A young woman who has been described as a loving, outgoing, energetic and “super sweet” person left this world almost eight months ago, but those who loved her are still dealing with the wake her death caused.
That’s because six months after 29-year-old Mariah Ashley Winter King’s death was initially reported as an apparent suicide by hanging, Sweet Home police arrested her boyfriend, Jerod Lloyd Norman, 40, and charged him with her murder.
The sequence of events began the night of July 18, 2024, when the Linn County Sheriff’s Office and Sweet Home Police Department responded to a report of an apparent suicide at 2241 Nandina St. But, according to police, things didn’t add up at the scene, so they asked the medical examiner to take a closer look.
Following a six-month investigation, Norman was arrested, lodged without bail and soon indicted by a grand jury on charges of second-degree murder and first-degree abuse of a corpse. No trial date has been set; preliminary hearings continue in the case.
Situation Rouses Suspicions
While King’s family has said she made threats about suicide in the past, investigators have evidence that they believe may be the answer to what really happened. In a press release on the day following Norman’s arrest, SHPD indicated the medical examiner found “a foreign object” inside King’s body.
Wholeheartedly believing King was a victim of domestic abuse by Norman, her sister, Micaela King, has stepped up to be a voice on behalf of Mariah and victims of domestic abuse. Their mother, Kim Lapham, said she’s never been made aware of any physical violence between the couple, but she believes Norman was emotionally, psychologically and spiritually controlling.
“She would confide in me and I would tell her, ‘This isn’t good, this is some flags and you should probably think about getting away,’” Lapham said.
Perspectives on Relationship Vary
Mariah and Norman started dating in July 2021 and that is when, family and friends say, they started noticing Mariah’s bubbly personality start to take a slow dive. SHPD Det. Sean Potter said that police started answering “disturbance” calls from neighbors at the house the two shared together just months into the relationship.
Lapham said she and Mariah used to be close and her daughter would tell her everything, but after she started dating Norman, Mariah began to pull away.
“I’m not positive that he ever told her not to come see me, but she started noticing that his behaviors would increase or he would give her the silent treatment if she had went and spent the day with me or her siblings or anything like that,” Lapham said. “So she’d pull away from us… it was easier for her to stay away than to make waves at home.”
Tiana Garcia, Norman’s former girlfriend and mother to one of his sons, tells a different story, saying that from what she heard, Mariah wasn’t close with her family and was afraid they wanted to take her kids from her.
Mariah’s friends, family and neighbors described Norman as quiet, cocky and kind of stand-offish.
When friends and family would visit, Micaela said, it wasn’t unusual for him to retreat to his truck or shed.
“It’s really hard to get him to talk,” Lapham said. “It’s like he’s avoidant in a way. He comes off kind of assertive, kind of gruff, but he’s not shy.”
Garcia called Norman “a man’s man,” nothing soft about him.
“He was the type to get up and do something productive every day,” she said. “No time for laziness or people who weren’t productive themselves. He came from a hard-working family.”
Potter said that, for the most part, Norman has been cooperative with police during their interactions, adding that he came off as a “very straightforward,” “intense” individual at times.
According to Micaela, Norman would give Mariah the silent treatment when he was mad – particularly whenever she got a job – and Mariah told family members he emotionally abused her. Even neighbors talked about conversations they had with Mariah in which she would say he was mentally abusive and mean to her.
Hearing things that are being said about Norman is “gut-wrenching” to Garcia.
“He was very much stuck in his ways, which at times caused rift,” Garcia said about her own relationship with him, “but Jerod is the type of person that can have someone screaming in his face and he will shut the door and ignore you until he’s ready to deal with it in a calm manner. Sure, we would fight and he was insensitive at times, but people aren’t perfect.”
Since Mariah’s death, Lapham said she has heard reports that Mariah was getting ready to leave Norman, and she said Mariah herself had talked to her about it. In January 2024 Mariah told Lapham she was slowly moving her things into the kids’ room so that one day she could just pick it all up and leave.
