In 2011, Jayna Murray was slowly, brutally murdered at a Lululemon shop in a Bethesda, Maryland shopping area. She was bludgeoned with a hammer, slashed over 320 times with a box cutter, then strangled to death. Next door at the Apple Store, employees heard her tortuous screams, but didn’t lift a finger. Not to help her. Not to call the police. Nothing. It was just a day after the iPad 2 launched.
Although no one in the Apple Store was complicit in the murders, it was still a PR disaster for Apple’s retail outlet. Now a new book called The Yoga Store Murder by Washington Post reporter Dan Morse delves into the murder and its aftermath.
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So what happened in that Bethesda Row Apple Store that night? An excerpt has just been posted online:
The sounds reached Jana Svrzo as she walked across the sales floor of the Apple Store, now closed for the night. Jana was 29 years old and wore funky black sneakers and a ready smile — an easy fit among Apple’s hip, young sales army. It was just after 10 p.m. on Friday, March 11, 2011, in downtown Bethesda, and Jana, the store’s manager, had about an hour’s worth of record-keeping ahead of her, following the opening day sales for Apple’s hot new product, the iPad 2.
Now, though, she looked to her right and listened. The sounds were high-pitched yelps and squeals, and low-pitched grunts, thuds, a dragging noise, as if something heavy was being moved. Jana thought they might be coming from a room near the back exit or a room upstairs, where technicians were still on duty. She asked a security guard to help her search.
Jana and the guard split up, meeting two minutes later upstairs, where they spoke to another young manager, Ricardo Rios.
“Screaming,” the guard said. “It sounded like some lady was screaming.”
Make sure to read the whole thing, and if your interest is piqued, consider buying the book. There’s a lot to this case, including a surprising conspiracy by the killer to cover her tracks.
Source: Washington Post
