LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — A young Las Vegas mother’s murder remains unsolved nearly five years after someone came into her home and strangled her as her 3-year-old daughter slept.
Friends found Brittney Briggs, 24, dead in her home on Spindrift Court near Lake Mead Boulevard and Mt. Hood Street on Feb. 10, 2017.
“We always see it happen to other people. It’s different when it’s you,” Brittney Briggs’ mother, Kim Briggs, said.
“She was a good person to other people. She always was a giving person,” Brittney Briggs’ father, Jon Schaffner, said.
Brittney, a tax preparer, returned to her home on the night of Feb. 9 after picking up a prescription for her young daughter, her parents told the I-Team. It was the last time anyone ever heard from her.
“The next morning, she was dead,” Kim Briggs said.
“There’s about a span of 8 hours of when where we don’t know what happened,” Schaffner said.
Sometime overnight, someone came into Brittney’s home and killed her. Her daughter told her grandparents one chilling detail.
“She said that someone told her to be quiet and put the blanket over her,” Kim said.
Never-before-seen photos of the crime scene obtained by the I-Team show a bed stripped of its sheets with a suitcase on top. In another photo, the young girl’s bedroom is shown with a plethora of toys and stuffed animals.
“Her daughter tried to wake her up several times,” Terri Miller, a Metro cold case investigator, told the I-Team. On the morning of Feb. 10, friends came to check on Brittney after not hearing from her. The front door was ajar, and the young girl came to the door, Miller and Briggs’ parents said.
“They didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary until they walked into the house and saw that it had been ransacked,” Miller said.
That proved to be a potential lead, Miller said. Investigators learned Brittney sold clothes, trinkets and other items online – things the killer took with them. To this day, those items have not been recovered.
“There were certain very specific items missing from her home,” Miller said.
Police scoured social media and other websites for clues, but found nothing suspicious. Miller would not reveal any specifics about the searches due to the ongoing investigation. Those are details only Briggs’ suspected killer may know.
“Someone out there knows what happened,” Miller said. “It’s been four years. Someone has talked about this.”
“And now all I have is an urn,” Kim Briggs said. “That’s not right”
Desperate for answers, Briggs’ parents have come up with their own theories: Was it a robbery gone wrong, or a pre-arraigned meeting with a tragic ending?
“We want to be able to tell her little girl that her mommy had justice, someday,” Kim Briggs said.
Brittney’s daughter, now 8, lives with a relative, her grandparents said. Police did not interview her at the time due to her young age.
Investigators have not been able to find the items missing from Briggs’ home, a major piece of the unsolved case, which could lead them to her killer.
Tips can be submitted anonymously through Crime Stoppers by calling 702-385-5555 or at crimestoppersofnv.com/report-a-crime. Crime Stoppers offers a reward for information that leads to an arrest.
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