The Lululemon employee who murdered her co-worker over a pair of leggings.

Content warning: This story mentions sexual assault and may be distressing to some readers.

Rachel Oertli was starting her shift at Lululemon store on a Saturday morning when she noticed something wasn't right.

That morning, in March 2011, she noticed the US store was unlocked, in a state of disarray, and the lights were still on out the back. 

Concerned, she called 911 and asked a man outside for help. 

When he walked into the store, he found 30-year-old employee Jayna Murray dead in the hallway and another employee, 28-year-old Brittany Norwood, tied up in the bathroom with cuts on her body. 

He told Rachel to call 911 again.

"There's two people in the back of my store," Rachel told the dispatcher over the phone. 

"One person seems dead, and the other person is breathing."

Responders arrived on scene and Brittany was rushed to hospital.

The 28-year-old, later told police the night before, on March 11, she went back into the store with Jayna after closing because she realised she had forgotten her wallet. 

Once inside, two masked men reportedly entered the store and attacked the pair and sexually assaulted them. 

When Jayna resisted, they stabbed her to death. 

Concern quickly spread throughout the community of Bethesda, in Maryland, with locals fearing two killers were on the loose. 

Jayna's brother, who was working in Iraq at the time, was left broken when he learned about his sister's death. 

"I had been told that my sister had been murdered," he told ABC News. "It was devastating, it broke me."

But as the investigation continued, police noticed some details in Brittany's story didn't add up. 

"The amount of trauma that Jayna suffered wasn't normal," said Detective Dimitry Ruvin.

"It's just this little voice in the back of my head. Something's just not right. The way Brittany's describing these two guys — they're racist, they're rapists, they're robbers, they're murderers — it's like the worst human being that you could possibly describe, right? It doesn't say two crazy people off the street. That screams an inside job."

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Police also only found two sets of footprints at the crime scene, one belonging to Brittany, and another to a pair of shoes found at the store, according to ABC News. 

"We were able to determine that there were only two sets of footprints at the crime scene, one belonging to Ms Norwood another belonging to a size 14 shoe that was recovered in the store," Montgomery County Police Chief Thomas Manger said, as per ABC News. 

Medical examiners also found no evidence of sexual assault on neither Brittany or Jayna, and according to police, the marks on her body were consistent with self-inflicted wounds. 

There were other inconsistencies too. 

Brittany's DNA was found in Jayna's car, which had been moved. 

And police said the position in which Brittany was tied up, with her hands bound above her head, suggested she might have done it herself. 

"As we began analysing the physical evidence and looked at the medical reports, it was not supporting what Ms Norwood had told us," said Manager.

Workers at the Apple Store next door also told police they heard two women arguing the night of the attack.  

 Brittany Norwood. Image: AAP. 

As days passed, Norwood started to be seen as a suspect rather than a victim. 

She was eventually arrested on March 18, 2011, a week after the attack. 

Shortly after, Jayna's dad told ABC News, "We believe very, very strongly in the US justice system and we are going to let the justice system prevail."

The family also set the Jayna Troxel Murray Foundation in memory of their daughter and sister.  

It was later discovered that on the night of March 11, Jayna allegedly found out that Brittany had stolen a pair of leggings from the store when they performed bag checks on each other, as per store policy. 

During Brittany's trial, Montgomery County State's Attorney John McCarthy said the pair then argued over the suspected theft, before Brittany picked up a weapon inside the store and attacked Janya. 

"The nature of this crime is shocking in terms of the level of violence that was directed at the victim," McCarthy said, according to NBC News.

He added that Brittany then put on a shoe from the store to create footprints and throw off detectives.  

In November that year, a jury found Brittany guilty of first-degree murder, in a case that became known in the media as the 'Lululemon murder'. 

Months later, in January 2012, she was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Brittany later tried to appeal her conviction in 2015, however, a Maryland court rejected the claim. 

To this day, she remains behind bars. 

If this has raised any issues for you, or if you just feel like you need to speak to someone, please call 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – the national sexual assault, domestic and family violence counselling service.

Feature Image: Facebook@In Memory of Jayna Murray/AAP. 

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