of-the-art digital autopsy table featuring digitally scanned sample bodies to investigate a series of intriguing murders where the victims' bodies help reveal the truth behind horrific crimes.

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Brief Summary

Brittany Norwood was convicted of murdering Jayna Murray in a staged robbery at a Lululemon store in Bethesda, Maryland.

Key points

The Lululemon Murder. A shocking crime in a peaceful suburb leaves two women in peril.
Brittany's Terrifying Account. Brittany Norwood's description of the attack raises crucial questions for detectives.
Suspicion Falls on Brittany. As evidence mounts, police begin to doubt Brittany Norwood's version of events.
The Argument Next Door. Witnesses heard a heated argument between two women, raising suspicions about the crime.
Brittany Becomes the Prime Suspect. Brittany Norwood, initially a victim, is now the main suspect in Jayna's murder.
The Brutal Attack Revealed. Jayna's body showed signs of a vicious attack, leading to a premeditated murder charge.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This was a brutal killing.

Richard describes the severity of Jayna's injuries after the murder.

4:57WatchFeb 14, 2026

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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