ALLENSTOWN, N.H. — It’s one of the most well-known Doe cases in the United States, and one that has haunted amateur sleuths, podcasters, and the public for more than two decades. Now, the DNA Doe Project has determined the identity of the little girl found in a barrel in Bear Brook State Park in 2000.
Her name was Rea Rasmussen, daughter of Terry Rasmussen and Pepper Reed. Terry Rasmussen, a serial killer believed to be responsible for the Bear Brook murders, may have also murdered Pepper Reed, who went missing in the late 1970s.
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Linda Stermer, a Michigan woman accused of setting a fire to her family home and murdering her husband, discusses her case in her only broadcast interview with “48 Hours” correspondent Erin Moriarty in “The Death of Todd Stermer,” reairing Saturday, Sept. 6 at 10/9c on CBS.
On Jan. 7, 2007, Linda Stermer says she was doing laundry in the basement of her family’s Michigan home when she heard her husband Todd Stermer let out a chilling scream and ran upstairs to find their living room engulfed in flames. Todd Stermer, says Linda, was in the middle of the room attempting to fight the fire. Unable to get to him, she says she fled the burning house with no shoes, jacket or cellphone.
In an interview for “48 Hours,” correspondent Erin Moriarty asks Linda Stermer, “You didn’t think about calling 911?” “That wasn’t my first thought,” Linda Stermer replies. “My first thought was to get out. Todd’s gonna get out … As long as he knows I’m out … he’s gonna get out.”
Linda and Todd Stermer
The Stermer home was in a rural area outside Kalamazoo, Michigan, with an electrified fence surrounding the large property to help keep the couple’s 31 horses safe. Without a cellphone, Linda Stermer says the only way for her to get help that day was to jump into her husband’s van, which always had the keys inside, and drive to the nearest neighbor. But just as she was about to take off in the van, she says she saw that her husband had escaped the burning house, and that she got out of the van to help him. “He’s jumping around and he’s patting himself. His skin is burnt terribly … I’m screaming at him, get in the van … And he won’t get in the van,” Linda Stermer tells Moriarty. “I can’t touch him … And, so, I get back in the van … And I lost sight of him.”
According to weather reports for that day, there was some light rain and snow in the area. Linda Stermer says their driveway was so wet and muddy that it was hard for her to get the van moving. “The tires were just spinning … so I couldn’t get any traction,” she says — but what happened next is something she still cannot explain. “Did you know you had run over your husband,” asks Moriarty. “No,” says Linda Stermer. Investigators would later find Todd’s blood on the van’s front bumper and undercarriage. Linda Stermer had hit her husband with his own van.
Emergency workers tried to save Todd Stermer, but he died on the scene from his burn injuries. Van Buren County sheriff’s detectives investigated the fire and Todd’s death for a little over two years. Then, on June 5, 2009, the prosecutor’s office felt it had enough evidence to arrest Linda Stermer and charge her with arson and the murder of her husband. Linda Stermer maintains she is innocent, but the couple’s sons say that over time they came to feel that their mother was guilty.
On Jan. 7, 2007, while Linda and Todd Stermer were in their Lawrence, Michigan, home, their house burst into flames.
Michigan State Police
“What do you believe happened,” Moriarty asks 28-year-old Trevor Stermer.
“Our mother murdered our father,” he replies. “She set the house on fire, doused him in gasoline, then after the fact when he managed to get out of the house, she ran him over with her van.”
The evidence presented at trial was mainly circumstantial. Among other things, a gas station clerk testified that she saw Linda Stermer on the morning of the fire seemingly pumping gas into a gas can at the back of her SUV. Her sons testified that when Linda got home from the gas station, she woke them and gave them money to go to the movies. A former close friend testified that Linda Stermer had talked about wanting to kill Todd Stermer by running him over, and accused Linda of having an affair with a coworker.
Linda Stermer’s defense countered with testimony from the brother of that former friend, who told the jury that his sister has a history of psychiatric illness and cannot be trusted. As for pumping gas into a can that morning, Linda Stermersays it was cold out and she went to the back of her SUV to get gloves to pump gas into her car. Nothing more. She also insists that the reason she sent her sons to the movies that day is that she and Todd were in the throes of a heated argument. She was planning on leaving Todd that day, says Linda, and did not want her sons there to see it.
On Jan. 13, 2010, the jury convicted Linda Stermer. A month later, she was sentenced to life in prison without parole — but after serving nearly 9 years, she was once again free, at least temporarily.
