Woman describes how she turned in Maryland couple wanted for murder after Cash App transaction

Two women wanted for murder in Maryland were captured in Ohio and are facing extradition for killing the elderly mother of one of the suspects. 

The couple was hiding out from police at the Ohio home of a good Samaritan who had no idea about the killing. 

Their scheme unraveled because one of the suspects made a Cash App payment using her real name. 

A quick Google search revealed the couple was wanted by law enforcement in Maryland.

On the run 

Vanessa Tjongarero-Henderson, 29, and her 36-year-old girlfriend Samantha Raebel had been on the run since the murder of Henderson's 67-year-old mother, Hilde Henderson, on May 22 at her Charter House Senior Apartment in Silver Spring, Maryland. 

Investigators said she died a violent death by blunt force trauma. 

The couple fled almost 500 miles away to Genoa, Ohio, which is near Toledo, where Tjongarero-Henderson walked into a fast food restaurant and met Adrienne Behrman and asked her for help. 

"I've been homeless. I've been down and out," Behrman told WJZ Investigator Mike Hellgren. "I just know the feelings deep down, and I didn't want them to feel like nobody cared, nobody was listening, nobody was here." 

Behrman continued, "They said they were homeless. They were living in Maryland. They had taken what little money they had and left a toxic living situation, and they were headed to Arizona." 

Police said Raebel was from Phoenix, Arizona

Behrman said she was not initially suspicious.

"Actually, I had no vibes of anything bad or being fearful of anything," Behrman said. "They talked very nice. They were kind of soft spoken." 

Behrman did not have much but offered what she could, a sofa bed where they could sleep. 

Behrman said she left the couple while she went away on a Christian retreat but became concerned about them being alone in her home and wrote about it in journal entries she shared with WJZ Investigates.

Behrman came back with a nagging feeling something was wrong. 

"Before I even opened the door, I felt like there was some kind of darkness, like a heaviness, and I could not explain it," Behrman said. "I just did not want to be home, like what am I going to walk into? Things weren't adding up with the questions and the answers that I was getting."

Behrman had arranged with her church to provide them with a hotel room for several days while they looked for a more permanent solution. 

Cash App transaction reveals a secret 

Behrman said Henderson asked for some cigarettes and offered to reimburse her through the Cash App online payment platform. 

Behrman did not use Cash App, but her friend did.

She told Henderson to pay her friend, and that is when everything unraveled. 

"I was standing in my friend's kitchen kind of telling her this vibe that I'm getting from the stories and the answers that they're telling me," Behrman recalled. "And she said, 'Oh, man, I forgot she's got Cash App. I wonder if she used her real name?' So, she put in her name. The second she put her name in Google, boom, that popped up."

The articles revealing that the couple was wanted for murder were tough for Behrman to take in. 

"I kind of just stared at them for a moment, you know, making sure that that was actually the picture of the person that was in my home," Behrman said. 

When Behrman was certain, she made sure she was in a safe place and called 911 to her home. 

"[Police] rolled in six cars deep," Behrman said. "There were about six or seven police officers. At least four of them that I know of had shotguns out and drawn and were standing behind the doors of their car for protection."

Behrman added, "They used their loudspeaker to get them out. I know that Sam Raebel came out the front door first, hands up. She got down and listened to the cops. The other one, Vanessa, did not come out as quickly. I don't know if she was trying to figure out a way to run, but then they ended up apprehending her a few minutes later."

Behrman said she feels lucky nothing happened to her.

"I'm still dumbfounded on well if these are murderers, why didn't they do anything to me? What did I do that was so different?" Behrman asked. 

Behrman remembered one of the interactions she had with Raebel the day before the arrest. 

"She said, 'Man, I really need to get back into church. Do you think we could maybe go to church with you on Sunday?"

Behrman said she hopes the two women face justice for the killing. 

"I just hope that the family and friends who knew the mother can have some peace," she said. 

What's next? 

Police and the State's Attorney's Office in Montgomery County, Maryland confirmed the women remain in custody in Ohio as of Monday. 

They said there is not an extract timetable for their return and noted the women could fight their extradition. 

The charging documents in the homicide will not be made public until the couple faces a judge in Maryland.