Occasionally a crime comes along that’s so heinous it captures the world’s attention. The Brittany McKinney triple murder case is one of those. On New Year’s Day of 2020, McKinney seemingly randomly murdered her 10-year-old daughter M’kenzie McKinney, her 2-year-old niece Serenity Rose, and her former flame Jerry Griffin, 61, creating one of the most heartbreaking and disturbing true crime cases of all time.
Police were called to do a welfare check on the rented home where McKinney was staying around 11 a.m. They found a grisly scene: McKinney’s daughter and Griffin were dead, and Serenity was clinging to life. The girls were both shot in the face, and Griffin was shot in the back of the head. Serenity eventually succumbed to her injuries as well.
In these cases, a lot of us want to search for a reason “why,” to help us understand how someone could become so detached from reality that they murder their own daughter. Unfortunately, that answer never really became clear.
This is the story of Brittany McKinney and the New Year’s Day triple murders.
Who is Brittany McKinney and what happened on New Year’s Day 2020?
We don’t know a lot about Brittany McKinney’s life before that fateful day on Jan. 1 when she murdered three people close to her, but there are whispers. She is said to have dealt with substance abuse issues in the past, per prosecutors, but her criminal record was scant.
The only thing on her record before the murders was a traffic citation for not having an operators license in 2018. She worked as a data entry specialist, and her mother Denise McKinney Weeks described her as a “loving person.”
“We know that this is not her character, this is not her,” Denise told Oxygen.com. “The love a parent has for a child is unconditional. We’re devastated with what happened. We’re not sure of the ‘why’ or the ‘how.’ The love I have for her has not changed.”
When asked for a potential motive for the killings, Denise said she was just “in shock.”
McKinney lived on Sweet Birch Drive in Greensboro, N.C. with her daughter and the older Griffin. The two adults dated previously, but were apparently just friends at the time of the murders. Here’s what we know, based on numerous reports.
McKinney shot all three people around 11 a.m. and fled in Griffin’s 2011 GMC. She then phoned her sister Delilah Merritt, who told FOX8 about that life-changing call:
“She said, ‘I killed everybody. I shot everybody in the house,’” Merritt told the outlet. “She’s like, ‘My baby, my baby, I shot my baby.’ And then I said, ‘Where’s Serenity?’ and she said, ‘I shot her too.’”
After the call, Merritt called police and told them to go check on the house. They arrived at 11:15 a.m.
McKinley kept driving until she crashed into a power line pole about 30 minutes later at 11:47 a.m. When a woman named Veronica Hayes tried to drive around, McKinney smashed into her car too. Hayes said she wanted to make sure everything was kosher and tried to talk to McKinney.
“I was just trying to make sure she was OK, not knowing what had happened moments before,” Hayes said. “She grabbed my hoodie and said, ‘I don’t want you to be involved.’ She said, ‘Sis, I don’t want you to be involved.’ I think she was a little disoriented at that point.”
After the accident, McKinley walked to a nearby Citgo gas station and went into the convenience store. She withdrew some money from the ATM, and then she just sat down on the floor and waited. When police responded to the accident they realized McKinley was the killer.
After her arrest, she tried to seek an insanity defense. Her lawyer at the time, Guilford County Assistant Public Defender Wayne Baucino, said she was “unbelievably remorseful.”
“Nothing happened that would have caused someone to react in this fashion,” he said. “There was no reason for this to be triggered. It’s my opinion she was not in her right mind when this happened.”
Regardless, the case did not go to trial. McKinney accepted a plea deal that took the death penalty off the table. Her lawyer said she was basically coerced to do so.
“I wish that they wouldn’t use the death penalty as a tool to make people plead guilty as opposed to just letting them have their day in court,” Baucino said.
A psychiatrist hired by the defense, Dr. Moira Artigues, wrote that there’s a “reasonable degree of medical certainty” that McKinney “meets the definition for a finding of insanity.” As to what would’ve happened had the case gone to trial, no one knows.
She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three life sentences without the possibility of parole. Gary L. Griffin, the son of slain victim Jerry Griffin, was in the courtroom for the sentencing.
“It’s not going to bring my father back — nothing that the judicial system or anybody can do is going to bring my father back,” Gary Griffin said after the verdict. “Her receiving a triple life sentence means nothing to me. I hope she rots in hell.”