Erin Moriarty and I first met Linda Stermer and her new attorney Wolfgang Mueller at the 2019 Innocence Network Conference. A federal judge had overturned Linda’s conviction in December 2018 and set her free. Judge Arthur J. Tarnow declared that Linda did not get a fair trial and said he found prosecutorial misconduct and ineffective assistance of counsel.
The State of Michigan immediately filed an appeal to reinstate Linda’s conviction and put her back behind bars. Prosecutors declared that if they lost, they would retry her.
On May 15, 2020, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Linda Stermer and upheld Judge Tarnow’s decision to overturn her conviction. The Van Buren County Prosecutor’s office then refiled murder charges against Stermer.
Through the next nearly five years of pretrial hearings and delays, Linda Stermer remained a free woman. Then, on March 27, 2025, she was back in court facing a second jury of her peers.
In a family divided, Linda’s sons testified against her. Their half-sisters — Linda’s daughters from a previous marriage, Ashley and Brittany — believe their mother is innocent and say they prayed that she would remain free. But after seven-and-a-half hours of deliberation, a jury of six men and six women once again found Linda Stermer guilty of the murder of her husband, Todd Stermer. Stermer is now serving a mandatory life sentence, without the possibility of parole.
A woman accused of setting her house on fire and then intentionally running over her husband as he escaped the flames speaks out to “48 Hours” correspondent Erin Moriarty.
Nearly five decades ago, the “Son of Sam” terrorized New York City. In a 2017 prison interview, convicted serial killer David Berkowitz tells CBS News what led him to shoot. “CBS Evening News” co-anchor Maurice DuBois reports.
The political messaging on Chicago crime is messy.
President Donald Trump and his Republican allies have painted the Windy City as the most dangerous American city ahead of expected immigration enforcement raids and as Trump floated sending in the National Guard.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem focused on raw homicide numbers on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Aug. 31, saying, “For 13 consecutive years, Chicago had more murders than any other American city.”
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., used a similar statistic on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” but swapped raw numbers for “murder rate” — making it inaccurate.
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Chicago’s Democratic defenders say Republicans overlook crime in red states.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat and potential 2028 presidential candidate, said his state fared better than many others on violent crime. “Notice (Trump) never talks about where the most violent crime is occurring, which is in red states,” Pritzker said Aug. 31 on “Face the Nation.”
“Illinois is not even in the bottom half of states in terms of violent crime. But do you hear (Trump) talking about Florida, where he is now from? No, you don’t hear him talking about that, or Texas. Their violent crime rates are much worse in other places.”
It’s not unusual for politicians to choose numbers that favor their political message, and some of these statements are wrong, misleading or lack context. (We use homicide instead of murder, because it is the legal term referring to a person killing another person, including lawfully. Republicans used the more narrow term “murder,” which means an unlawful intentional killing.)
Here are the facts to help you cut through the spin.
Homicide rate vs. raw numbers result in different metrics
A single word — rate — makes a big difference for accuracy when discussing Chicago — or any city’s — crime.
It is accurate to say Chicago has led the country’s most populous cities for sheer numbers of homicides for 13 years. But it is inaccurate that Chicago is the country’s leader for the homicide rate, the measure that is preferred by criminologists because it adjusts the count for population size, usually per 100,000 people.
Chicago had 573 homicides in 2024, preliminary police data shows.
Chicago has reported the most homicides of all U.S. cities every year since 2012, according to FBI data crunched by Jeff Asher, a crime data analyst for AH Datalytics.
The last city to have a higher homicide count than Chicago was New York City in 2011, said John Roman, director of the University of Chicago’s Center on Public Safety and Justice.
Chicago, which has about 2.7 million residents in the city itself, excluding suburbs, is the third most populous city in the U.S., so its raw crime numbers are bound to be higher than smaller cities.
By homicide rate, Chicago does not have the most in the U.S., or the world.
Other cities, including small cities in red states not in the national political spotlight, have violent crime problems too.
The Trace, a news website about guns, found that “half of all shootings between 2014 and 2023 occurred outside large cities, in small cities and towns of fewer than 1 million people.” The Trace used data from the Gun Violence Archive, which tracks gun injuries and deaths.
The Igarapé Institute, a Brazilian nonprofit organization, monitors homicide rates in the U.S. and around the world. In its most recent data from 2023, more than 100 cities around the world had higher homicide rates than Chicago, including Memphis, Tennessee; New Orleans; St. Louis; Baltimore; Cleveland, Detroit and Washington, D.C.
The data showed that cities including Durán and Manta in Ecuador; Nelson Mandela Bay in South Africa; Camaçari in Brazil; and Cajeme and Tijuana in Mexico topped the list.
