Inset (left): Kendrick Brown (Dallas County Sheriff”s Office). Inset (right): Mariah Murray (Facebook). Background: News footage of the house in East Oak Cliff, Texas, where Mariah Murray was found on May 10 (KDFW).
A Texas man was charged with murder after police said he stabbed a woman to death and stuffed her body in a freezer.
Kendrick Brown, 51, was arrested on June 18 after police accused him of fatally stabbing 27-year-old Mariah Murray. According to an arrest warrant obtained by local Fox affiliate KDFW, Brown and Murray were in a romantic relationship until Murray’s body was found in an abandoned home in East Oak Cliff, Texas, on May 10. Police said neighbors often noticed people coming in and out of the home, and one witness told police he saw Murray and Brown having several fights inside the home.
Police were first alerted to the home on May 10, when neighbors said they saw several people coming out of the home and saying there was a dead body inside.
Officers responded to the home and found Murray, dead from stab wounds and frozen solid. Her body was transported to the medical examiner in the freezer she was found in, which was still running in the home’s master bedroom. After Murray’s body was thawed out, the medical examiner determined that she had been stabbed multiple times. One knife wound to her head was deep enough to penetrate her brain.
Police said they found blood in the master bedroom on the carpet and the walls. A military-style knife was found wrapped in a cloth and a towel and hidden behind the drywall.
According to the warrant, tips from neighbors led police to Brown, and officials soon learned of his relationship with Murray. The warrant, which was also obtained by local ABC affiliate WFAA, noted that surveillance videos from the neighborhood allegedly captured Brown walking around carrying a similar-looking knife.
Brown was questioned about his familiarity with the home and the freezer. Police said Brown admitted to being inside the house, but denied that he was ever in the master bedroom. A search of his cellphone and a tablet he owned uncovered videos of him and Murray in the bedroom together.
The witness who told police that he saw Murray and Brown fight inside the house also told police that he saw Brown in the master bedroom three days before Murray’s body was found. According to the affidavit, the witness told police that he saw “Murray lying on the floor of the closet just inside the master bedroom, at which point suspect Kendrick Brown saw him, yelled at him, and shut the bedroom door.”
Brown was charged with murder and booked into the Dallas County Jail, where he is being held on $250,000 bond. His next court date was not immediately available.
