The Yoga Store Murder (10 page)

“I think that this is the year we’re going to go all the way!” Brittany wrote in a paragraph for that squad’s program when she was a junior. “I hope to play soccer throughout my college years, and someday play on the U.S. Women’s National Team.”

The only time Brittany ever did anything that gave her coaches pause was after the final game of the season in her junior year.

It happened on the way home from a game 140 miles away on the border of Oregon. The game had been a big deal, with the winner advancing closer to the state finals, played before hundreds of her fellow students who had made the trip to watch. And for the first time all season, Brittany hadn’t been the fastest player on the field—an honor that went to twin sisters on the opposing team who zipped by Brittany all game while leading their squad to a 2–1 win. Brittany and her teammates boarded a bus for the trip home. A short time later, they pulled off Interstate 5 to an exit filled with fast-food places. Their coaches gave them each $6 and told them to be back in fifteen minutes. Everyone returned except Brittany and a teammate. Head coach Brandon Frederick asked the other players where they were, couldn’t get an answer, and began searching the fast-food restaurants with his assistant coach. After ninety minutes, the coaches felt they had no choice but to continue the trip home.

It was only after returning that the coaches learned Brittany and her teammate were safe: they’d jumped into the car of other students who’d pulled into the same fast-food area. The coaches called both players’ parents in for a meeting. Earl and Larkita Norwood were serious and apologetic, reflecting the anxiety their daughter had put everyone through. Afterward, Frederick’s assistant coach spoke to Brittany.

“What were you thinking?” she asked.

“We felt bad because we lost,” Brittany said nonchalantly.

Brittany did well her senior year, finishing high school with a B average and a soccer career that attracted attention from coaches at large universities in Washington State, Oregon, Nevada, North Carolina, and New York. She visited the New York school—Stony Brook University on Long Island—during a snowstorm, loved the place, and enrolled there.

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The choice, so far from home, surprised her parents. But on Long Island, Brittany stood out on campus with a big smile and a decidedly non-northeastern accent that pronounced “Hi” and “How are you?” as if exclamation points were needed. She studied sociology but struggled, winding up on academic probation by the end of her freshman year and putting her soccer scholarship in danger. She practiced with the soccer team but didn’t play games, a common practice for first-year college athletes called redshirting, which allows them to extend college to five years. By her sophomore year, though, Brittany picked up her grades and exploded on the soccer field—starting all nineteen games and earning an award as the best rookie among the nine teams in Stony Brook’s athletic conference. Her coach, Sue Ryan, said in a news release that Brittany had the mental makeup of all great defenders: “Brittany hates losing more than she likes winning.”

Teammates were initially drawn to her. Brittany showed up on the team bus with snacks and would do things like give out her blanket if it was cold or bring a friend a favorite sandwich. The friendships extended off the field. One of her teammates recalled telephoning Brittany at 8:00 A.M. because she was having a meltdown over a boyfriend. Brittany walked across the snow-covered campus to hang out with her. The two would go shopping at a nearby mall, or eat out at restaurants, with Brittany often picking up the tab.

But her friend’s wallet kept disappearing, something she first chalked up to misplacing it. She told several teammates, who stunned her with a warning: it was probably Brittany. They suspected Brittany of going into lockers, stealing textbooks, and reselling them. Her friend also couldn’t track down a Versace shirt. She and her teammates finally confronted Brittany, who broke down and admitted it, but said she wouldn’t do it again. They warned other students about her.

“Brittany’s really fun to hang with,” they would say. “But be careful: she steals and she lies.”

Joanna Katz, who played on the school’s lacrosse team, received one such warning. She was cautious, but enjoyed Brittany’s company and liked how Brittany didn’t seem to take herself and events in life too seriously. “Joanna, get real,” was one of Brittany’s favorite phrases. During a summer break, Katz got a job tending bar and carried a lot of cash from her tips. She found herself clutching her purse around Brittany, even as she enjoyed her company. At one point, she couldn’t find $60 after Brittany had been at her place. It was all so strange—the relatively small-value items, the insistence from Brittany that everything was fine. “She would look you dead in the face and say she didn’t know where it was,” Katz would later say.

