Chapter 1: What crime occurred at the Lululemon store in Bethesda?
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And welcome to The Hunt. As you know, we release a lot of one-off interview episodes, and then sometimes we have more developed multi-part series. We're about to start one of those multi-part series next week. But while we're getting ready, we thought we'd give you the first episode of another one we did. It's called Murder at Lululemon, and this one is a wild ride.
It tells the story of a deeply unsettling crime, one that took place in a wealthy suburb inside a store better known for $100 leggings and aspirational wellness culture. Now, I'll admit, I love Lululemon. It's one of the few things I splash out on when I want to treat myself, a total guilty pleasure. Guilty because who really needs $100 leggings? But clearly, I am not alone.
I have been on New York subway cars where every single person is wearing at least one piece of Lulu. But so far, 2026 has been a rocky year for the brand. In January, the company faced backlash over a new line of leggings that customers say were unexpectedly see-through. Sound familiar? It's a total callback to the brand's infamous 2013 recall.
But at least this time, founder and now former CEO Chip Wilson hasn't sparked additional outrage by blaming the faulty product on the women who bought it. Some women's bodies just actually don't work for it. The response this time has been much quieter. It's possible you haven't even heard about it.
And for what it's worth, customers are saying online that they've been able to return or exchange their leggings pretty easily. But Chip Wilson is still stirring the pot. He's been publicly criticizing the company for losing its edge and trying too hard to be everything to everybody. And maybe he's right.
They've lost market share, and their CEO, Calvin McDonald, recently stepped down, leaving the struggling brand without a leader at its helm. And underneath all this is the bigger issue. Maybe Lululemon's time has passed. As you're about to hear in this story, Lululemon didn't just sell leggings.
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Chapter 2: How did Lululemon's culture influence its employees?
Back then, she had just graduated college. She was an aspiring writer, new in the city, in need of a job. So I figured I should get a retail job, and the Lululemon was hiring. I knew nothing about Lululemon, really. Like, I knew that sort of basic girls wore it, but I didn't own anything by it. Kat didn't know that the company culture and some of the people there would be kind of intense.
So I went to my interview, which looking back on was fully crazy. Like it was a group interview and they sat us down on the floor in a circle. And I was definitely the only person who didn't own anything by the brand. And I remember there was this one lady who had just quit her corporate job to come work at Lululemon because she was so obsessed with the brand and so obsessed with product.
And she was wearing head to toe Lululemon and knew everything about it. And she really wanted that job. But hilariously, I got it because at the time they were introducing running clothes and I was a runner.
And so they wanted to hire someone who could product test the running clothes and like sell them in the store, which I did, which was pretty sweet because then they would pay me to go on runs and stuff. So it was actually pretty great. There were other perks, too, like employees were given a debit card with some money to spend on yoga and fitness classes each month.
But there were some Lululemon practices that were just sort of strange. I'm not even talking about the intense Lululemon fans like the woman who quit her corporate job to work there. I'm talking about the weirdly personal things the company made their employees do. Like, Lululemon was really big on helping employees set goals and achieve them.
So we would have these workshops, and in staff meetings, there would be dedicated time to goal setting, where you would set your goals for, like, six months, a year.
I wanted to be a writer, and they helped me set all these goals around writing, and most of the people in my store were all aspiring to be on Broadway, or musical theater actors and performers, and so often their goals revolved around that. And even though it's kind of cheesy, I still like use a lot of those skills and the sort of rules around goal setting.
For a basic retail job with a high turnover of employees, this was pretty deep personal stuff. Too personal, I'm sure, for a lot of people. But for Kat, who was so young and so new to the city, it was actually pretty helpful. I'm a novelist now, so I am a writer now. And I guess I should probably thank the goal-setting skills I learned at Lululemon for that.
