Limerick man convicted of murdering his business partner, sentenced to life in prison

A Montgomery County jury convicted a Limerick man Wednesday of first-degree murder for killing his business partner after defrauding her of thousands of dollars that she invested in his restaurant business.

Blair Watts, 33, was then sentenced to life in prison after the five-day trial before Montgomery County Court Judge William Carpenter. As he was escorted out of the courthouse, Watts maintained his innocence, saying he didn’t kill Jennifer Brown and promising to fight for his freedom.

Brown, 43, disappeared Jan. 3, sparking an intense search for her organized by her friends and loved ones. Her body was discovered two weeks later in a shallow grave by an employee at a warehouse where the grave had been hastily dug.

Initially, Watts cooperated with police, telling them that he was the last person to see Brown alive during a meeting at her home, but vehemently denying harming her. However, prosecutors said, it quickly became clear that Watts was lying to them in an attempt to manipulate their investigation and move suspicion away from him.

First Assistant District Attorney Ed McCann and Deputy District Attorney Kelly Lloyd said after the verdict was read Wednesday that they believed, and the jury agreed, that the prosecution had proven Watts’ guilt “beyond any doubt.”

“This is an immense tragedy; Jennifer was beloved by so many,” Lloyd said. “She leaves behind two sons ... we will just never be able to know the full impact this will have on them.”

Watts’ lawyer, Michael Coard, did not comment as he left the courthouse after his client’s sentencing.

During the trial, McCann said that there was an “overwhelming web and weight of evidence” against Watts, a “broke narcissist” who had been manipulating Brown for months. The two, who had been friends for years, forged an agreement in which Brown helped fund Birdie’s Kitchen, a venture that Watts hoped to reopen.

Coard, in his own presentation to the jurors, had urged them to render their verdict based on evidence, not emotion or sympathy for Brown. He asserted that prosecutors had relied only on circumstantial evidence to charge Watts and had failed to prove he had murdered her.

Watts, according to evidence presented during the trial, greatly misrepresented the business’ progress to Brown. Though he told her that he had renovated the property and bought equipment in preparation for what he said would be an opening in January, Watts spent most of Brown’s $23,000 on personal expenses, including fast food and online shopping.

In late December 2022, as Brown was asking Watts for more details about when the eatery would open, the building’s owners told him they were no longer interested in working with him. That day, he texted his girlfriend that he was having a “mental breakdown.”

Watts told police that he and Brown had agreed to meet less than a week later to have an “airing of grievances” to discuss the stresses in their lives. Afterward, he offered to take Brown’s 8-year-old son, Noah, for a sleepover at his house with his three kids.

But unlike previous sleepovers at Watts’ house, Noah left without a change of clothes or his medication, something that immediately raised suspicion among those who knew Brown, a doting mother, well.

In reality, prosecutors said, Watts killed Brown in her living room. Shards of a hair clip she wore were found embedded in the room’s carpet, and a cadaver dog detected the smell of a corpse in the home’s kitchen.

That dog also detected evidence of a corpse in Watts’ red Jeep Grand Cherokee. In that same vehicle, detectives found soil that was “identical” to the soil that Brown was buried in, according to trial testimony.

Cell phone records showed Watts visited that burial site Jan. 5, two days after Brown was killed and weeks before her body was discovered. Other records showed that Watts was in possession of Brown’s phone when $17,000 was transferred from her CashApp account to his, transfers made hours after Brown was killed.

“A 43-year-old woman doesn’t end up in a shallow grave on her own, and there was no other way to explain how she died,” McCann, the prosecutor, said Wednesday.

Brown’s aunt, Diane Brehm, fought back tears in court Wednesday during the sentencing hearing as she testified about how the loss of her niece, who was like a daughter to her, had sent her and her family’s worlds into disarray from the first day she was reported missing.

”Eleven months of sleepless nights for a selfish act of greed,” Brehm said. “I don’t know if I’ll ever understand, but I know now that this jury saw everything that we have seen.

“This will never bring Jennifer back to us, but we can carry her legacy. We’ve had justice.”