Leaundra Matthews, left, was convicted of conspiring with her twin sister Lemae Matthews, inset, to kill their brother Christian Matthews in 2017 Silver Spring, Maryland. Leaundra Matthews faces 30 years in prison while her sister will be sentenced next year for accessory after the fact in murder. (Montgomery County State Attorney’s Office)
A jury in Maryland Wednesday convicted a woman who, along with her twin sister, hatched a plan to have her boyfriend murder her 17-year-old brother as he slept in the basement, later telling her mother “he had to go,” according to Montgomery County prosecutors.
Leaundra Matthews faces up to 30 years in prison after her second-degree murder conviction in the 2017 death of her brother Christian Matthews.
“This defendant was integral to the plot to kill Christian Matthews and served as the driver, both to and from, the scene of the murder. She executed a significant cover up operation to deflect responsibility, but thanks to the work of the Montgomery County Police Homicide Unit and Assistant State’s Attorneys Ashley Inderfurth and Sheila Bagheri, she will now be held accountable,” said State’s Attorney John McCarthy.
Her boyfriend Tysean Lipford was convicted of second-degree murder in 2019 and is serving a 30-year prison sentence. Another man, Daniel Howard, who allegedly held Christian Matthews down as Lipford choked him to death is scheduled to go on trial next year. In addition, Leaundra’s twin sister, Lemae Matthews, pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact to murder in October 2021 and will be sentenced after Howard’s trial.
Montgomery County police were called to the Silver Spring home on March 21, 2017, where they found Christian Matthews unresponsive. He was taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead. Officers noticed bruising around his neck and an autopsy revealed the cause of death was asphyxia and the manner of death was homicide.
Leaundra Matthews told police she was upstairs in her bedroom when she heard a commotion in the basement and found her brother unresponsive before calling 911. An arrest affidavit said Lipford admitted to killing his girlfriend’s brother in an interview with detectives two days after the murder. Lipford, who had a child with Leaundra Matthews, said they wanted the brother dead because he threatened harm to his sister and her child.
Text messages between Lipford and his girlfriend show them carrying out the plan. Lipford initially said he wanted to do the murder earlier in the night but Leaundra Matthews disagreed.
“And yall idea is not a good idea trust meee Im not gonna let yall do it iff yall dont do it how i said cuz its a whole bunch of stuff yall aint think about,” she texted her boyfriend, according to the affidavit.
If they did it later in the night, fewer neighbors would be awake and therefore there would be fewer potential eyewitnesses, she reportedly said.
Leaundra Matthews picked up Lipford and Howard from another home and brought them to her house, the affidavit said. She also told them to break a glass window and ransack the house to make it look like a robbery. She also unlocked the back door and left some disposable gloves for him to use. They waited outside until Christian Matthews was asleep.
After the murder, she met her boyfriend and Howard nearby and drove them back to the home where she picked them from, the affidavit said.
Two years after the murder, Leaundra Matthews admitted to her mother and aunt what she had done. During her confession, she was unremorseful and “straight faced,” according to the affidavit. She said “it had to be done. He had to go because he wasn’t going to stop.”
Her mother asked if the plan was just to hurt him.
“No, because you already know how Christian is you know that if he was going to get into a fight it wasn’t going to stop him so we had to stop him,” Leaundra Matthews told her mother, the affidavit said.
The mother relayed her daughter’s confession to detectives and she was arrested.
Lemae Matthews told detectives she knew of the plan to kill her brother but hoped they would just beat him up. She went to the basement before the murders and relayed to her sister that their brother was asleep. She saw Lipford and Howard go to the basement while wearing gloves.
Lemae Matthews said her brother and Lipford often argued because he did not like that he was dating his sister and was the father of his child.
Leaundra’s Matthews sentencing is in January.
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