On a tragic afternoon in Laurel, Maryland, the lives of 22-year-old Lisa Laverne Brown and her infant daughter were cut short. On December 12, 2006, both mother and child were found shot to death in an upstairs bedroom of their boarding house on Engleman Drive. The discovery was made after a resident in the home reported hearing gunshots. There were no signs of forced entry, leading investigators to believe the victims were targeted.
In the days leading up to her death, Lisa Brown had
sought legal protection from a man named Lawrence Banks, also known as Malik Samartaney. Banks was reportedly the boyfriend of Lisa's mother. Court records revealed that just ten days before the murders, Lisa had obtained a temporary peace order against Banks. In her application, she detailed a verbal altercation with him stemming from his disapproval of her mother babysitting her 9-month-old daughter, Labria Fogle. Despite the peace order being granted and several attempts by sheriff's deputies to serve him, Banks never received the order.
Investigators quickly focused on Lawrence Banks as a person of interest, delving into his violent past which included prior convictions for two murders in 1991. He was arrested on a parole violation shortly after the killings of Lisa and Labria. Despite the existence of the peace order and the circumstances surrounding their deaths, authorities were unable to gather enough evidence to formally charge Banks in connection with the double homicide.
The case of the murder of Lisa Laverne Brown and her daughter Labria Fogle has remained without a conviction. While Banks was a significant figure in the investigation, the lack of sufficient evidence meant that no one was ever brought to trial for their deaths. Years later, in an unrelated case, Lawrence Banks was convicted and sentenced to a lengthy prison term for the 2019 murder and dismemberment of his adult daughter, the same child he had been convicted of assaulting as an infant decades earlier. However, the murders of Lisa and Labria officially remain unsolved.
