Murder of a Typical Family, From Within — True Crime
In a family that seemed so normal, tragedy would strike, and leave everyone suffering from loss.
Could depression have led to a teenager killing his mother and brother, and trying to kill his father?
Friday Valentine’s Day 2020
Like many men, that day, Josh Norwood 37 left work and stopped off for some flowers that night on his way home.
He arrived at his rural Virginia home around 6 pm. As he walked towards the house, he got his first hint that something was wrong. The curtains were drawn, and when he entered his youngest son, Wyatt 6 didn’t come to greet him, as usual.
That’s when he heard the gunfire and felt the bullet grazing his forehead.
Immediately Josh thought about saving his family, even as the blood ran down his face. He ran to his eldest son seventeen-year-old Levi’s room, the lights were on, but Levi was nowhere to be seen.
In the living room, he found a pile of blankets. Josh pulled back the blankets and discovered his wife Jen 34, lying motionless facedown in a pool of blood.
There was a blanket covering something on the love seat, when he pulled it back he found his youngest son Wyatt.
Talking to reporters later, Josh said that he remembered just screaming, “No, this isn’t real.”
Not knowing what was going on, he pulled his gun, that he had on him, and shot towards the basement door. That’s where the bullet came from that had hit him upon entry.
Then Josh ran out of the house and was able to flag down a passing motorist who helped him call 911.
Saturday, February 15, 2020
The next day the hunt for the killer came to an end when the Fauquier County Sheriff’s Department arrested Levi.
It’s speculated that the Liberty High School junior had shot and killed his mother and brother, and wounded his father, then escaped before the police had arrived.
Levi then stole a car and drove over 200 miles south to evade capture. He was arrested initially for shoplifting hair dye at a store in Durham, North Carolina. At the time of the shooting, Levi had purple hair and said he wanted to change the color to avoid detection on the run.
It Could Happen to Anyone
The Norwood’s seemed like your typical family. No one who knew them would have ever expected this. So what happened?
Josh had met his wife, Jen Overlock, in a pet store he worked at in Maine when they were both teenagers. “I was a snake guy,” he said. “She came in and asked about ferrets, and I said, ‘Wow, I like that.’”
They began dating and got married in 2002 after Josh proposed at a Pantera concert.
A year after they married, they had Levi, which they named after their favorite pet, a large snaked called Leviathan. Josh said they liked the name because it was strong sounding and unusual.
Six years later, they moved to Virginia so Josh could manage a reptile shop there. Then a couple of years after they had their second son, Wyatt.
Josh said that his wife Jen, loved being a mother, and was very active in their lives. Her Facebook tagline is ProudMama2003, showing the love she had for her sons.
“She was very protective of both our boys,” Josh said. “Our boys grew up in a loving household. We told them we loved them every day.”
A Father Left Behind
Josh Norwood lost his whole world at once. His wife and youngest son dead, and his eldest son “the one who took them away” charged with murder.
Raking his brain trying to figure out how this could have happened, all he came up with was that Levi had seemed “a little depressed.”
That’s why he and his wife had made an appointment for Levi to see a Doctor on Monday, three days after the murders.
Another question Josh has is, where did his son get the gun? He owns weapons, but they are safely locked in a double-lock safe, and Levi didn’t have access.
He also wonders how his son could be the same boy that he took driving the weekend before so Levi could get more hours behind the wheel to take his driver’s test. He remembered the trip as great, both of them laughing and having fun.
Just that Valentine’s Day, his wife had texted him that the boys were cuddled up on the couch together. It would be the same spot he would find Wyatt’s body that evening.
Classmates Blame Racism
Students who went to school with Levi say they blame his father because they say he is a racist.
They reference a Facebook page that Josh Norwood shared the motto referred to as the “14 words”.
Josh denies he is in any way a racist. He said he shared the information in 2014 but added it was “Nothing that I believe or stand for.”
He added, “I don’t even remember why I put it [up]. Maybe I was having a bad day.”
Teenage Problems
Josh said that he and his wife had pressured their son to stop seeing his girlfriend, who was black. But he said it had nothing to do with her race. It was the fact that Levi had been depressed after dating her. Saying the relationship was “bringing him down.”
“I don’t care about that,” he said about Levi’s girlfriend being black. “The only thing I told him was, ‘Levi, this girl has a few issues, she’s working through some stuff, and you guys don’t need to bring each other down. You don’t need people who need help and support, to feed off of each other and cause you to get worse.’”
“You don’t know how to feel,” he told reporters. “All you have are just questions of why and how. How your little boy grew up to do something like that.”
Coming Days
As Josh prepares for a double funeral, he still hasn’t been able to go back into his own home. Family members have gone and talked about finding the uncooked food in the stove and wrapped presents that will never be opened now.
At the same time, Levi is in the process of being returned to Virginia to stand for his arraignment of two murder charges.
It hasn’t been decided yet if Levi will be tried as a juvenile or an adult.
“Every day for the rest of my life,” Josh said, “I’m going to wake up, look in the mirror, and I’m going to have a scar down my face, my head, as a memory of the worst day of my life, when my family got taken away.”
Ginny Norwood, mother to Josh and grandmother to Levi, says she’s devastated by their family’s loss but is still praying for her grandson. “I love Levi still, but am so confused,” she wrote on Facebook. “We are all empty, pray for us.”
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