Nearly a year after Christina Downer disappeared, her actor boyfriend was among two people arrested on suspicion of murdering her, Los Angeles police said Friday.
Downer’s brother is “Saturday Night Live” writer Jimmy Fowlie. Los Angeles Police Department officers arrested Delorean Bijon Brandon, 41, and Kaylee Nicole Markowski, 34, on Thursday after a lengthy investigation that kicked off after Downer was reported missing just before Christmas last year.
Both Brandon and Markowski were booked at the Metropolitan Detention Center with bail set at $2 million each. It is not clear if they are being represented by attorneys.
At first, the disappearance appeared to be a missing person’s case. Downer’s ex-husband requested a welfare check on Dec. 18, 2025 when he hadn’t heard from her. At the time, Downer’s boyfriend, Brandon, claimed that she had moved out several months earlier, leaving behind everything she owned including her car and dog, according to LAPD.
A few days later on Dec. 22, Fowlie shared a missing persons flier on his Instagram, writing that Downer had been missing and the family was concerned for her safety. In a separate post, he shared a photo of Downer and her dog, Rex, and wrote in the caption that his sister was very attached to the dog and had last been seen in Koreatown.
“I heard from her on Nov 26th. She was active on social media up to Dec 15th,” he wrote, noting that the last time anyone had spoke to her on the phone was Oct. 5. Fowlie said in the post that the family had “reason to believe” that in the weeks before she went missing, her phone and social media had been compromised and that whoever had Downer’s phone used it to hide “the fact that she was gone,” by requesting money and create an illusion that she’d skipped town and gone off the grid.
But when Downer’s phone washed ashore on the beach in Santa Monica, LAPD’s Robbery-Homicide Division took over the investigation.
Early this month, investigators searched an Airbnb in Joshua Tree in connection with Downer’s disappearance, according to NBC. It is not clear what, if anything, investigators found at the location.