There are a lot of novelistic things at Lululemon when you really think about it. Tightly wound women in tightly wound clothes. Aspirational quotes on walls and merchandise bearing down on them. Merchandise that would one day be splattered in blood. When someone in one of those stores snapped.
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Chapter 3: What were the events leading up to the murder on March 12, 2011?
For this story, we also called the courthouse to get a hold of police interrogation files and court documents. It was so much stuff that they mailed a thumb drive to us, but it got returned. So we ended up sending the sister of one of our colleagues to pick it up near D.C. Long story short, we eventually got our hands on a ton of files, some of which have never been published before.
So you'll get to hear a lot of those insider tape recordings over the next few episodes. With that, I'll hand it over to Vanessa. We're opening this story in an upscale shopping district in Bethesda, Maryland. It's March 12, 2011. It's early morning, not too much noise out there. The streets around the boutiques are just starting to stir. The stores aren't quite open yet.
Sidewalks are just coming to life. One of the stores is an Apple store, because of course it is, and it's well-designed like all Apple stores, and really, really popular. Even before it opens, there's customers there because the iPad 2 has just been released. Now, this iPad... had that cutting-edge front-facing camera, which all of our tablets do that today.
But back then, it was the first iPad where you could FaceTime. People were very excited about it. So many people came to buy it the day before that they were turning customers away. Right next door to Apple, there's Lululemon, everybody's favorite athleisure store. Home to those leggings that can run $100 and just make your butt look really good. The first employee, Rachel, arrives.
She's wearing orange sneakers. She's the manager of this particular Lululemon, and she's arrived to open it for the day, as she's done on so many other days. But almost immediately, right when she approaches, she can tell something is wrong. Really, really wrong.
What is the emergency? Hi, yes, I'm at 4856 Bethesda. I'm opening up my Lululemon store and the door was completely open. And I hear someone moaning in the back and it looks like it's been vandalized and I'm just really scared to go in. While Rachel is waiting for police to arrive, she walks over to the Apple store, where the iPad line is still forming.
She flags down a man and asks if he can help. He agrees. According to Dan Morse's book, The Yoga Store Murder, the two of them walk into Lululemon together. Inside, everything seems normal at first. Racks of bright, neatly folded clothes, lots of inspirational sayings on the bags and a chalkboard on the wall. Today it says, may each of us equally enjoy happiness and the root of happiness.
But then he notices something. Stains on the floor. Small at first. But as he walks deeper inside, he sees more and more. It's blood. Some of it pooling beneath a purple door. He pushes the door open. And what he sees inside sends him running back to the storefront, straight to where Rachel's waiting.
Montgomery County 911, what is the emergency? Hi, yes, I just called 911 to come and there's two dead people in the back of my store. There's two people. There's a woman that's alive and she's breathing. She's tied up.
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Chapter 4: What details emerged from the police investigation?
One person seems dead and the other person is breathing. My store, the door was open this morning. I just came up to the door and I noticed it was unlocked, which is just, it's never unlocked. Someone's tied her up. She's still breathing. And where is the other person? There was a struggle. There was a fight. The other person is in our back hallway. One is in the bathroom.
I'm so sorry, ma'am, if I'm a little crazy right now. I'm the manager of this store. And I am so scared that one of my girls is hurt. That's the kind of place that Lululemon in Bethesda was.
A place where the manager spoke about her employees so lovingly. A place imbued with an almost religious sense of calm and purpose. And now there are two female bodies lying on the floor. The scene is utter chaos. This is a neighborhood that is not accustomed to random violent crime. Crowds begin to gather. Rumors spread.
Meanwhile, at a nearby diner, state's attorney John McCarthy, the chief prosecutor for the entire county of almost a million people, is enjoying a quiet breakfast.
Saturday morning. Beautiful Saturday morning, bright, sunny day.
His cell phone rings.
The first phone call I got were questions from the Washington Post about crowds of people that were beginning to mill on Bethesda Avenue in downtown Bethesda around the Lululemon store. I very quickly learned that it was a homicide. And I immediately left from where I was having breakfast and went directly to the scene of where the murder had occurred. I assigned this case to myself.