In 2003, Brittany’s fourth year at Stony Brook and third season on the field, she played in only twelve of nineteen soccer games. By then, teammates had taken their complaints to their coach. Brittany and the team parted ways, with accounts differing over how it happened. But the result was clear, and it quickly punctured everything: not only her dreams of playing for the U.S. national team, but her identity on campus and, even more importantly, the scholarship that paid for her classes. By the fall of 2004 Brittany was out of school completely, just eleven credits shy of graduating.

*

Leaving school, Brittany moved to the Washington, D.C., area, where her two sisters Marissa and Candace already lived, and soon were joined by a third, Heather. To many who asked, even family members, Brittany claimed to have graduated from Stony Brook but that a hang-up over tuition loans had kept her from being allowed to attend the graduation ceremony.

But, of course, she didn’t really have a degree, certainly not one that an employer could verify, and her work experience was limited. Brittany got a job as a teller for Bank of America at a branch in the city. One day, a dentist with offices down the street, Dr. Maury Branch, walked in and the two struck up a conversation. They hit it off, and by 2006, the two were not only dating, but Brittany was working in the dental practice as an office manager. But, over time, Maury found things not adding up—like whether or not Brittany had her degree—and he broke up with her, and she left the practice in 2007.

It was not an easy breakup. Indeed, it prompted what Maury described as a series of bizarre events that prompted him and his new girlfriend, Marjorie Noel, to go to the D.C. Superior Court to file restraining orders against Brittany. In sworn statements given to the court, they made several assertions.

Brittany had called weekly after the breakup. Maury said he just wanted to be friends. One Sunday afternoon, Brittany texted him to say she was coming over. He ignored the message and left the house. A short time later, when he and Marjorie returned, they discovered a number of Marjorie’s belongings missing: a Movado watch, a pair of diamond earrings, a bottle of Vera Wang perfume, a Lacoste polo shirt, checks from her checkbook, her house keys, her car keys, and her cell phone. It had been Brittany, they asserted, who still had a key to the place and must have also learned the burglar-alarm code by watching Maury punch it in. Later, Marjorie found her cell phone in her car, and by then Brittany must have figured out the number. She called, Marjorie picked up and said hello, and Brittany hung up.

In statements filed with the court, Marjorie alleged she was in “immediate danger,” and asked that Brittany be ordered to return all her stuff and undergo psychological testing. Maury made a similar request, saying that Brittany had stolen from him as well, and that when they were together, Brittany would push and punch him and throw things at him. He told the court Brittany needed a psychiatric evaluation and “anger management” counseling. The judge ordered Brittany to stay away from Maury and Marjorie for two weeks, a standard move pending a hearing on their allegations. Brittany showed up at court and signed a consent order, agreeing to stay away from the couple for a year but without admitting to the accusations.

Brittany admitted to a close friend that she’d “gone off” on the dentist and had thrown things at him, but she said it was because he’d started to date Marjorie while they were still together, something Brittany found out by following him one day. In Brittany’s view, Maury had filed the restraining order to show his new girlfriend how serious he was about moving on.

The whole matter seemed to be quietly going away until Marjorie returned to the courthouse accusing Brittany of having violated the restraining order six weeks earlier. Marjorie claimed that Brittany had driven a dark-blue Honda Accord to an alley next to Maury’s house, then tailed the couple to an Office Depot store in Silver Spring. The court set a new hearing on whether to file criminal contempt charges against Brittany for violating the restraining order.

At the time, Brittany was working a new job at the front desk of the Willard InterContinental, a four-star luxury hotel two blocks from the White House. She asked the court to postpone the hearing, saying she’d only been given two days’ notice and couldn’t get off from work. “This matter is very serious to me,” she wrote. A delay was granted.

Her bosses at the Willard hotel had no reason to know about the proceedings—a good thing because things seemed to be going well there. Brittany was an ideal presence to greet hotel guests—petite, striking, smiling, smartly appointed in a dark business suit over a white blouse. Her coworkers began to rely on her to deal with the rudest of guests—those exhausted after travel, those expecting perfect service for the Willard’s high rates, those whom Brittany seemed to be able to sense as they walked across the lobby. “I got it, guys,” she’d tell them. “Don’t worry.”

