Woman Accused of Killing Bethesda Co-Worker and Cover-Up Is Due in Court

The woman accused of murdering her co-worker in an upscale Maryland athletic store and then fabricating a story about being the victim of a brutal rape and assault as a cover-up is due in court today.

Brittany Erin Norwood is being charged with first-degree murder. She is the only suspect in the slaying of 30-year-old Jayna Troxel Murray, her former co-worker who was found beaten and stabbed to death inside the Lululemon Athletica store in Bethesda, Md.

For residents in the wealthy Maryland suburb, just outside of Washington, D.C., the slaying has been particularly unsettling. Norwood, who was found with her legs and arms bound together inside the store March 12, told police that she and Murray had been attacked and sexually assaulted by masked robbers who broke into the store the night before.

But days later, after finding what they said were inconsistencies in her telling of the events, Montgomery County Police said Norwood's story was nothing more than a work of fiction. They said that the 28-year-old Washington state native beat Murray to death after a fierce argument and that there was no evidence of intruders in the store at all.

Police said Norwood's tale was suspicious from the start. Medical examinations, for example, revealed that neither woman was sexually assaulted and found wounds on Norwood that appeared to be self-inflicted.

The set of footprints that supposedly belonged to a robber were made by a pair of Lululemon Athletica sneakers the store uses to fit its customers for workout pants, police said Friday. And then there were the employees at the neighboring Apple Store, who told police that they heard two women arguing on the evening of the slaying. Police also said it appeared as though Norwood had tied together her own hands and feet.

Word that there were no masked criminals roaming the city's downtown seemed to do little to reassure people in tony Bethesda, which counts Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts among its residents.

"That's even sicker than what they first thought. To think that you had been working alongside someone and had that happen," Barbara Newhouse, who lives in Bethesda, told The Washington Post.

The search for a motive continues today, as residents struggled to understand how an alleged argument between two women with no criminal history could have ended in such unspeakable violence.

Montgomery County Police spokesman Paul Starks told AOL News today that officials were looking into allegations that the alleged argument broke out over accusations that Norwood may have stolen something from the Lululemon store where the women worked.

Norwood, who grew up in Federal Way, Wash., and once played soccer for Stony Brook University on New York's Long Island, has had only minor brushes with the law until now. In 2008, she was sued by a Washington, D.C., landlord for allegedly not paying rent on an apartment. In 2005, she was a no-show in court after allegedly speeding at 70 mph in a 55 mph zone in Maryland, according to WTOP FM.

Murray's parents said their daughter was adventurous and fun-loving and liked to go bungee jumping. "One of the most fearless people I've ever known in my life, and that's as objective as a father can get," her father, David Murray, said of his daughter in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America" today.

It is not clear if Norwood has hired an attorney.