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.
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