White/Caucasian female Lisa Rutzebeck, 39, was found shot to death alongside her mother, Rachelle M. Armstrong, 60, inside a residence on California Avenue on Kenai's north side. Police were called in the early hours of Sunday, July 21, 2019, and discovered both women dead in the living room. The home sits not far from the Kenai Spur Highway, and neighbors had reported the sudden cracks of gunfire in the quiet of the morning.
Within a day, authorities publicly identified the victims and confirmed they were mother and daughter.
Detectives worked quickly through the first days, gathering witness accounts and tracing movements in and out of the apartment. An affidavit described a witness seeing a man inside moments before two shots rang out. The Kenai Police Department said the suspect fled, but investigators followed leads that soon pointed to a local 25-year-old man.
On July 24, 2019, officers arrested Masonn Byrd of Kenai, taking him into custody without incident. Prosecutors charged him with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Lisa Rutzebeck, 39, and Rachelle Armstrong, 60. In the days that followed, police reported locating a handgun consistent with the weapon they were seeking, and said it would be examined at the state crime lab.
Court filings and contemporary news coverage outlined early theories about motive: prosecutors alleged the killing may have stemmed from a drug debt, with authorities saying one of the victims owed money to the suspect. Alaska Public Media and KDLL also noted Byrd's prior run-ins with the law, including a 2016 case that resulted in convictions on assault and a weapons charge after an attempted-murder count was dismissed in a plea agreement.
Public records and reporting from that summer document the arrest and charges but do not show a publicly reported verdict or sentence in the years immediately following, and some Alaska Court System criminal case information may be unavailable on the public index depending on case status and removal rules. As of the contemporary reports, Byrd remained the arrested and charged suspect in the double homicide of Lisa Rutzebeck, 39, and her mother.