Democratic governors, including Pritzker and Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., have tried to turn the focus away from their major cities and toward their states’ overall crime rates. Through this broad lens, which includes rural areas and all violent crimes, the home turf appears safer.
“Low-crime rural areas may ‘water down’ the effects of high-crime urban locales such that the overall state rate is low despite significant variation,” said Jacinta M. Gau, a University of Central Florida criminal justice professor.
Pritzker referred to a U.S. News and World Report ranking of states for violent crime rates based on 2023 FBI data. From lowest violent crime rates to highest, Florida ranked No. 22, Illinois was No. 23, and Texas was No. 34.
So Pritzker’s statement was technically accurate, because Illinois was not in the bottom half of states, though Florida came in a notch below Illinois.
Academics who study crime data warned of various pitfalls. Victims underreport crime to police, and police agencies’ decisions about classifying crimes and whether to submit annual reports to the FBI can affect a state’s report.
“The unreliability of crime data makes it easy for the numbers to be run so that the result supports the narrative that is being pushed,” Gau said.
Illinois has had decades-long issues with reporting correct data to the FBI, Asher said. He said Illinois’ violent crime count does not fully report Chicago’s aggravated assaults. Florida, he added, has its own data reporting issues.
There are complications to remember when comparing crime rates across cities or states.
One reason not to make city comparisons is that city boundaries are arbitrary.
“Some cities (like St. Louis) incorporate only those parts of the metro that are densest, which has the practical effect of including areas with high violence but excluding wealthier areas,” which are in St. Louis County and St. Charles County,” Roman said. In other cities, those wealthier areas are within the city boundaries.
Comparing states avoids the boundary issue. Plus, most criminal justice law is set at the state level.
Still, the challenges of crime data mean that politicians can selectively use or criticize the data to score political points.
“Unfortunately, this is often not clear to the average person and so it can be extremely confusing and might seem like one politician is right and the other is wrong even when a discrepancy is more apples-vs.-oranges than right-vs.-wrong,” Gau said.
PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this article.
A man is accused of driving Dacara Thompson to his home in Bowie, Maryland, killing her in the bedroom and leaving her body in a grassy area where she was later found by police.
Prince George’s County Police Chief George Nader participates in a Sept. 5 news conference announcing murder charges in connection to the death of 19-year-old Dacara Thompson.
(WTOP/Jose Umana)
WTOP/Jose Umana
A missing person flyer for Dacara Thompson, 19, of Prince George’s County, Maryland.
(Courtesy 7News)
Courtesy 7News
Prince George’s County Executive Aisha Braveboy participates in Sept. 5 news conference regarding the death of 19-year-old Dacara Thompson.
(WTOP/Jose Umana)
WTOP/Jose Umana
A man has been charged in the killing of a 19-year-old woman from Prince George’s County, Maryland, whose body was found last weekend after she was reported missing in late August.
Hugo Hernandez-Mendez, 35, was arrested and charged with first- and second-degree murder in Dacara Thompson’s death, investigators said Friday morning.
Hernandez-Mendez is accused of driving Thompson to his home in Bowie, killing her in the bedroom and leaving her body in a grassy area where she was later found by investigators.
A timeline of events by police
Surveillance footage showed Thompson willingly getting into a black SUV at around 3 a.m. on Aug. 23, police said. The driver, believed to be Hernandez-Mendez, took the young woman to his home in the 12000 block of Kembridge Drive in Bowie.
“We believe everything transpired in the bedroom,” said George Nader, the interim chief of Prince George’s County police. “What is surrounding the two coming together, that’s what we’re still investigating.”
Police believe Hernandez-Mendez brought her body to a spot near Route 50 in Anne Arundel County. That’s where Maryland State Police later found a body, now identified as Thompson, on Sunday, Aug. 31 — about one week after Thompson’s family reported her as missing.
The body was discovered as police followed up on a call about a disabled vehicle, which they believe is unrelated to the killing.
“That area is probably about seven miles away from the murder location, but a good distance away from where she went missing,” Nader said. “So we are thankful that the Maryland State Police had the ability to locate that body based on that call for service.”
State police contacted Prince George’s County police after finding the woman’s body.
County police identified Hernandez-Mendez as a suspect. Detectives got a search warrant for Hernandez-Mendez’s home, where they said they found evidence she was killed in the bedroom.
Hernandez-Mendez is being held without bond. He’s expected to appear at a bond hearing Monday to determine whether he should remain held, according to online court records.
Investigators are looking into whether Thompson and Hernandez-Mendez knew each other before Aug. 23.
