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Thread: Michael Ryan Brown Sentenced to 38 Years in 2008 VA Murder of Angie Lechlitner

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    Michael Ryan Brown Sentenced to 38 Years in 2008 VA Murder of Angie Lechlitner


    Michael Ryan Brown, left, and Angie Lechlitner


    Death penalty on the table for man accused of Norfolk murder, sexual assault

    By Jonathan Edwards
    The Virginian-Pilot

    NORFOLK - A 27-year-old North Carolina man could now face the death penalty because he’s accused of murdering a 28-year-old gardener after raping her with an object.

    Grand jurors on Wednesday indicted Michael Ryan Brown of Goldsboro, N.C., on two counts of capital murder in the 2008 killing of Angie Lechlitner. They also indicted him on charges of object sexual penetration, malicious wounding and abducting Lechlitner with the intent to defile her.

    Brown faces two counts of capital murder in Lechlitner’s death because prosecutors allege he killed her during an abduction and while raping her with an object. Murder combined with either crime makes the death penalty an option, so long as the defendant is at least 18 years old.

    If convicted, Brown would be executed or spend the rest of his life in prison. Prosecutors haven’t decided whether they’ll push for the death penalty because they’re still reviewing the evidence and the law, said Amanda Howie, spokeswoman for the Norfolk commonwealth’s attorney.

    Brown declined to talk about the case, and so did his lawyer, Deputy Capital Defender Katherine Jensen.

    Lechlitner was strangled in her home in January 2008, and detectives have said DNA and fingerprints link Brown to the crimes.

    Based on that evidence, Norfolk General District Judge S. Clark Daugherty at a February court hearing certified a second-degree murder charge against Brown, sending the case to a grand jury. Norfolk prosecutors on Monday upped the charges, and the grand jury set the capital murder case on a path to trial.

    Brown was charged with murder in September and extradited from Goldsboro to Norfolk two months later. His arrest came nearly eight years after one of Lechlitner’s co-workers found her body inside her Fox Hall house in the 2400 block of Shafer St.

    An electric cord was tied in a double knot, tightly around Lechlitner’s neck, investigators testified Wednesday. Her hands were bound with electrical tape. She was stabbed in the back, a wound that nicked her lung.

    An autopsy revealed Lechlitner, a nursery technician at the Norfolk Botanical Garden at the time, had been sexually penetrated several times before she died, said Elizabeth Kinnison, pathologist with the chief medical examiner’s Norfolk office. Lechlitner died from the combination of being choked and stabbed, Kinnison said.

    Detectives homed in on Brown early in their investigation after learning Lechlitner had given him rides to work, Norfolk Detective Richard Brady said during the February court hearing.

    The two of them met when Lechlitner spotted Brown riding a bike to work during a nor’easter, said Janice Franklin, Brown’s mother. She decided to give him a lift after learning they lived close to each other and he had no car to get to his job.

    Lechlitner and Brown also got to know each other through work. Lechlitner’s supervisor, Marcus Jones, said Brown worked under him at the garden during a 10-week program for at-risk youth.

    http://pilotonline.com/news/local/cr...75eaa4d67.html

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    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    Prosecutors go for death penalty in 2008 killing of Norfolk Botanical Garden worker

    By Jonathan Edwards
    The Virginian-Pilot

    Michael Ryan Brown, the North Carolina man accused of murdering a 28-year-old botanist more than eight years ago, will face the death penalty, according to court documents filed Monday.

    Prosecutors chose to seek execution instead of life in prison late last week, after spending more than three months weighing the evidence.

    A grand jury indicted the 28-year-old Goldsboro, N.C., man in April on a charge of capital murder, which calls for life in prison or the death penalty if a defendant is convicted. Brown is also charged with sexual object penetration, malicious wounding and abduction with the intent to defile.

    He pleaded not guilty to all charges in April.

    Brown was charged with second-degree murder in September and extradited from Goldsboro two months later. His arrest came nearly eight years after one of Angela Lechlitner’s co-workers found her body inside her house in the 2400 block of Shafer St.

    In April, prosecutors sought the more severe charges.

    Lechlitner, who worked as a nursery technician at the Norfolk Botanical Garden, was strangled, stabbed and raped with an object in her Fox Hall house.

    Brown faces a capital murder charge because prosecutors allege he killed Lechlitner during an abduction.

    The last capital murder case in Norfolk involved Jamiel Douglas Graves, now 33, who murdered Phylicia Robinson in 2012. He pleaded guilty in 2014 in a deal that gave him life without parole.

    http://pilotonline.com/news/local/cr...660955b31.html
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    Man pleads guilty to cold-case murder of Norfolk Botanical Garden worker

    By Jonathan Edwards
    The Virginian-Pilot

    NORFOLK - Facing the death penalty, a 29-year-old North Carolina man pleaded guilty to capital murder Tuesday and was sentenced to 38 years in prison for kidnapping, stabbing and strangling his former co-worker.

