Soon after, Deborah met their next-door neighbor, Malaika Griffin. According to Deborah, the two met in their front yards when Malaika threatened to kill Deborah's dogs and hurled racial slurs. (Deborah and Jason are white, Malaika is African American). According to witnesses, over the next month Griffin and the neighbors had numerous confrontations. Griffin took issue with people parking in front of her house. She also complained to Jason about unloading his carpentry tools on the public sidewalk in front of her house. None of the arguments made any sense to Jason and Deborah because they insisted they never trespassed on her property.

On May 19th, 1999, Jason returned from work and began unloading his tools on the sidewalk in front of Griffin's house. Malaika immediately came outside screaming at Jason. Deborah said that when she came out of the house to see what was going on, Griffin threatened her. Both women stormed back into their respective homes. Jason continued to unload when Malaika returned armed with a 9mm pistol and allegedly shot Jason in the back at point-blank range. The bullet pierced Jason's heart and killed him almost instantly. Deborah found Jason slumped over the seat of his car, unconscious and bleeding profusely.

According to witnesses, Griffin fled the scene by carjacking a friend at gunpoint. The car was found two days later in Iowa. Police searched Griffin's room and discovered racist literature and anarchist Internet material as well as a stockpile of ammunition, diffused hand grenades, and a 9mm assault rifle. They also found notebooks full of Griffin's secret writings about a coming race war and the killing of white people. None of Griffin's close friends ever heard her express the types of racist rhetoric that she wrote about. According to police, a man in Iowa told them that Griffin confessed to killing a man in Colorado. He drove Griffin to the bus station where, he said, she boarded a bus to Chicago. Griffin's mother told police she had spoken to her daughter on the phone. Griffin told her she was wanted for murder in Denver and was calling from Chicago.

Griffin has a degree in chemistry and has worked in laboratories and a pharmacy in the past. She filed bankruptcy a year before the murder.

UPDATE: The FBI arrested Malaika Griffin in El Cajon, California after receiving tips about her whereabouts.  Griffin had been working at a biotechnology firm under an assumed name.  She was found guilty of the murder of Jason Horsley and was sentenced to life in prison.