“It was a slow process. It wasn’t going to be a fast process,” Lapham said.
Reactions to Case Vary Widely
Just a few days before her death, Mariah apparently told her neighbor Shawn Jefferson that Norman said something so terrible to her that she couldn’t even repeat it. After they heard of her alleged suicide, Jefferson and his girlfriend, Matti Hook, questioned whether this mysterious “terrible thing” was somehow related to her death.
“I knew he seemed like he could kind of be like an a-hole, but I didn’t think he was, like, that capable (of murder),” Hook said. “It caught us off guard.”
Others apparently thought the same thing. In social media posts, Norman’s friends and family expressed surprise after his arrest, describing him as “a fun, good young man,” and not someone they would expect to commit such a crime. And on the night of her death, after Norman allegedly found Mariah’s body in his shed, Micaela said he called her, “bawling.”
The New Era reached out to Norman’s mother, but she declined to comment. Garcia, however, said she wanted to bring light to his name because she believes the father of her 9-year-old son, Bearett, is innocent.
“He was my rock during a very dark time in my life,” she said. “As much as I would push him away, he never gave up on me, and trying to show me a new way to love my life again.”
Bearett lived in the residence with Norman and Mariah, along with Mariah’s own two kids and Norman’s father, David Norman. Mariah’s step-dad, Ed Taylor, had also lived there for a period of time.
Garcia is convinced Norman is innocent, she said, noting that her own son was with Mariah and Norman that evening and has talked to her about that night. Based on what she was told, it was both Norman and Bearett who opened the shed door and found Mariah there. Garcia said this has been a hard time for Bearett, who not only viewed Mariah like a mother, but also told Garcia that he didn’t know how to help his dad stop crying after Mariah died.
Given what she believes about Mariah and Norman, Garcia believes Mariah took her own life, she said. As for the foreign object, she speculated that someone put it there to frame Norman.
Victim Struggled with Suicidal Thoughts
Both Micaela and Lapham said Mariah had struggled in the past, threatening suicide.
“Mariah did have some suicidal ideation,” Lapham said. “Ideation is not the same as an actual attempt, and she’s actually had zero attempts.”
According to Micaela, one of those incidents occurred two years before Mariah’s death, in July 2022, when Mariah took Norman’s gun after he allegedly told her where it was. She drove out to Foster Lake and called her mom, telling her she wanted to kill herself.
Lapham drove out to meet her and persuaded her to come home with her. Mariah stayed with her mom for several months but, Micaela said, Norman continued to text her and allegedly threatened Lapham. Out of this situation, Norman was charged in December 2022 with telephonic harassment against Lapham; that case is still active.
Mariah was the kind of person who loved going all out decorating for the holidays, Micaela said. She was a cheerleader at South Albany who never partied while in high school, and was adventurous and a go-getter.
Mariah had two children, and Micaela believes that alone is indication she didn’t commit suicide because she would not do that to herself without, at least, leaving a note for her kids.
Micaela believes strongly that her sister never did drugs – and that Mariah hated the fact that Norman allegedly did drugs. But she said Mariah began having a problem with alcohol after moving in with Norman. Both Micaela and Lapham say it was Mariah’s way of coping with her sadness.
“The one thing that she had a recent problem with – like this did not occur until within the last couple years – she did not have a problem with alcohol until this, and I think that was because she was just trying to numb herself and it was available,” Lapham said. “So there was some heavy drinking involved at times.”
Friend: Final Night ‘Super Emotional’
On the night of Mariah’s death, friend Jeanette Taylor said she was working at Going Green when Mariah arrived there – which was walking distance away from Mariah’s home – and seemed “super emotional” and really upset.
“I said, ‘What can I do to help?’ and she said, ‘You’re a mom. Will you just please hold me like you’re my mom?’”
Taylor sat with Mariah and said she noticed Mariah acted like she had been drinking – although she didn’t smell alcohol on her – and had marks on her neck. According to Taylor, Mariah said her and Norman had had a good day together, but they got into some sort of fight that evening.
