Sony Millbrook Slumbers Under a Motel Bed

Sony Millbrook

(Memphis, TN) It was January 25^th, 2010 and Sony Millbrook was laying on the bed in her Budget Lodge room.   The sound of the key in the door and the eventual creak of the hinges brought her body upright.  Seeing LaKeith Moody, her boyfriend and the father of one of her five children, in the doorway put her at ease; she nodded at him and returned to reclining.  After closing her eyes for a moment, she opened them to see Moody standing over her.  He was silent.  She asked him what he was doing, and he responded by calling her a lazy fat-ass.  She sat up to defend herself and he began to yell.  She could barely understand what he was saying.  “Money,” “the children,” and “just wanted a score” were threaded into the sentences, but beyond that Sony was forced to squint in confusion at the barrage of complaints.

And then he struck her.  LaKeith had hit her before.  Sony raised her hands to soften his blows, but she did not fight back or run away.  The phone sat unused on the end table, she didn’t even run for it.  Suddenly, she noticed a change in LaKeith’s eyes.  She saw a rage there that she had not seen before, and the groans of frustration he made took on a new beastly tone.  He pushed her hard against the wall.  She watched him as she slid down the surface.  He pulled a dangling object from his pocket, which she soon identified as a red, white, and yellow cord.

She stood up to run.  As she made her way to the door he swung his arm across her throat, halting her in her place.  Sony put her hands to her neck and tried to breathe through the damage, but LaKeith slipped the cord past her hands and around her throat.  She tried to reach her fingers under the cord but it closed tighter every fraction of a second.  No matter how hard she forced her muscles, another breath would not enter her lungs.  As her life slipped away, she focused on a knot in the cord, digging into her neck.  And then there was nothing.

After Sony was dead, LaKeith pulled out the box-spring from under the mattress of the bed.  He shoved Sony’s body into it, between the metal bars.  Afterwards, he carefully replaced the bed as it was.  He took her car with him when he left.  The next day, the door was locked by management after failure to pay the rent.  Before long they were renting the room to new guests, with 5 sets of guests staying the night before the discovery of Sony’s body was made on March 17.  LaKeith Moody was arrested and questioned when he was found sitting in Sony’s car, but he was released on lack of evidence to tie him to the murder.  He was arrested again for possession of a gun as a felon, and is now being held, currently unaccused of Sony Millbrook’s death.