The Unbelievably Shocking, But True Lululemon Murder

Jonny

15 Feb 2021 — 6 min read

On a Friday night, March 11, 2011, two Lululemon employees, Jayna Murray (30), and Brittany Norwood closed the store for the night only to return minutes later when Norwood realized she left her wallet in the store. According to Brittany Norwood, when the co-workers entered the store again, two masked men (one tall and one short) snuck in the door behind them. What happened next resulted is the brutal murder of Jayna Murray and the alleged sexual assault of Brittany Norwood with a wooden coat hanger.

Jayna Murray (left) was the victim of Brittany Norwood (right). Norwood murdered Murray after she was accused of stealing merchandise from the store.

"God help me, please help me."

The Lululemon store shares it's store with a neighboring Apple retailer, who at the time of the murder had just released the iPad 2, drawing in a large presence at the store to wait in line for the official release.

On the evening of March 11th and Apple sales associate, along with a security guard, hears screaming next door in the Lululemon store. "Talk to me. Don't do this. What is going on?" A female voice screams. Eventually the voice becomes softer, "God help me, please help me."

A harrowing scene

Around 8:30am when shoppers arrived on Bethesda Ave. a female jogger and a male shopper walk through Lululemon finding overturned furniture, bloody floor, a clump of blonde hair, and multiple blood spatters covering the walls.

After Brittany Norwood violently murdered Murray, she flipped over furniture to make it appear as someone else had broken in.

The man attempts to push open a door leading to the back employee area, but finds that the motion of the door is stopped by something large. As he looks beyond the door, he sees Jayna Murray's legs sticking out from her body.

She is deceased.

She is lying in a pool of her own blood.

Her face is unrecognizable.

Police find Jayna Murray deceased and propped up against this door. She was found in a pool of her own blood.

Around the corner leading to the double bathrooms, Brittany Norwood is still alive. Her body is covered in severe lacerations, there is a large gash on her forehead, and she is calling out for help. Police will use her testimony to piece together the brutal events inside the Lululemon store.

A dream shattered, and a life destroyed

Jayna Murray, a 30-year-old from Texas, was receiving her dual master's degrees in business admin and communication.

Jayna dreamed of moving to the Pacific Northwest where she could marry her long-time boyfriend, in the process of his PH.D., and take up a career in business and marketing.

Before starting at Lululemon, she worked at Halliburton in Texas.

Jayna Murray gone too soon. She was in the process of getting her Ph.D. and would soon marry her long-time boyfriend.

Jayna was introduced to Lululemon by one of her friends, in which she decided it would be a great opportunity for her to meet like-minded people, earn money, attended free business and motivation seminars, and receive a discount on the Lululemon clothing brand.

An inside job

Jayna's dreamed ended with her life on March 11, 2011. Her killer, later determined to be Brittany Norwood, the other employee that night who staged the scene to appear as a robbery, used a variety of weapons to murder and mutilate Murray.

At the crime-scene police found several everyday items covered in Jayna's blood, including a red toolbox that the staff used labeled "everyday tools".

A toolkit containing many crafting tools. Blood was found splattered on several objects. What exactly did Jayna Murray have to endure?

Jayna Murray received over 200 strikes that night, some lacerations as small as a ball-point pen, while others as large as a quarter in size.

Rope was used to strangle Jayna before death, as determined by the rope fibers buried in her fingernails as she attempted pull down the rope to breathe.

Police found Jayna laying facedown in a pool of her own blood, an open gash to the back of her head, and her pants cut open to create the appearance that they had raped her.

However, detectives discovered she wasn't sexually assaulted, but beaten to death by Brittany Norwood, Jayna's subordinate, angry that she had caught her stealing clothing from the Lululemon store.

Photos of Jayna's appearance after death remain sealed, but it is worth noting her murder was so brutal that an open casket ceremony was not a possibility.

The attack was so violent that Jayna's hair had been ripped from her scalp.

She zip-tied her self by using her teeth

Jayna's killer, employee Brittany Norwood, also had lacerations to her body, but not severe enough to cause her death. All of her injuries were self-inflicted or accidental during her bludgeoning of Jayna's body.

Norwood was also found in the Lululemon store that morning, her hands tied behind her back with zip-ties. Detectives would later surmise that Norwood tightening the zip ties with her teeth as saliva was discovered.

Brittany Norwood murdered Jayna and then used these zipties to tie her own hands. She claimed to police that the 'intruders' had raped her.

A thief, a liar, and a killer

Before she murdered Jayna, Brittany was athletic and outgoing. She had several boyfriends, including several "sugar daddies" that she hooked up with via ads on Craigslist.

Norwood was raised in Seattle in a lower to middle class family. She was the sixth of nine siblings and the soccer star of her family. Norwood dreamed of someday playing for the U.S. Women's National Team.

Digging into Brittany Norwood's true background, detectives spotted many red flags. Brittany was a notorious thief, stealing even from family and friends, and a compulsive liar, even falsifying her own resume, claiming she graduated from Stone Ridge. She did not.

Created bloody shoe prints to stage scene

Detectives could eventually poke several holes in Brittany's re-telling of the crime. Size 14 bloody shoe prints were left all over the store, however police determined that after killing Jayna, Norwood put on those shoes (used in the shop for alterations), jumped in Jayna Murray's pool of blood, and walked around the store to simulate a large male killer.

Wearing an oversized shoe, Norwood splashed down in Murray's blood, then she walked around the store. Her goal was to show police that a large male had broken in and committed the crime, but she forgot to put prints outside the store.

No blood outside?

They did not find those same shoe prints in the outside alley, leading detectives to believe the killer never left the store, or must have removed his shoes (an unlikely scenario), before heading out the back door.

The bloody shoe prints stopped at the emergency exit. There were none present in the alley behind the Lululemon store.

Brutally murdered over $40 pair of Lululemon crops

On the night of the murder, Jayna, her manager, called Brittany out for stealing clothing from the Lululemon store.

When confronted with this accusation Brittany lied, then texted Jayna back into the shop under the ruse of needing her wallet.

As her rage of being accused of the theft mounted, Brittany unleased her hatred on Jayna, ultimately staging the scene to look like a brutal robbery.

Brittany Norwood killed Jayna Murray over a simple altercation. She will now spend her life behind bars.

A sociopath locked up without parole

Brittany Norwood is serving life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder of Jayna Murray on March 11, 2011 inside the Bethesda Lululemon store.