During a Friday news conference, it was revealed Hernandez-Mendez was an immigrant without proper legal status in the U.S.
He was arrested by U.S. Park Police last April on a charge of driving under the influence, Braveboy said. He was released while awaiting his trial.
At that time, he was not detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But Nader said an ICE detainer was issued for Hernandez-Mendez on Thursday.
Thompson’s cause of death hasn’t been determined but is expected to be ruled a homicide, police said. Officials did not share details about the manner of her death.
There are no other suspects in her killing at this time, police said.
Police are asking anyone with more information to call Prince George’s County police at 301-516-2512.
A 19-year-old who served her community
Prince George’s County Executive Aisha Braveboy thanked the community and law enforcement for their efforts to find Thompson.
Thompson had graduated from St. Charles High School in Charles County.
She lived with her father in Lanham.
Thompson was participating in a “Service Year Option,” a program launched by Gov. Wes Moore in 2023. Young adults get placed in a service position that’s an area of interest, with the hope being it helps recent graduates prepare for their future career.
In a statement, Moore called Thompson a “bright light in our state.”
“She yearned to be part of our mission to solve big problems with bold solutions through her passion for the arts,” the governor wrote.
“This is a young woman who dedicated part of her young life to serving others,” Braveboy said. “I want that to ring home to all of you that this is a good, good, good young woman who wanted to do good for her community, and now her community will stand behind her family as we seek justice for her.”
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Judge Marta Chou decided to vacate Hooper’s conviction on Wednesday, a day after Hooper’s hearing.
“I’ll continue to live my life the best that I can. Hopefully, good things happen from that. That’s what I’m looking forward to. Spend time with my family as much as possible. That’s first and foremost. What happens after that, to be continued,” said Hooper while speaking to reporters after his release.
“It is our duty as prosecutors to hold the correct individuals responsible for their actions, and that duty demands that we acknowledge our mistakes and make things right as quickly as we can. When our Conviction Integrity Unit learned that another person had confessed to the crime for which Mr. Hooper was convicted, they worked tirelessly to clear his name and secure his release,” said Morarity.
Hooper was previously convicted of three counts of first-degree murder and given three concurrent life sentences for the murder of Ann Prazniak, who was found dead in a box in her bedroom closet at 1818 Park Avenue in 1998. Her wrists, face and head were bound with packing tape, and the box was wrapped with a string of Christmas lights.
Ann Prazniak
WCCO
Neighbors told police that they had seen a woman at Prazinak’s apartment around the time of the murder. The woman told police the names of several others, including Hooper, who had also been at Prazniak’s apartment at the time.
According to a Supreme Court filing, Hooper told police he had smoked crack cocaine in Prazniak’s apartment but denied being involved in the murder. Police found his fingerprints on two sandwich bags and a beer can in Prazniak’s living room. Police also found Chalaka Lewis’ fingerprints on packing tape found in Prazniak’s apartment.
During Hooper’s trial, four witnesses testified that he confessed to the murder. One of the witnesses falsely implicated him in another murder and gave multiple inconsistent accounts of Hooper’s confession, Supreme Court documents say.
Prosecutors used jailhouse confessions, and Lewis was one of eight people charged and given a plea deal for burglarizing Prazniak’s home for her testimony.
The jury ultimately found Hooper guilty.
“First of all, they need to be very careful when they accept jailhouse informant statements. That should be eradicated from the justice system, period. You know, that was a big problem in my case, that’s what caused me to be wrongfully convicted. So they need to really look into that and change that, and change these bars, these time bars that they put on us when we try and go back post-conviction,” said Hooper. “That hinders us, and something needs to be done about it.”
“I think the police had tunnel vision,” said Jeff Dean, who represented Hooper. “They made the decision they thought it was Bryan Hooper who committed this crime and then they followed that. They couldn’t let it go.”
Since the conviction, Hooper appealed to the state Supreme Court and said the four witnesses had recanted their testimony. In a 2015 appeal, one of the witnesses stated she had lied about Hooper’s confession in the hope of receiving reward money. Hooper petitioned six times to have his conviction vacated after multiple witness recanted their trial testimony. The state Supreme Court, however, upheld the conviction, arguing that he had filed the request years too late.
Moriarty previously said the state’s star witness had come forward on July 29 not only to renounce her testimony but to confess to killing Prazniak and hiding her body. The woman, who was 23 years old at the time, is serving a sentence for aggravated battery at a Georgia prison.
When asked if he would be out of prison if the woman in Georgia hadn’t confessed, Hooper said, “That’s a good question. But I should’ve been out a long time ago, when other individuals recanted.”
