A man from Connecticut, charged with the murder of his girlfriend who was discovered dead at the base of a staircase months earlier, also faces separate domestic violence allegations. In an ongoing case, a different woman has accused him of choking, threatening, and assaulting her after they met on a dating app, according to court documents.
Cole Theodore Werhan, age 28, residing in Burlington, Connecticut, was taken into custody on Tuesday. He has been charged with the murder of 26-year-old Janina Brooke Murphy from Duxbury, Massachusetts, as confirmed by the Connecticut State Police.
In March, Murphy, known to friends as Brooke, was discovered at the foot of a staircase inside her residence in Burlington. At that time, state police considered the circumstances surrounding her death suspicious.
Werhan is alleged to have killed Janina Brooke Murphy, whose fatal head injury was determined by authorities to be a homicide. He is 28 and resides in Burlington, Connecticut. (Source: Connecticut State Police)
The Connecticut Office of the Chief Medical Examiner has recently revealed that Murphy’s death resulted from blunt force trauma to her head and officially classified it as homicide.
“Another detective got on the phone. He said, ‘I want you to know something. Your daughter didn’t just fall down the stairs. She had wounds all over her,'” Murphy’s mother, Beth Murphy, told WBZ-TV.
Beth Murphy said her daughter and Werhan were dating, and that the homicide ruling confirmed what her family had feared.
“It’s confirmed, it wasn’t an accident. So that part, really, that’s tough,” she told WBZ-TV.
Janina Brooke Murphy, 26, of Duxbury, Massachusetts, was remembered by her mother as a kind, artistic woman with “a heart of gold” after authorities ruled her death a homicide. (Cartmell-Davis Funeral Home)
Court records reviewed by News Media show Werhan was already facing pending domestic violence charges in a separate case out of Torrington Superior Court. In that case, a woman told Connecticut State Police investigators she met Werhan on Hinge and that their communication initially seemed normal before he began “love bombing” her, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
The woman told police that during their first in-person meeting at Werhan’s Burlington home, he was drinking and physically assaulted her, the warrant says.
She alleged that between May and August 2025, Werhan slapped her, pulled her hair, screamed in her face, held her down and, during one incident, ran up behind her as she tried to leave, grabbed her, threw her back into the house and held her down, according to the affidavit.
In another alleged incident, the woman told police Werhan strangled her with his hands around her neck while he was on top of her, squeezing until she could not breathe, the warrant says. She told investigators she did not lose consciousness but had bruising on her neck for about a week.
The woman also told police Werhan threatened her and said he wanted to kill her, according to the warrant.
“Complainant #1 stated that Werhan would yell at her, insult her, and say that he hated her,” the affidavit says. “Complainant #1 explained that Werhan would tell her that he wanted to kill her.”
Cole Theodore Werhan, 28, of Burlington, Connecticut, is charged with murder in the death of his girlfriend, Janina Brooke Murphy, and was already facing pending domestic violence charges in separate cases, court records show. (Connecticut State Police)
The woman told investigators she eventually left because she believed that if she went back to him, “she would end up dead,” according to the warrant.
Werhan was charged in that case with second-degree strangulation or suffocation, second-degree threatening and disorderly conduct.
State judicial records also show Werhan had another pending case involving alleged domestic violence-related charges from November 2025, including breach of peace, third-degree assault, disorderly conduct, unlawful restraint and threatening. That case listed a $75,000 bond.
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Werhan is now being held on a $5 million cash bond in the murder case and was arraigned Wednesday in Torrington Superior Court, WBZ-TV reported. Prosecutors called Werhan an “extreme danger to the community,” according to CBS News.
Beth Murphy described her daughter as kind, artistic and deeply loved.
“So many people said she was my best friend. Like, pretty much everybody said Brooke was my best friend. She had a heart of gold,” she told WBZ-TV.
Murphy would have turned 27 on June 17.
Connecticut State Police said the investigation into the circumstances surrounding her death remains active. News Media reached out to Werhan’s attorney.