They don't seem like the typical kind of people that are going to find themselves in this kind of situation. This is not a neighborhood where this kind of thing happens. None of it seems to fit.
But what McCarthy didn't know was that over the next few days, the investigation would take some pretty bizarre turns, making it one of the most insidious, strange, and infamous crimes he'd witness in his decades-long career. Sometimes I get recipe paralysis, where I just end up cooking the same three meals on loop.
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Chapter 5: Who were the victims involved in the Lululemon murder case?
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This is Infamous from Campside Media.
So before the break, we were talking about the Lululemon in Bethesda, Maryland. That's a classic inner ring suburb where you're close enough to the city for commutes, but you also have the great schools, not a lot of crime. It is a very educated and upscale place. There's tons of economists, lobbyists, you know, chemists, just people with a lot of education.
And then, meanwhile, you have in Lululemon, the place that everybody's getting their leggings for doing their athletics or just hanging out, this grisly murder. The place is spattered with blood. This is the kind of murder you see on CSI, not in Bethesda.
Look, this is a place that's two doors down from the Georgetown Cupcake Store. I mean, People are thinking, this is where I'm going to send my kids to get a cupcake. You know, this is not happening next door to the cupcake store. It's just so out of place.
But the women who were inside that Lululemon who were hurt, they very much belonged to Lululemon. In fact, they themselves were employees or educators, as they're often called there. They were selling clothes in a boutique that wasn't just really about clothes. It was also about all of that stuff you heard earlier, the goal setting, the inspirational quotes. One of them was named Jana Murray.
She was 30 years old. She'd graduated from George Washington University with a degree in business and marketing and was both an outdoorsy person and someone into corporate life. As a kid, she tagged along to Boy Scout campouts with her dad. She took dance lessons. She was fluent in Spanish. She was very athletic.
And McCarthy told us that she'd come by her job at Lululemon in a really interesting way.
The only reason she was even in that store is because she was getting her third master's degree from Johns Hopkins. And one of her professors was somewhat taken with the Lululemon corporate model and said to her as a dissertation topic, potentially, you know, you ought to consider writing about Lululemon. and their corporate model. And that's why she went there.
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Chapter 6: What were the circumstances of the attack on Jaina and Brittany?
Plus, you'll get exclusive access to the over 60 other true crime stories on The Binge podcast channel. Hit subscribe on Apple Podcasts or head to getthebinge.com. Now, I want to zoom out for a second and talk a little more generally about fitness and its role in our lives. Specifically, the kinds of boutique fitness classes and luxury gyms that Lululemon outfits you for.
The ones that got wildly popular in the 2010s, like SoulCycle, CrossFit and Equinox. These expensive, cultish workouts that aren't just a way to move your body, but a lifestyle choice, a brand that can come to define your identity. I don't think it's a coincidence that Americans' move away from organized religion has coincided with the rise of these sorts of identitarian fitness regimes.
And there is something religious about them, I think. The dimly lit candles at SoulCycle, the arduous penance of CrossFit lifting, the high ceilings and zigzag atriums of Equinox, this modernist architecture built to inspire awe and make you feel small, like you're in a cathedral. And Lululemon stores, they're one of these sacred spaces.
You've probably been in one, or at the very least, walked by one. They look beautiful. Spotlit tables, felt mannequins dressed in their famous stretchy yoga pants, neat little cubby holes showcasing rolled up yoga mats just ready for the taking. It's high end and deeply aspirational. A place to buy clothes that promise to make you a better person.
This Lululemon store in Bethesda was no different. Behind the counter were red shopping bags with sayings on them like modern-day commandments. Things like, breathe deeply and appreciate the moment. Successful people replaced the words wish, should, and try with I will. This environment made the gruesome scene police discovered in Lululemon all the more disturbing, sacrilegious even.