While prosecutors did not name her, the key witness in the trial was Lewis. At the time, her testimony was controversial as her fingerprints were found at the crime scene and she testified in exchange for a plea deal for burglary. She has not been charged in the Prazniak murder.
“I’m so glad she did the right thing,” said Hooper. “God bless her.”
Chou said it was “tainted by false evidence and that without this false testimony, the jury might have reached a different conclusion.”
A Fridley man was found guilty of multiple counts of first-degree murder for dressing as a UPS worker and shooting three people inside a Coon Rapids home in January of 2024.
A jury convicted Alonzo Mingo, 39, of four counts of first-degree murder, one count of aiding and abetting first-degree murder, one count of aiding and abetting second-degree murder and two counts of second-degree murder. He was found not guilty of one count of aiding and abetting first-degree murder.
Surveillance video from the home and across the street showed three people arriving in a vehicle and entering the home. Two of them were wearing clothing similar to UPS delivery drivers and one was carrying a cardboard box. They entered the home and exited seven minutes later.
The video from the home showed Mingo holding a man and a woman at gunpoint and demanding money. Later, Mingo is seen fatally shooting the woman.
Mingo was arrested later that day after he was pulled over in his vehicle in Fridley. Officials say they found UPS clothing in a backpack inside the vehicle.
Shannon Trejo, her husband Mario Trejo and their 20-year-old son Jorge Reyes-Jungwirth were killed in the shooting. A 2-year-old and a 4-year-old were also in the home at the time of the murders.
Court documents released in the case revealed that drugs may have played a role in the killings. One of the victims killed was being investigated by a violent crime task force for selling illegal drugs, according to those documents.
A 42-year-old man has been charged with murder after a “ding dong ditch” shooting left an 11-year-old Houston boy dead Saturday.Leon Gonzalo Jr. was booked into jail Tuesday morning, Harris County court records show. His address matches the address where someone fatally opened fire at the 11-year-old, whom a witness described as running away from the house when he was shot, according to police.”Officers were told the male was ringing doorbells of homes in the area and running away,” police said. “A witness stated the male was running from a house, after ringing the doorbell, just prior to suffering a gunshot wound.” The shooting did not seem to involve self-defense because the shooting “wasn’t close to the house,” Houston police homicide Sgt. Michael Cass said, according to CNN affiliate KHOU.The boy’s name has not been publicly released.Gonzalo Jr. is scheduled to appear in court on Tuesday.”Ding dong ditching” is an age-old prank that’s risen in popularity in recent years as a social media challenge. TikTok videos often feature variations where pranksters pound on or kick people’s front doors.In May, an 18-year-old high school senior in Virginia was shot and killed while filming a “ding dong ditch” to post on TikTok, The New York Times reported. The man accused of shooting the teen was charged with second-degree murder.In 2020, three 16-year-olds were killed when a California man rammed his car into their vehicle in retaliation for a “ding dong ditch” prank. The man was convicted of three counts of murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 2023.In the Houston case, the boy and his friends were playing a game of “ding dong ditch” at a house down the street from their homes just before 11 p.m. Saturday when a person inside the house came out and shot the boy, Houston police said.A witness said the boy was running from the house on Racine Street after ringing the doorbell when he was shot, police said.The boy was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead on Sunday, police said.This is a developing story and will be updated.CNN’s Karina Tsui, Danya Gainor and David Williams contributed to this report.
A 42-year-old man has been charged with murder after a “ding dong ditch” shooting left an 11-year-old Houston boy dead Saturday.
Leon Gonzalo Jr. was booked into jail Tuesday morning, Harris County court records show. His address matches the address where someone fatally opened fire at the 11-year-old, whom a witness described as running away from the house when he was shot, according to police.
“Officers were told the male was ringing doorbells of homes in the area and running away,” police said. “A witness stated the male was running from a house, after ringing the doorbell, just prior to suffering a gunshot wound.”
The shooting did not seem to involve self-defense because the shooting “wasn’t close to the house,” Houston police homicide Sgt. Michael Cass said, according to CNN affiliate KHOU.
The boy’s name has not been publicly released.
Gonzalo Jr. is scheduled to appear in court on Tuesday.
“Ding dong ditching” is an age-old prank that’s risen in popularity in recent years as a social media challenge. TikTok videos often feature variations where pranksters pound on or kick people’s front doors.
In May, an 18-year-old high school senior in Virginia was shot and killed while filming a “ding dong ditch” to post on TikTok, The New York Times reported. The man accused of shooting the teen was charged with second-degree murder.
