This is an article from Oct 16, 2015.
Gruesome.
http://www.tennessean.com/story/news...-cut/73934852/Editor's note: Details in this story may be gruesome to some readers.
As the victims slept, the couple standing over them exchanged a look. Then they attacked with a hammer and a microphone stand.
It was an attempt to escape from a drug debt, police said, that Brandon Griswold and Whitney Gray did not want to repay.
Preston Claybrooks and Alexandra Grubbs died over $650.
Nashville Police Detective Mike Roland testified in court that Griswold and Gray went into their roommates? bedroom about 10:15 a.m. on Sept. 21.
Gray had the hammer. Griswold had the microphone stand. Both had a plan.
Six days later, Claybrooks? and Grubbs? bodies were found wrapped like mummies in a utility closet. Their heads had been partially crushed. Their throats had been cut.
Roland outlined the gruesome details of that Monday morning at Howe Garden Apartments in East Nashville during a court hearing on Thursday. It was the first time Griswold and Gray have appeared in court since their arrests.
Roland?s testimony led Nashville General Sessions Judge Gale Robinson to send the case to a Davidson County grand jury to consider indicting Griswold and Gray.
Griswold, 20, and Gray, 21, are in custody. Their interviews with detectives after their arrests helped police piece together a timeline of what happened inside the apartment at 1921 Greenwood Ave., and in the days before and after the killings.
Roland relayed those accounts in about an hour of court testimony:
Griswold and Gray were a couple. For only a few months, they lived with another couple, Claybrooks and Grubbs, who have two young children, according to family members.
Gray said in her police interview that Claybrooks was a drug dealer, Roland said. Drug pipes were found at the apartment, but police did not find large amounts of cash or other items that would indicate drug sales.
Officials found what they believe to be heroin in Claybrooks' sock during his autopsy, the detective said.
Gray said she and Griswold owed $650 to Claybrooks for heroin.
They came up with a plan to kill Claybrooks and Grubbs to avoid the debt, Roland said.
On Sept. 21, they went to their roommates? bedroom, Gray said. Griswold used a card to unlock the bedroom door.
Gray went to Grubbs on the left and Griswold to Claybrooks on the right. They stopped and looked at each other, the detective said, before beginning the attack.
Gray told police detectives she hit Grubbs with the hammer 15 to 20 times and held Grubbs? hair so Grubbs could not escape.
Griswold hit Claybrooks as many times, Roland said. Autopsies determined the victims died of blunt force trauma.
And then, Gray and Griswold appear to have continued some aspects of their normal lives. Gray went to work within two hours. She worked all but one day in the week before the bodies were found.
They used heroin, bought supplies and tried to clean up the apartment, Roland said. They moved their roommates? blood-soaked mattress into their own room, topped it with towels and their own egg crate-foam and slept there for several days.
They bought a new mattress online to make things inside the apartment look normal. But they did not get rid of the bloody mattress. Police found that mattress topped with soaking towels in the apartment.
On Sept. 26, Claybrooks? mother went to the apartment. She had reported her son missing two days earlier.
She smelled something decomposing. She called police. Officers began combing through the apartment.
Roland testified that Gray heard about police arriving at the apartment that day and notified Griswold. They met later at a drug store and spent Saturday night in the woods.
Meanwhile, police were at the apartment building their case.
"When you walked up through the breezeway you could smell death," Roland said.
Roland said it took police eight hours to search through the apartment.
There was blood on the doorframe to both bedrooms, and one had visible wipe marks like it had been cleaned. There was blood on the ceiling and walls that had not been cleaned.
Police found the bloody mattress and eventually worked their way to a closet with a water heater inside. Roland said at first glance it looked like any closet with boxes and other items.
But underneath, police found the bodies of Claybrooks, 24, and Grubbs, 23, wrapped mummy-like in bedding, Roland said. He said both victims' throats had been cut. A knife was found wrapped with Claybrooks.
During their investigation, police found a hammer in a trash bag in the apartment and a bloody microphone stand in the trunk of Griswold's Honda, Roland said. A page in a journal in Griswold and Gray's room included a "pros and cons list of burying or dumping in water" the bodies of the victims, he said.
There were also what, according to Roland's description, seemed like to-do lists found crumpled in the trash. Those included crossed out items and things such as cleaning with bleach, Roland said.
Police began to search for Griswold and Gray. A news release distributed by Nashville police before their arrests said they were wanted for questioning. At the time, police did not know whether Griswold and Gray were involved.
"And, quite frankly, I didn't know if we might find one of them dead," Roland said.
Police worked with connections in the homeless community and one man identified Griswold. That led police to a parking lot near a gas station and Italian restaurant at Harding Place and Trousdale Drive on Sept. 28, one week after the killings, where they arrested Griswold and Gray.
Roland said Gray was interviewed quickly after the arrest, seemed "jovial" and confessed. He said Griswold was interviewed within three or four hours and largely corroborated Gray's story.
Details about the bludgeoning deaths came from those interviews with Roland and Detective Jill Weaver, Roland said. He said Griswold said he thought Claybrooks was taking over the apartment and may have had a gun.
Their stories differed in at least one way: who cut the victims' throats. Both blamed each other for that act, he said.
Gray told police that she became paranoid after the attack and thought she could hear Claybrooks and Grubbs breathing. She told police Griswold left the room, and that?s when he must have cut their throats.
After the Thursday hearing, Gray's attorney, Joshua Brand, said that Gray's family in Oklahoma was shocked he could be accused in the case. He said they had no idea Gray was using heroin. Brand pointed to heroin abuse as a cause of trouble in this case and in society as a whole.
"Not that that's an excuse for as tragic a situation as this, but I do think that's underlying what's happened," he said.
Originally posted by animosity:
Hmu next time, we'll have some soapy gins and then draw each other naked. Until we get kicked out.
I think they had one child, a 1-year-old daughter.
Never mind ~ Angie, you are right as this was in an article about the couple:
The victims had two children together, a son and a daughter.
http://wkrn.com/2015/09/29/affidavit...n-their-sleep/
I'm guessing it wasn't too uncommon for them to disappear for a while and then show up to get the kid.
The way these people died is fucking terrible but you don't end up knowing people like that unless you're also using.
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