Brother of Lululemon Murder Victim Receives Package from Slain Sister

Recently returned to Iraq following the funeral of his sister Jayna, it was a “time travel” moment for Hugh Murray to open a package she mailed to him just days before her murder.

After several false starts, Hugh Murray, 39, had finally tracked down the package in Mosul – the same city in Northern Iraq he was in when he learned that his sister had been stabbed and beaten to death in the downtown Bethesda Lululemon retail athletic shop where she worked. Her co-worker, Brittany Norwood,

During his trip back to the U.S. after the murder, Murray, an attorney for the U.S. Army, had learned from one of Jayna’ friends that she had been talking about sending him a package in the days before her death.  

“They bought a card when they were together, but [the friend] didn’t know if Jayna had had time to send it,” Murray said during a phone interview from Iraq.

Murray, who travels frequently within Iraq for his job, called and emailed around to see if he had any mail waiting for him when he returned to Iraq. He came up empty-handed. But he had also given Jayna and his family another address in Mosul, where he occasionally travels. He was finally able to confirm he had two packages waiting for him there, and when he recently made his way back north to the city, he discovered one of them was from Jayna.

“I was hoping Jayna had found time to mail it, and I was hoping I would find it,” Murray said. “I was very, very hopeful both things would work out, and it did.”

He took the package back to his housing unit to open it. It was postmarked March 7 – the Monday before her death.

“It’s kind of like your mind plays weird games – she’s gone, and yet something she sent before she was gone is now getting into my hands,” Murray said. “It’s almost like a time travel experience. I’m going back in time to a time when she was alive and giving me something.”

Inside, he found a card and a Lululemon running hat. Jayna, who had been so committed to the company that she was in Vancouver before her death, was known for giving her family Lululemon athletic gear as gifts, Hugh Murray said in a previous interview.

“I really enjoy distance running and before I left, it had been really cold up north [in Iraq.] Every morning I would wake up and there would be frost on the ground. I was complaining to Jayna that I didn’t have warm head gear to wear running, and ironically enough, she sent me a Lululemon running cap,” Murray said.

He also found a card. It was illustrated with images of items that pair together, captioned with words such as, “peanut butter without jelly” and “chips without dip.”

“There were five or six things, and at the bottom it said something like, ‘me without you,’” Murray said.

“Jayna wrote a paragraph – I had been writing weekly update e-mails about what I was doing, where I was, how things were going, the unique qualities of my job in Iraq – she just commented she was really enjoying the emails and to keep them coming. She said she couldn’t wait untill I got home so we could talk about everything in greater detail. She said to stay safe, and see you soon, and she signed her name and she had a couple of her ‘XOXO” things,” Murray said.

For Murray, receiving the package spurred mixed emotions. The message reaffirms that his sister was proud of him and his work, he said, but at the same time, it drives home her loss.

“I think my strongest feeling is I’m happy I got it – I’m happy she was thinking about me," Murray said. "But I’m very sad that what she wanted was for me to be able to be home to share everything with her, to show her pictures, and that really tears me apart that that’s never going to happen.”