In 2020, three 16-year-olds were killed when a California man rammed his car into their vehicle in retaliation for a “ding dong ditch” prank. The man was convicted of three counts of murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 2023.
In the Houston case, the boy and his friends were playing a game of “ding dong ditch” at a house down the street from their homes just before 11 p.m. Saturday when a person inside the house came out and shot the boy, Houston police said.
A witness said the boy was running from the house on Racine Street after ringing the doorbell when he was shot, police said.
The boy was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead on Sunday, police said.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
CNN’s Karina Tsui, Danya Gainor and David Williams contributed to this report.
A psychiatrist at the California Medical Facility for inmates was seriously hurt in an attack by an inmate with a makeshift weapon
California inmate Jose L. Ramirez is charged with assaulting a prison psychiatrist at California Medical Facility Credit: California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
A convicted killer in the custody of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation was hit with new charges of attempted murder after he allegedly attacked a prison psychologist with what officials are calling an “improvised weapon.”
The attack was interrupted by corrections officers, and the doctor is expected to survive, according to a statement by the CDCR. The attack happened shortly before 1 p.m. at California Medical Facility on August 29, a state prison located in the Solano County city of Vacaville, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) said.
A correctional officer ended the attack and recovered the makeshift implement used in the attack, officials said. The psychiatrist, who was treated at an outside hospital, was released this weekend.
Ramirez had been serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole for first-degree murder with weapons, violence and arson enhancements, the CDCR said. Prison officials placed Ramirez into restrictive housing while the investigation remains pending.
California Medical Facility is a medium-security prison that has been operating since 1955 and treats the medical, dental and psychiatric needs of its male inmates.
It was a July evening when Elyse Pahler, 15, sneaked out her bedroom in the Central Coast town of Arroyo Grande, planning to get into some mischief. A boy from school had gotten her number from a friend and invited her to smoke weed in the woods near her family’s home.
The boy was Jacob Delashmutt, also 15, and he brought along two friends. Delashmutt and his schoolmates Royce Casey, 16, and Joseph Fiorella, 14, all shared a passion for death metal, and they formed their own band called Hatred.
One of their favorite groups was Slayer, a popular metal act that featured a song with lyrics about worshiping Satan and sacrificing a blonde, blue-eyed virgin.
Pahler fit that description as she walked to join the three metal heads that night in 1995. Three decades later, Delashmutt described what happened next to a state parole board.
Delashmutt, now 45, said that once they had smoked marijuana, he and the two other boys attacked Pahler when she was distracted by the sound of a passing car. He wrapped his belt around her neck, strangling her while Fiorella stabbed her and Casey held down her arms. Then they each took turns stabbing her with a 12-inch knife, according to his testimony, first in the neck then in the back and shoulders.
Casey told state parole officials this year that Pahler begged for her mother and Jesus before he stomped on the back of her neck. They had planned to violate her remains, Delashmutt testified to the parole board, but instead hid her body in the woods and fled the scene. She wasn’t found until eight months later, when Casey confessed to his pastor.
Royce Casey, Jacob Delashmutt and Joseph Fiorella pictured as teens after their arrest in March 1996. They were convicted of murdering Elyse Pahler, a teenage peer, in a satanic ritual. Casey and Delashmutt were released on parole recently, 30 years after the murder in Arroyo Grande, Calif.
(U.S. District Court for the Central District of California)
Today, two of the killers — including the admitted ringleader — are walking free after receiving parole. But the youngest of the group, Fiorella, remains behind bars despite claims that he is intellectually disabled and that his case was mishandled.
The releases of Casey and Delashmutt this year have come amid a surge of high-profile murder cases from the 1990s entering the parole process. Erik and Lyle Menendez, the Beverly Hills brothers convicted of killing their parents in 1989 as teens, were denied parole this month after a months-long resentencing effort.
Pahler’s murder occurred while the Menendez brothers were on trial, and the grisly killing of a young, white girl provoked a similar level of media frenzy. Prosecutors alleged the death-metal-obsessed teens had plotted to commit the murder as part of a “Satanic ritual.”
Pahler’s family has fought against letting out any of the men over the past decade, with her father, David, often bringing a picture of his daughter to show the parole board.
David Pahler told the board at a 2023 hearing that he believed Casey still lacked remorse, reading from a transcript of Casey’s journal taken when he was arrested in which the teen wrote about believing Satan had “taken my soul and replaced it with a new one to carry out his work on earth.”
“If you give up your soul to Satan, how do you get it back? How do you get it back? I — I don’t have an answer for that,” Pahler said, according to a transcript of the hearing.
