A 49-year-old Washington state woman reportedly left for a camping trip with an ex-boyfriend and his current girlfriend last month and didn’t return.
Jannell Martensen’s former boyfriend, 37-year-old Colton Russell, and his girlfriend, 22-year-old Kiara Morgan-Weiland, were found dead on December 8. Russell had been shot to death and Morgan-Weiland stabbed outside a drug house, and the murders were captured on surveillance video. Brandon Kenny, 25, was arrested on Sunday and charged in their deaths, the Spokane Spokesman-Review said.
And Mortensen’s body was found off a remote road in Valleyford last week, according to the Spokane County Medical Examiner, who has not released a cause and manner of death. Russell and Morgan-Weiland were reportedly suspects in her death.
According to court documents filed in the double murders, Kenny told detectives that he’d gone to Russell’s home late last month and found him crying, saying he’d “accidentally killed” Martensen. Russell allegedly ordered Kenny to move the body or said he’d kill him.
Kenny helped Russell put Martensen’s body to Russell’s pick up truck and left, he said. Then on December 8, he said, he, Russell, and Morgan-Weiland went to a drug house to buy drugs. As Russell parked, he reportedly said he was worried Kenny was going to talk to police about Martensen’s death, KREM reported.
Kenny said he decided on the spot to kill Russell. He went into the house to buy the drugs, then came out and shot Russell six times with a 9mm handgun and stabbed Morgan-Weiland 51 times with a pocket knife when she tried to run away, the Spokesman-Review said. He “made sure she was dead,” he told investigators.
Home security footage showed Kenny and another person, who has not been identified, near Russell’s van as gunfire shatters the windows. Then Morgan-Weiland runs, but Kenny attacks her with his knife and “appears to slash at her throat,” court records say. Police said they spoke with a friend of Kenny’s who identified him in the video but didn’t recognize the other person.
When police searched Russell’s home, they found blood on the walls and in the carpet, believed to be Martensen’s. Detectives said Russell and Morgan-Weiland were possible suspects in her death, but it’s not clear why they had not searched the home before or questioned them.
Shelby Martensen-Wright, Martensen’s daughter, said that her mother struggled with drug addiction and that she believed the deaths were all about drugs.
“Nobody won. Not a single person won here. Every family lost in this situation. Just get help if you need it,” said Martensen-Wright, adding that her mother was. loving mom and doting grandmother.
Kenny appeared in court on Tuesday and was ordered held on a $1 million bond, according to KREM.
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[Featured image: Jannell Martensen/Facebook]
