Not long before police say Brittany Norwood stabbed and bludgeoned Jayna Murray to death last month inside the Lululemon Athletica store in downtown Bethesda’s high-end shopping district, the two were the perfect sales team.
Murray was showing regular customer Janay Carlson items from the store’s posh running collection when Norwood walked over to chat up Carlson and help put her at ease. Norwood brought up a top Carlson had recently bought at the store.
A reconstructions of the events surrounding the killing of Jayne Murray on March 11 at Bethesda’s Lululemon Athletica store.
“When that shirt first came out, I wasn’t sure about it. You’re changing my mind,” Norwood said, according to Carlson’s recollections.
Carlson stayed and chatted awhile before walking out with new running pants, a running jacket, a shirt and a headband.
There was absolutely nothing wrong inside Lululemon, said Carlson, who was in the store for about an hour and, at times, was the only customer. Norwood was smiling, left briefly to grab some takeout food and talked about the diminishing lines for the iPad 2 at the Apple Store next door.
“It must have went wrong fast,” Carlson said.
What exactly went wrong, and why, is puzzling even to longtime detectives. Friends and former co-workers described Norwood as athletic, funny and engaging. Neither they nor police were aware of any past violence or mental illness. Police also said they did not know of any animosity between Norwood and Murray.
Murray’s slaying and the story police say Norwood concocted to cover her tracks shocked the merchants and customers in the shops along Bethesda Row.
At 9 p.m. March 11, about two hours after Carlson left the store, Norwood, 28, and Murray, 30, shut the front doors and began closing for the night. Before leaving, they checked each other’s bags, a common anti-theft procedure at Lululemon and other retail chains, law enforcement officials said.
Murray saw store items in Norwood’s bag, the officials said. Murray walked to her car and called her store manager, who said she would deal with it the next morning. It was just before 10 p.m., and minutes later, police say, Murray got a call from Norwood saying that she had left her wallet in the store and asking Murray to let her in to get it.
Detectives have different theories about the confrontation that occurred after the two got back to the store.
Perhaps Norwood, not knowing that Murray had called the manager, used the wallet as a ruse to get her back to the store and then tried to persuade her to play down what she had found in the bag. “That conversation didn’t go well,” said a law enforcement official with knowledge of the case who, like other unidentified sources, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. “Brittany had no chance of convincing Jayna to bury the truth.”
Another official described an alternate theory: Once inside the store, Murray told Norwood that she had called the manager. “When she found out, she lost it,” he said.
Either way, the two began screaming at each other — so loudly that employees in the Apple Store would later tell police they heard them, according to police charging documents. The two fought — Norwood, a 5-foot- 2, 120-pound workout fiend, and Murray, 35 pounds heavier and just as athletic.
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