Casey and Delashmutt pleaded no contest to first-degree murder in 1997, each receiving 25 years to life in prison. Fiorella, also charged with being armed with a deadly weapon, got 26 years to life. Since they became eligible for parole, their paths through the system have led to vastly divergent outcomes.
Casey was denied twice by the board, then approved in 2021 and 2023, only to have Gov. Gavin Newsom reverse the decision. Newsom argued Casey needed to do more work to ensure he would make healthy relationships outside prison and learn the “internal processes” that led him to kill Pahler.
Delashmutt was also denied twice by the parole board in 2017 and 2022 and once by the governor’s reversal in 2023. The rejections often referenced his tendency to shirk responsibility onto his co-defendants for his role in the murder.
Although Delashmutt was the one who called Pahler and invited her into the woods, at the time of his arrest he blamed the other two for orchestrating the murder and recruiting him to carry it out.
This year, however, Delashmutt told the parole board he was the “ringleader” of the group.
“I know that I am the most responsible for this crime. I had every opportunity to put a stop to it, and I didn’t. I was involved in the planning from the beginning and I made this crime happen. Elyse Pahler was safe in her home that night when she received a phone call from me,” Delashmutt said.
The teens were influenced by death metal music — specifically by Slayer — to channel their anger at the world into physical violence, Casey told the parole board.
“That music, especially Slayer, was all about suicide, murder, sacrifice. So, I started learning a specific way to express those things,” he said.
Pahler’s family unsuccessfully sued Slayer and its record company for its lyrics in 2001, claiming they incited her murder, but lost on 1st Amendment grounds.
Casey was released from Valley State Prison in early August to transitional housing in Los Angeles County, his lawyer told The Times. “Our legal system is not based on emotion,” his lawyer and prison advocate Charles Carbone said.
Despite what was “one of the most notorious crimes committed in San Luis Obispo County,” Carbone said, there has been an “enormous consensus” over the last few years among prison psychologists, the full parole board and the governor that Casey should go home.
Delashmutt, who was released in late July, didn’t believe he had a future when he was a teen, said parole hearing lawyer Patrick Sparks.
“His background was about a lot of poor decisions,” he said. “He started to change his life, and it gave him hope for the future again.”
Both apologized.
“I want to acknowledge all of the pain and the trauma that I’ve caused,” Delashmutt said. “It is impossible for me to understand the magnitude of the crime, the impact that it’s had on the Pahler family.”
Casey said he remembered how David Pahler often brought a picture of his daughter to the hearing.
“Something that I remember hearing over time when Elyse’s dad has come, is that she has a face. And I try to remember every day, whatever decision I’m making or whatever I do, that the ongoing impact of what I did is present all the time.”
Fiorella, unlike the other two men, has yet to participate openly in a parole hearing, according to hearing transcripts from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. He waived attendance for a 2019 hearing, and, according to the transcripts, was advised by his lawyer, Dennis Cusick, not to speak or answer questions in his most recent hearing in 2023.
Cusick declined to comment on whether his client would attend or participate in an upcoming parole hearing scheduled for next year.
Court filings show Fiorella has long looked to overturn his conviction, arguing that a court-appointed defense attorney failed to give his due diligence prior to accepting the plea deal.
A complaint filed in the Central District of California in November 2023 argues that Fiorella’s first trial lawyer, David Hurst, waived a fitness hearing after receiving a neuropsychologist’s report that Fiorella was developmentally disabled and had an IQ score of 68, indicating a mild intellectual disability.
Hurst said in a 2020 deposition that he “felt that we would lose the fitness hearing and it would be a waste of time,” despite knowing about the report and other circumstances of Fiorella’s life, the complaint said.
Hurst was terminally ill at the time of his deposition, the complaint notes, and died by the end of the year before an evidentiary hearing.
Fiorella scored at just above an eighth-grade level on a basic education test, according to a transcript of his 2023 parole hearing. He earned a GED more than two decades prior, in 2002, but the parole board noted a report from a doctor who alleged he could not pass it and paid someone to take it for him.
Cusick argued to the parole board that Fiorella is still developmentally disabled and “is not the kind of person to take on a leadership role in anything.” The habeas corpus complaint repeatedly characterized a teenage Fiorella as a shy, quiet child who was teased by peers for being “slow.” It also challenged the idea that he orchestrated the murder, instead placing blame on Delashmutt.
Fiorella’s complaint has gone through several levels of state and federal courts, with most agreeing that the challenge to his conviction was years past the statute of limitations. Courts also said it was questionable whether the forgone fitness hearing, as his trial lawyer suggested, would have resulted in any action.
