- Brittany Smith was found in a purple suitcase in the Neuse River in Raleigh
- She was six months pregnant with a baby boy and was a recovering drug addict
- She and her boyfriend Cody Page had been living in another man’s backyard
- Thomas Clayton Johnson and Emmalei Grace Trevathan have been arrested
- It’s unclear what their motive was but Johnson picked Smith up
- The body was found in a suitcase by the Neuse River Trail in Raleigh on Monday
Two people have been arrested for killing a pregnant homeless woman whose body was found stuffed in a suitcase near a North Carolina river last week.
Brittany Smith, 28, was six months pregnant with a baby boy when she vanished last week near Raleigh.
She was living in a tent with her boyfriend Cody Page in the backyard of another man’s home,and the pair were overcoming drug addiction.
It’s unclear what their motive was, but police have now arrested Thomas Clayton Johnson, 37, and Emmalei Grace Trevathan, 24, with her murder.
Police arrested the pair after looking through the victim’s phone and discovering that Johnson had offered to pick her up on the day she went missing. Her boyfriend is now convinced she was living a ‘secret life’.
‘She had a secret life. She wouldn’t keep me informed. She was doing stuff that I didn’t agree with,’ he told local network WRAL.
The pair were living in the backyard of Dale Williams. It’s unclear how they knew him but he allowed them to do laundry and shower in his house.
Wake County Sheriff Gerald Baker said last week, after discovering her body: ‘I can’t sit here and tell you that’s what’s in there right now.
‘We have not gotten to that point. We have information to believe it.
‘It’s not every day, it’s not every morning, that you find what could be a person’s body in a suitcase, in a river,’ he added.
Police had put out an alert asking for the public’s help in locating Smith on Saturday, four days after she was last seen in Wendell.
Smith was described as being 4’11” tall, about 115 pounds and ‘noticeably pregnant’.
Baker hinted that investigators suspect Smith may be the victim in the suitcase on Monday.
‘If this is, in fact, this young lady that we’ve been looking for all weekend, someone is responsible for that,’ he said.
The sheriff also said there is a ‘person of interest’ detectives want to speak with.
‘We’re going to work very hard. We’re going to find out who was responsible. I can tell you that.
‘Because these things just don’t happen. Someone is responsible.’
