Cary man in prison for strangling mother and girlfriend found dead in cell
Editor’s note: This story contains reporting about suicides, a topic that will be disturbing to some readers. Mental health resources are available at the bottom of the story.
A 44-year-man who shocked Cary by strangling both his mother and girlfriend has died in prison, reportedly of suicide, six years into his life sentence.
NC Correctional officials reported they found Brandon Lee, 44, unresponsive in his Scotland County cell Monday. Local EMS crews pronounced him dead just past noon, apparently of suicide. The state pledged an investigation.
In 2015, Lee called 911 to confess killing Christa Lee, his 58-year-old mother who lived with him on Havers Drive. He told dispatchers she had wanted to kill herself and had come at him with a knife, “and I ended up choking her ... I couldn’t let her kill herself because that is an unforgivable sin, and she was trying to kill me at the same time.”
He said police would find her in their bathtub at home, where he had placed her roughly a week earlier and covered her with ice.
While on the phone, he told dispatchers he had also killed his girlfriend, 28-year-old Krystal Juell Hilton, in her home on Parktop Drive because “she was seeing someone else and lying to me, and I ended up choking her, too.”
Lee took the rare step of testifying in his own defense during his 2019 trial, and he pantomimed both murders from the witness stand. His attorney asked jurors for a second-degree murder conviction, arguing that he had not operated in a cool state of mind and had a history of alcoholism.
Given two life sentences at 38, Lee apologized to both families.
“Life is not perfect,” he said. “One bad decision can lead to another bad decision, and that’s kind of what my story is.”
As he left the courtroom, Superior Court Judge Graham Shirley told Lee to lay his head on the pillow in his prison cell and think of his victims every night for the next 40.1 years — Lee’s life expectancy at the time.
If you or someone you know is thinking about suicide, help is available. Hope4NC is the NCDHHS help line; call 855-587-3463. For immediate help, call or send a text to 988.
This story was originally published October 29, 2025 at 10:10 AM.