    Michael Ryan Brown maintained his innocence but conceded that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict him of capital murder and abduction with the intent to defile. Prosecutor Phil Evans agreed to drop three other charges.

    Circuit Judge Junius Fulton III sentenced Brown to life in prison for capital murder but reduced it to 38 years, in accordance with the plea bargain. He gave him 20 years for the kidnapping charge but included it in the time for the murder sentence.

    “Our goal was to save his life,” said Brown’s lawyer, Emily Munn.

    Brown, who was also represented by state-level capital public defenders, was accused of strangling his co-worker from the Norfolk Botanical Garden, Angie Lechlitner, after binding her and raping her with an object in January 2008 at her Fox Hall house on Shafer Street. He wasn’t charged until 2015.

    On Jan. 19, 2008, three days after Lechlitner last showed up for work, a co-worker went to her house with his wife, tried the front door and, after getting no response, went inside through the back.

    He found Lechlitner’s body, lying face-up on the bathroom floor. She was covered in a comforter, and her two socked feet stretched out into the hallway. The co-worker left and called police.

    An electrical cord was tied in a double knot tightly around Lechlitner’s neck, investigators have testified. Her hands were bound with electrical tape. She had been stabbed in the back, a wound that nicked her lung.

    An autopsy revealed that Lechlitner, a 28-year-old nursery technician, had trauma to her genitals, including cuts and bruising, medical examiner Elizabeth Kinnison said, according to court documents.

    Lechlitner died from the combination of being strangled and stabbed, Kinnison said.

    Brown was not an obvious suspect from the start. Police found her DNA and someone else’s on the murder weapon and the tape.

    Detectives eliminated others they knew had been in contact with Lechlitner around the time of the murder. They tested DNA found on cigarettes near the crime scene.

    Nothing hit.

    Investigators homed in on Brown when Botanical Garden workers told them Lechlitner gave him rides to work, Evans said. Brown, who’d worked there between 2005 and 2007, had trouble finding steady transportation to work and, because he lived right next to Lechlitner, she gave him a lift.

    Detectives tried to find Brown at his Fox Hall house but learned he’d gone to the Peninsula and then to North Carolina.

    Detectives traveled there in July 2009 but didn’t find him. Over the years, they continued working the case.

    Finally, in September 2015, they tracked down Brown in North Carolina.

    His DNA matched that found on the murder weapon – a boombox cord – and on the spool that had housed the electrical tape. Detectives also found his fingerprints in Lechlitner’s bathroom, near where her body was discovered.

    During an interview, Brown told detectives he’d never been inside her house. Brown was charged with murder and extradited to Hampton Roads.

    On Tuesday, Fulton complimented detectives for their tireless work. Without them, Lechlitner’s murder would’ve gone unsolved even longer, Fulton said. Cold-case detectives, including Vic Powell and Ray Smith, worked the case. Richard Brady, who was one of the original investigators, won 2016 Officer of the Year, in part for his work on solving Lechlitner’s murder.

    The judge also knocked Brown for failing to admit what he did, prolonging the Lechlitners’ heartache. Then Fulton offered his condolences to family members who traveled from Indiana and Pennsylvania to watch the hearing.

    Lechlitner’s father and mother were two of about a dozen relatives and friends who sobbed as Evans read their letters to Fulton.

    One wrote that holidays and family gatherings just aren’t the same. “Angie is not there to help, and she was often snitching her favorites as we did the food prep.”

    That brought a good laugh from the family.

    Angie’s father, Rex Lechlitner, wrote that even as a little girl, his daughter was always getting into flowers, so much so that her parents had to keep them out of reach.

    He lamented missing out watching her career blossom, getting to know a possible son-in-law and playing with who-knows-how-many grandchildren.

    “(I missed) the chance to once again tell her how much I love her and how proud I am of her.”

    In the first years after his daughter died, Lechlitner wrote, he cried several times a day – on the way to work, on breaks, on the drive home. He bounced around from job to job because of unrest that may have been caused by a never-ending “season of grief.”

    Lechlitner was diagnosed with Tourette syndrome at an early age but didn’t feel sorry for herself or retreat from the world, said her aunt and uncle in their letter. Instead, she worked twice as hard as other students and pursued her love of plants by earning a bachelor’s in horticulture at Purdue University.

    Lechlitner volunteered at neighborhood gardens and shared her expertise with those around her, Eric and Charlene Lechlitner said. She also volunteered at her church, which supported international college students from around the world. Lechlitner would drive them places and stay involved in their lives.

    Because she wanted to read the Bible in its original Hebrew, she attended a synagogue twice a week to learn the language. She made friends, just like she did at work, church and around the neighborhood.

    Then Brown took her away.

    “There is a wound in the hearts and lives of all of us,” her uncle and aunt wrote in their letter. “Mr. Brown has given all of us a life sentence from which there is no escape.”

    https://pilotonline.com/news/local/c...d7d4a27ed.html

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