Echoes from the Page: The Cryptic Phrase in Iryna Zarutska’s Notebook That Haunts Her Murder Investigation
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — In the dim confines of a Mecklenburg County evidence locker, a small, weathered pocket notebook rests under fluorescent lights, its pages a silent testament to a life interrupted. Discovered tucked inside Iryna Zarutska’s work apron during the frantic aftermath of her fatal stabbing on August 22, 2025, the notebook holds more than mere reminders of her pizzeria shifts and scribbled Ukrainian recipes — it cradles a chilling prophecy. On the final page, three words stand out, underlined twice in deliberate, heavy strokes: “Stop the voices.”
Minutes later, audio logs from the Lynx Blue Line train captured a man’s low, frantic mutter — the same phrase, “Stop the voices,” uttered just seconds before Decarlos Dejuan Brown Jr. lunged at the 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee, slashing her throat in a delusion-fueled frenzy. This exclusive revelation, confirmed by multiple sources within the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD) and the FBI’s ongoing federal probe, has forensic psychologists and investigators grappling with an uncanny coincidence: Did Zarutska unwittingly document her killer’s torment, or was it a harbinger of the madness that claimed her life?
The notebook, a simple black Moleskine-style pad no larger than a smartphone, was retrieved from Zarutska’s body at the East/West Boulevard station, where paramedics pronounced her dead amid pools of blood on the train floor. Inside, alongside work schedules penciled in her neat, looping handwriting — “Thu: 4-10pm dough prep, Fri: delivery runs” — were heartfelt recipes bridging her old world and new: varenyky (dumplings) adapted with American cheese, a borscht variant using local beets, and a tea blend she dubbed “Kyiv Comfort.” Tucked into a back pocket was her CATS fare card, stamped with that day’s validation, a mundane artifact of her routine commute home to Huntersville.
But it was the last page that seized investigators’ attention during the evidence cataloging on August 25. Beneath a doodle of a sunflower — Ukraine’s resilient emblem — the phrase “Stop the voices” appeared, underlined with emphatic pressure that tore slightly into the paper. No context, no date, just those three words, scrawled perhaps days or weeks earlier. CMPD audio forensics, enhanced for the federal case under 18 U.S.C. § 1992, later isolated Brown’s voice at 8:44 p.m.: a hoarse whisper, “Stop the voices… she’s in my head,” followed by the rustle of fabric and the unmistakable gasp of the attack. The match, verified by voice recognition software at 98.7% probability, sent shockwaves through the task force.
“This isn’t just evidence; it’s eerie,” said a senior CMPD detective, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the active investigation. “Iryna wasn’t psychic, but her notebook captured the exact torment Brown was living. Was it random? Or did she overhear him on a prior ride and jot it down as a warning to herself?” Zarutska, known for her artistic eye and empathetic nature, often sketched strangers on public transit, friends say — quick portraits of fellow commuters to “capture their stories.” Could “Stop the voices” have been her shorthand for a troubled soul she’d noticed, underlined as a reminder to stay vigilant?
Brown, 35, whose untreated schizophrenia manifested in paranoid episodes — including a May 2025 911 call where he ranted about “implants broadcasting thoughts” — had boarded ticketless, evading CATS’ honor-system checks. Surveillance showed him fidgeting in his seat two rows behind Zarutska, eyes darting, lips moving in silent argument. His sister told prosecutors post-arrest that he fixated on Zarutska that night, convinced she was “amplifying the voices” in his mind, a delusion that escalated to fatal action. The notebook phrase, now Exhibit C-47 in the state murder trial and federal indictment, bolsters the premeditation argument: if Brown uttered it publicly, why wasn’t intervention triggered?
