MARTINSBURG, W.Va. — A Maryland man has pleaded guilty to his role in a 2020 multi-state violent crime spree that led to three deaths.
Following a lengthy investigation, Monroe Merrell, 29, of Westminster, Maryland, entered a guilty plea Tuesday to three charges. As part of the plea, he admitted he worked with others to kidnap and murder a man in a Maryland apartment in March 2020.
Merrell and others brought the victim into West Virginia and disposed his body in the woods in Rippon, a rural area of Jefferson County. The body was doused with gasoline and burnt.
U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of West Virginia Matt Harvey said on WEPM Wednesday that the murder emanated from dispute over drug money.
“For people that are operating in polite society, it’s just unthinkable what this began over,” Harvey said. “It was $40 of a drug debt.”
Harvey said the two other murders came a month later. He said Merrell became concerned about witnesses of the March 2020 killing.
“The suspects in that, based on that, decided that they needed to — in a term that they would use — ‘tie up loose ends,'” Harvey said. “Then that resulted in two additional victims in this case. We had one (murder), the initial incident, and two potential witnesses.”
The second and third victims were an 18-year-old and a 33-year-old, both from Maryland. The U.S. Attorney’s office said those bodies were tossed into the Potomac River in Berkeley County.
Harvey was Jefferson County’s Prosecutor in 2020, when the murders took place. He said he’s thankful to see the end of the case through.
“The FBI got involved, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department determined that there was enough of a federal nexus that they were going to prosecute the cases,” Harvey remembered. “It elevated when the two witnesses were murdered as well.”
“As the prosecutor in Jefferson County, I was very thankful for the assistance of the United States Attorney’s Office,” Harvey continued. “It’s come full circle for me, in the role now where I get to see the end to this case. That means something to me.”
Merrell became the sixth person charged in the case. Three Maryland men — David Sanford, Jr., John Black III, and Jeffrey Smith Jr. — have already pleaded guilty. Two West Virginians also entered guilty pleas for their roles. April Braner, 43, of Falling Waters, and Norman Bradford, 55, of Martinsburg pleaded guilty without a grand jury indictment.
The sentencing hearings in this case are scheduled for January 25, 2027.
WEPM’s Marsha Chwalik contributed to this story.