Taylor asked Mariah about the marks on her neck. She said Mariah told her she had done that to herself because she wanted to hurt herself.
Taylor asked Mariah if she wanted help getting away from Norman but, Taylor said, Mariah told her she was not comfortable answering that yet. Taylor also said their conversation included a confession by Mariah that she just didn’t recognize herself any more those past three years, that she was happier with her ex-boyfriend.
“She just talked a lot about her family and her siblings,” Taylor said. “She talked about her mom and about how much she loved everybody and how much she wanted to get better.”
Taylor called Lapham, per Mariah’s request, but when Lapham arrived, the reunion wasn’t warmly received.
Lapham explained that she had tried helping Mariah sober up and leave Norman in the past, but it got to a point where Lapham had to set boundaries for her own health’s sake. That, she said, is why she kept a distance when she arrived that evening.
Still, she asked Mariah where she wanted to go, but Mariah’s response was to turn around and run back home.
According to Garcia – who recounted what she heard from her son Bearett – at the time of Mariah’s death, Norman was out front while his father, David Norman, was out back barbecuing. Bearett had a friend over and the two were running back and forth between the two men. Mariah’s two kids, Libby, 8, and James, 5, were not there that day.
Later that evening, Lapham asked police to do a welfare check on her daughter. Potter said that Mariah answered their knock on the door, but she refused to open up and told them to go away. One hour and 30 minutes later, police responded to a call regarding a suicide at that same house.
Since Mariah had made suicidal threats before, Micaela thought this time it may have actually happened, but the fact she didn’t leave a note for her kids didn’t make sense, she said.
This also confused Mariah’s neighbor.
“It did surprise me because she was a really good mother,” Hook said. “I was confused, like, how could she leave her kids like that?”
Acquaintances Conflicted by Case
After police informed the public that a foreign object was found inside Mariah, Hook came to believe it’s “obvious” Norman killed her.
“That’s a really, I feel like, key defining factor to that,” she said.
Still, Garcia doesn’t see it that way.
“He’s not a killer,” she said. “He loved Mariah, Mariah loved him. She had a lot of issues that needed a lot of attention and when she didn’t get it, she would throw fits.”
Potter said that police see and notice certain things during an investigation and, in this particular case, enough of it was “off” to make them want to take a step back and scrutinize the situation more closely. He was aware, he said, that suicide was a possible explanation.
“There were some indicators that she may have had those ideations, but to my knowledge she never took steps towards any of that,” Potter said. “Typically, if somebody’s actually suicidal, they’ll take steps toward that.”
More evidence and the truth may come to light for the public when Norman’s case goes to trial or is closed. All records have been sealed for now. A final resolution conference is scheduled March 11. Mariah’s family expects Norman will plead ‘not guilty’ and move for a trial.
Norman’s attorney, Gregory Scholl, said, “Suicide is a profound tragedy, and while it is understandable that people confronted with such a senseless act want answers, the answer is never to falsely accuse an innocent man. Mr. Norman is devastated by the loss of his fiancé, and we look forward to clearing his name.”
Mariah’s two kids are now living with their father.
For friends and family, as they navigate this journey to finding the truth, they will always remember Mariah as the “super positive,” happy, loving, giving girl they’d come to know. They recall her love of being outdoors, being in the water, hiking and backpacking, and her love of animals.
Victim ‘A Remarkable Person’
“She was amazing,” Taylor said. “She was super positive, super sweet, never mean or rude to anybody. Super giving, super lovey, super duper lovey, always had a smile. She was one of our favorites, so everybody was always happy to see her.”
She was described as having a good sense of humor, someone who was always there for anyone who needed help, and who was down-to-earth.
Mariah could also be stubborn, those who knew her say, and one who insisted on her independence while at the same time wanting to help others. She was the kind of person who could make friends easily, because she never knew a stranger.
“She was a very bubbly, outgoing, helpful person, the kind this world needs more of,” Lapham said. “She was really a remarkable person.”
This story was updated Feb. 28, 2025, to include a statement from the defense attorney.