Her colleagues, like Whitney Osborne, never saw Brittany get ruffled. “She had this invisible shield, where she was always happy, always smiling,” Whitney would later recall. Brittany started filling in at the Guest Services unit, which combed through reservation lists to flag celebrity guests and those paying $700 or more a night. Brittany made sure their rooms and suites were stocked with fruit baskets, fresh-cut flowers, and—for the really high-enders—a Montblanc pen. Brittany gave them tours of their rooms, her smiling, confident bearing on full display. Outside of work, as some of her coworkers knew, Brittany had also settled into an apartment inside a chic building overlooking D.C.’s trendy Columbia Heights neighborhood. She could have people over for cocktails, then take them out to a host of bars and restaurants just steps away.

But, privately, she was making trips to the D.C. Superior Court, first for the stalking allegations and then a whole new matter. On April 25, 2008, the management company of the sleek apartment building filed a claim to evict Brittany and her roommate because they were two months late on their $2,565 monthly rent. After a brief legal proceeding, the roommates were evicted, and Brittany moved in with one of her sisters. As for the stalking claims, Brittany managed to make them go away quietly by simply not showing up for a hearing, prompting the judge to issue a standard “bench warrant” for such matters. But in a city full of crime, cops didn’t have time to serve bench warrants. They only enforced them when they picked up someone for something else. The warrants often automatically expire after a year if they’re not served, which is what happened for Brittany.

*

At the Willard, work demands and long hours mounted. “I spent the WHOLE weekend at work, literally,” she texted to a friend. “Even had to stay over because I had Johnny Depp and Tim Burton in house. Didn’t get home until 11:45 last night.”

But Brittany’s bosses took notice. “You won employee of the quarter and didn’t tell me?!?!,” a colleague and friend texted her in late 2008.

“Oops. Sorry! You didn’t ask,” replied Brittany, who friends knew was quicker to talk them up than herself. “I am truly blessed to have friends like you!!!!” she wrote in one such text.

Outside of work, much of Brittany’s social life revolved around her three sisters who lived in the area, Marissa, Heather, and Candace, and Candace’s two young sons. They got together for dinners, or took the boys to movies and sleepovers.

“Thank you so much for making this day SO special,” Candace wrote to her sisters after a long birthday celebration. “I love you guys VERY much!!”

“We LOVE you too,” Brittany wrote back a minute later. “Glad you had a good time.”

Brittany also kept in touch with her siblings who lived outside the area: older brothers Jay and Chris, who lived in the Seattle area; younger sister Lauren, who lived there as well; and younger brothers Zach and Josh, who lived in Indiana and North Carolina, respectively. Indeed, a day after she gathered with her local sisters for the birthday celebration, Brittany learned that Josh, who was still in college, was low on funds to fly home for Thanksgiving. She reported it to her siblings in a group text message. “Hey Everyone, I just spoke with Joshy and he wasn’t going to come because he said he didn’t have the money,” Brittany wrote. “I was wondering if we could all pitch in and get his tic. I’m gonna look now and see how much we’re looking at. I will keep you posted. No phone calls until 10 please. My shows are on :).”

It prompted immediate responses.

“Let me know. I’ll donate to that cause,” one brother wrote.

“Of course, let us know!” another sister added. “What’s his schedule? I will also search for tickets.”

Brittany texted them back about two hours later.

“OK, so after a little research, if everyone can, we will probably be looking at about $65-$75/person. I will do more research tomorrow and finalize things then. Love Ya.”

They quickly thanked her.

“Of course,” Brittany wrote back. “Turkey Day wouldn’t be the same.”

*

Brittany had a taste for nice things: designer clothes, $35 crab cakes, Maker’s Mark bourbon, close-in seats to Washington Redskins games, a well-known hairstylist.

Brittany was known for always having great hair. It was hardly an accident. She went to one of Washington’s top stylists, who charged $275 for hairstyles. And he was the kind of professional you didn’t cancel on at the last minute without good reason.