We got a hold of a video from the actual crime scene. At first, the store looks normal. Everything seems to be in its right place. But then you notice a mannequin is lying on the floor. It's got black bike shorts on and a striped shirt. And there looks to be a bloody shoe print near it. Towards the back of the store, there are signs of a struggle. Another mannequin has toppled over.
There are clothes and reusable water bottles littered about. And there's a black athletic bag that looks like it's been dropped on the ground. Its contents spill out. A white candle, a tube of lip balm, a pair of headphones. And in the back of the store, behind a purple door, they find Jaina. the George Washington grad with multiple master's degrees. She's already dead.
Her hair is tangled and matted. There's a big open cut on the back of her head. A rope lies underneath her neck. The back of her pants look as though they've been ripped or cut open. In the bathroom, they find Brittany, the strong athlete who'd once challenged customers to push-up contests. She's on the floor, but she's still alive. She's got cuts all over her face and she's moaning.
She's wearing white footy socks covered in bloodstains and black yoga pants that have been torn open at the crotch. Plastic zip ties bind her ankles and wrists. A gray shirt is wrapped around her neck. It's printed with the saying, set your goals. Life is too short for the treadmill. Get out and run. The beige bathroom tiles are smeared in bloodstains.
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Chapter 7: How did the community react to the Lululemon murder?
She needed it to go home. And Jaina came back because she was the one with the keys because she's the supervisor. And the two girls met up in the store. Yeah. And I got to the metro and actually realized I didn't have my wallet. So I called her and let her know I didn't have my wallet. And she was like, well, I noticed I didn't have my laptop anyway, so it's fine.
So I just met her back in front of the store. Went around what time? Maybe a little after 10, if even then. I don't think that we locked it behind us. And she turned off the alarm. And we both went to the back.
Did you find your wallet?
No. And we looked for like maybe 10. Maybe like, well, not even 10 minutes. And I was just like, it's fine. It's late. I work tomorrow. And she gave me her smart trip. So just like, it's fine. Like, I just won't go out. Maybe this is a sign. Right. And when they're in the back getting the Metropass, that's when the attackers enter the store and let loose on the two women.
And when we walked back out onto the floor, like, there was, she was a little ahead of me. And there was someone who they, like, I think it was maybe in her face, like, hit her in her face. And I turned to try to, like, leave a back exit door. Yeah.
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Chapter 8: What implications did this murder have on Lululemon's brand image?
trying to try to, like, go out of that door because it immediately sets the alarm off anyway. Okay. And I think there was two people.
Okay.
And, like, grabbed me and then threw me on the ground. And, like, I don't know, like, what they hit her with. Well, the one guy, he was just, like, repeatedly just, like, hitting her. And we were both, like, yelling for help. So there's definitely two people? Yeah. Um... He had me by the hair, told me if I said another word, he would slit my throat.
And Jaina kept yelling and fighting, and he just kept hitting her. They were followed back in by two men, both dressed all in black, one taller, one shorter. And the two girls were separated. She could hear where Jaina was being attacked by one of the men, and the man that took her aside sexually assaulted her. cut up her clothing and did some physical injuries to her.
As she listened to Jane, as it turned out, being killed a short distance away. But she couldn't do anything. They tied up Brittany using plastic ties. Her arms were tied, her legs were tied, left on the floor.
It sounds so scary, so absolutely nightmarish. And this would be the story that would lead the local news that night. The police chief would say that they had no indication at this point that this was anything but a random crime of opportunity. Next time on Infamous.
It's a murder case that has stunned many here in Maryland and even grabbed national headlines. Jaina Murray was laid to rest this weekend after being killed in the yoga store where she worked.
The pattern on the bottom of that shoe was identical to the pattern of the shoe prints that were all over the store. And all I could think was it was my fault because I lost my girlfriend.
It's not your fault.
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