Kanika Powell was a brilliant twenty-eight year old woman living in Prince George County, Maryland. After a tour of service in the Army, she came out and began work as a security contractor. Much to her delight, she found work at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. After two years working as a contractor, she was hired on as a full time employee.
Her work required a top secret classification and she was involved in securing projects related to National Security and in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security. The nature of her work has never been revealed for public consumption, and though the Lab did confirm that she worked there, they would not release even what her job title was.
On Saturday, August 23rd, 2008, Kanika had a frightening experience where a man posing as an FBI agent had tried to gain access to her apartment. He knew her name, and approached her door, but Kanika was intelligent enough to not allow him inside. She later called the police to report the incident and sent out an email to family and friends telling them the strange story. Four days later, a different man showed up, claiming to have a package for her. Again she did not open the door. She called her mother about the second incident, took the day off from work and ran some errands.
When she arrived back at her apartment at approximately 11:50am, someone was waiting in the hallway and shot her multiple times. Kanika never regained consciousness and passed away as a result of her injuries the next day. Police were baffled by the seemingly motiveless crime and didn't have so much as a single suspect.
Three months later, Sean Green, a thirty one year old man working in as an IT professional for a National Security contactor was shot nine times while sitting at a red light. The attack took place just twenty-five miles from where Kanika had been murdered, and the similarities didn't end there. Many have speculated that both Kanika and Green were murdered by the same individual, or possibly for the same reason.
Why was Kanika Powell murdered? Was it simply a random act of violence? Was the murder perpetrated by someone she knew? Is she a yet unproven victim of the "Mother Daughter Killer" Jason Thomas Scott? Was her murder part of a larger plan which also targeted Sean Green or was Kanika the victim of a murder for hire scheme?
