Leaundra Matthews: Maryland woman gets 30 years in prison for fatally choking teen brother with BF's help

SILVER SPRING, MARYLAND: A 25-year-old woman, who conspired with her twin sister to have her boyfriend kill their teen brother, was sentenced to 25 years in prison and five years of probation by a judge on Monday, February 5, 2024.

In August 2023, a jury returned a guilty verdict against Leaundra Matthews for the 2017 murder of her 17-year-old brother Christian Matthews in their Silver Spring, Maryland, home.

Leaundra Matthews drove the victim to and from the murder scene

The prosecutor described Leaundra Matthews, who drove the victim to and from the murder scene, as having an "integral" role in the scheme to kill her brother.

Attorney Jeffrey Zahler for his client stated he plans to appeal the case to the local news website MoCo360 because he was unable to produce evidence of his client's brother's abuse during the trial.

“The sentence was a little higher than necessary, considering she was convicted of a second-degree murder,” Zahler said to the outlet, according to Law&Crime.

Tysean Lipford, 26, the boyfriend of Leaundra Matthews, was found guilty in 2019 of second-degree murder and is currently serving a 30-year prison sentence.

The trial of Daniel Howard, a 27-year-old man who is suspected of holding Christian Matthews down while Lipford strangled him to death, is set for July.

Furthermore, in October 2021, Lemae Matthews, Leaundra's twin sister, entered a guilty plea to accessory after the fact to murder. She will be sentenced after Howard's trial.

When Montgomery County police arrived at the Silver Spring residence on March 21, 2017, they discovered Christian Matthews was not breathing. He was taken to the hospital by first responders, where medical professionals declared him dead.

He had bruises around his neck, which the officers saw, and an autopsy showed that homicide was the cause of death and asphyxia was the mode of death.

Leaundra Matthews told the cops that she heard a disturbance in the basement and discovered her brother unconscious before dialing 911.

In an interrogation with detectives two days after the murder, Lipford allegedly confessed to killing his girlfriend's brother, according to an arrest affidavit. Lipford claimed that because he had threatened to hurt his girlfriend and their child, they wanted him dead.

Lipford and his girlfriend planned the murder in the text messages to each other. Leaundra disapproved when Lipford first declared earlier in the evening that he wanted to carry out the murder.

"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, as per the affidavit.

She reportedly stated that if they acted later in the night, fewer neighbors would be awake and thus, fewer possible eyewitnesses.

Leaundra Matthews instructed BF to loot house and smash glass window

According to the affidavit, Leaundra picked up Lipford and Howard from a different residence and brought them to her home. To make it appear like a robbery, she also instructed them to smash a glass window and loot the house.

She opened the rear door and gave him a pair of disposable gloves. When Christian Matthews was sound asleep, they waited outside.

According to the affidavit, she drove Howard and her boyfriend back to the house she had picked them up from after meeting them nearby following the murder.

Leaundra Matthews told her mother and aunt what she had done two years after the murder. The affidavit states that she was "straight-faced" and exhibited no remorse during her confession. "It had to be done," she declared.

"He had to go because he wasn’t going to stop,” she said.

Leaundra Matthews told her mother, according to the affidavit, "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."

After telling detectives about her daughter's confession, the mother was taken into custody. Lemae Matthews informed detectives that she was aware of her brother's murderous scheme, but she had hoped they would simply beat him up.

Before the killings, she went to the basement and told her sister that their brother was asleep. Wearing gloves, she watched Lipford and Howard enter the basement.

According to Lemae Matthews, Lipford and her brother had a lot of arguments because he didn't like that Lipford was seeing his sister and having a child with her.