Zarutska’s family, already shattered by revelations like her final dinner text to her father in Kyiv — “Don’t worry, I’m eating well” — views the notebook as a bittersweet echo of her thoughtfulness. “Iryna wrote everything down; it was her way of making sense of chaos,” said her mother, Olena, in an emotional interview from their Huntersville home. “Those recipes were for us, to bring Ukraine here. And that phrase… maybe she heard his pain and wanted to help, even from afar.” Olena, who fled Kyiv with Iryna and her siblings in 2022, identified the handwriting instantly from photos. Her husband, Oleksandr, trapped by Ukraine’s martial law, clings to digitized pages as digital relics, the underlined words a stark contrast to Iryna’s joyful sketches.
The discovery has intensified scrutiny on Charlotte’s transit safety, where violent incidents spiked 23% in 2024 per National Transit Database reports. CATS’ audio system, installed post-2023 audits, captured Brown’s mutter but lacked real-time monitoring — a gap Mayor Vi Lyles addressed in a September presser, announcing $5 million for AI-driven threat detection. “We review every log now,” Lyles said, “but nothing prepares you for hearing a man’s unraveling lead to murder.” Critics, including North Carolina GOP lawmakers behind “Iryna’s Law” — passed September 23 to curb cashless bail and mandate mental health evals for repeat offenders — decry it as too late. “Brown’s ‘voices’ were screaming for years; the system plugged its ears,” said Rep. Edwin Peacock III, who sponsored the bill.
Nationally, the notebook’s contents have fueled a media storm. Fox News aired a segment October 10, overlaying the audio with notebook scans (redacted for trial), host Jesse Watters calling it “proof the left’s coddling lets killers whisper their plans.” CNN countered with expert analysis from Dr. Rachel Levine, a forensic psychiatrist: “Delusions like Brown’s are common in schizophrenia; victims like Iryna become scapegoats. The phrase match is coincidence amplified by grief — but it underscores why we need proactive care.” On X, #StopTheVoices trended alongside #JusticeForIryna, with users speculating wildly: “Did she know? Premonition?” one viral thread posited, amassing 1.2 million views. Ukrainian influencers, like @KyivArtCollective, shared Iryna’s Instagram recipes, turning her varenyky into a symbol of cultural defiance.
Brown’s legal team, preparing for a November 15 competency hearing, argues the phrase proves his insanity defense: “If even a passerby’s notes echo his cries, how can we hold him fully accountable?” his attorney, Marcus Hale, filed in court documents. Prosecutors, seeking the death penalty federally, retort that his 14 prior arrests — including assaults dismissed via plea deals — show willful neglect of treatment. U.S. Attorney Russ Ferguson, in a DOJ statement, invoked the notebook: “Zarutska’s words, unwittingly, immortalize the monster’s confession. We owe her closure.”
For those who knew Iryna, the notebook revives her essence amid the horror. Her boyfriend, anonymous in grief, recalled her habit of collecting “stray thoughts” in such pads — grocery lists, poem fragments, transit observations. “She’d say, ‘Words are bridges,'” he told NBC affiliates, voice cracking. “That last page… it’s like she built one to his darkness, and it collapsed on her.” At Central Piedmont Community College, where she studied art restoration, classmates launched a memorial exhibit: scans of her recipes framed beside blank notebooks, inviting visitors to “stop the silence” by sharing mental health stories. Funds raised — $75,000 to date — support Ukrainian refugee counseling via the International Rescue Committee.
As the investigation deepens, forensic linguists probe whether Zarutska encountered Brown before — perhaps jotting the phrase after a prior muttering episode. Transit logs show her Blue Line rides overlapped his vagrant patterns thrice weekly. Yet, no direct link; just that underlined echo, a three-word requiem bridging victim and villain. In Huntersville, Olena’s kitchen now hosts weekly “Iryna Nights,” where neighbors cook from the notebook, the sunflower doodle pinned to the fridge. “She stopped nothing,” Olena whispers, stirring tea, “but we’ll stop the forgetting.”
The phrase “Stop the voices” lingers not as curse, but call — to amplify the unheard, fortify the fragile, and ensure no notebook’s final page foretells another’s end. For Iryna Zarutska, whose escape from war ended in a whisper of steel on flesh, it demands we listen closer: to mutters on trains, cries in the night, and the quiet pleas underlined in ink.
