Former Duke University football player Brandon Braxton has admitted to the brutal killing of his high school friend, Whitney Hurd, after stalking and terrorizing her outside her home in an upscale North Carolina neighborhood last July.
According to The New York Post, Braxton sent a chilling message to the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office while in custody on an unrelated charge, writing: “I killed Whitney Hurd.”
The confession, made on March 3, was detailed in an arrest affidavit signed on March 20, which led to Braxton’s formal arrest for the murder.
Hurd, a 32-year-old real estate agent, was first reported missing by her family on July 11, 2024. Three days later, a private investigator found her body wrapped in bedding inside her SouthPark home.
An autopsy later confirmed she had been stabbed multiple times, and her death was ruled a homicide.
From the outset, Braxton was considered a person of interest. His fingerprints were discovered at the crime scene and inside Hurd’s stolen white 2014 BMW X3. However, despite the mounting evidence, he was not arrested until March 20, 2025.
Braxton and Hurd had once been close, meeting at Providence High School in Charlotte before losing contact for years.
Braxton later played football at Duke, appearing in 43 games and scoring three touchdowns as a receiver, as well as recording 38 tackles in his 2012 season as a safety.
But in 2014, nearly a decade before the murder, Braxton allegedly reappeared in Hurd’s life in an unsettling way.
According to court documents, he began showing up outside her home uninvited. On one occasion, he reportedly slept in her driveway after she refused to let him in. Another time, she called the police when he allegedly broke into her home.
Despite these troubling incidents, there were no reports of restraining orders or criminal charges filed against him at the time.
After killing Hurd, Braxton took her phone and car before vanishing from the scene. Witnesses later told authorities they had seen a man leaving her home in the stolen BMW on July 4.
Police eventually located the abandoned vehicle, but Hurd’s phone was never recovered. Investigators used fingerprints found inside the car and the home to track Braxton’s whereabouts.
While authorities worked to build their case, Braxton was arrested on January 23 for burglary and remained in custody. Then, on March 3, while in jail, he accessed a kiosk system used by inmates to communicate with jail staff.
That same day, a message appeared in the system, addressed to Mecklenburg County sheriff’s sergeants: “I killed Whitney Hurd.”
Two weeks later, on March 20, authorities formally charged him with first-degree murder and armed robbery.
At his court appearance on March 21, Braxton was denied bail and remains behind bars as he awaits trial.