The complaint was dismissed and then appealed in March to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. That case is awaiting an opening brief due in November.
Fiorella’s federal public defender, Raj Shah, did not respond to requests for comment.
In his 2023 hearing, a representative of the San Luis Obispo County district attorney’s office, Lisa Dunn, opposed Fiorella’s release, arguing he had not done the work necessary to prove he was ready for parole.
“Mr. Fiorella, frankly, is a dangerous individual,” Dunn said. “He’s been dangerous since he was 15, and there’s no evidence to support a finding that he’s less dangerous now.”
Meet the tattooed beauty charged in death of Google executive Forrest Hayes.
It all started on this boat the night of Nov. 22, 2013, when Forrest Hayes, a 51-year-old Google executive, met Alix Tichelman, a then-26-year-old aspiring model and makeup artist, on his 46-foot- yacht, “Escape.”
Forrest Hayes
Forrest Hayes Memorial Site
The next morning, Hayes was found dead from an apparent heroin overdose. Police noticed two used wine glasses in the cabin. Their conclusion? Someone else must have been there.
Alix Tichelman
diaz digital media
After obtaining security footage from the yacht, police discover that indeed, Hayes had been with someone else that night. That woman was Alix Tichelman.
Young Alix
Personal photo
Tichelman spent the early years of her childhood in Canada. She is pictured in her soccer uniform.
Forrest Hayes’ H.S. photo
Harry S. Truman High School
Hayes grew up in Dearborn, Michigan, right outside of Detroit. After graduating from the University of Michigan – Dearborn, he took a job working for Ford Motor Company.
Alix Tichelman at Hyde School
Personal photo
As a teenager, Tichelman spent some months at the Hyde School in Bath, Maine.
This scrapbook page was given to “48 Hours” by a roommate during her time at the school. The caption in the photo reads: “look at the cuts on her arm.”
Tichelman’s teen years
Personal photo
Friends say Alix Tichelman began using drugs as a teenager. She would eventually leave Hyde School and attend several other public and private schools. This is 14-year-old Alix in her passport photo.
The Tichelman family
Facebook
Bart and Leslieann Tichelman, Alix’s parents, are pictured after Bart won a major 2008 poker event. Reports say he won more than $400,000.
In her early teens, the family moved from Canada to a suburb of Atlanta.
Hayes’ Santa Cruz home
Zillow
Hayes moved to California to pursue a career in technology. He held high-level positions at Sun Microsystems, Apple and Google, where he worked at the company’s most secret division, Google X.
He lived in a $3 million mansion in Santa Cruz — an hour-long commute from his job at Google.
Alix Tichelman & Dean Riopelle
Facebook
Before Alix Tichelman ever met Hayes, she dated night club owner and former rock singer Dean Riopelle.
Riopelle was a member of the band Impotent Sea Snakes and invited Tichelman to live in his home with him.
Dean Riopelle’s Pet Hobby
Facebook
Riopelle lived on a ranch where he housed dozens of exotic monkeys. Alix Tichelman loved these monkeys and fondly referred to them as her “babies” on her Twitter page.
Dean Riopelle’s Death
Facebook
In September 2013, Alix Tichelman called 911 to report Riopelle had overdosed. The autopsy report stated he had toxic levels of heroin, pain killers and alcohol in his system.
Chad Cornell and Alix Tichelman
Chad Cornell
After Dean Riopelle’s death, Alix Tichelman moved to California to live with her parents. There, she met Chad Cornell, a contractor and part-time musician. They started dating and, as Cornell says, fell in love. They would date for eight months, breaking up only a month before Tichelman’s arrest for the death of Forrest Hayes.
Tichelman’s Texts
Friend of Alix Tichelman
Alix Tichelman was also meeting men through the sugar daddy website SeekingArrangement.com.
These are texts Tichelman’s friend, Todd, says she sent to him. In this text, Todd says Tichelman talks about meeting up with one of these “sugar daddies” just a few weeks before she met Hayes.
Todd thinks the man she’s referring to in this text is Forrest Hayes.
“48 Hours” onboard “Escape”
CBS News
On Nov. 22, 2013, Hayes and Alix Tichelman meet in this cabin of the “Escape.”
Santa Cruz police say footage from security cameras captured Tichelman injecting herself and then Hayes with heroin. Here, “48 Hours” correspondent Maureen Maher tours the crime scene.
Alix Tichelman’s arrest
Friend of Alix Tichelman
Months after Hayes’ death, Alix Tichelman is unaware she’s a suspect, her friend Todd says. Todd also says Alix was ready to leave California and return to Atlanta. The problem is, she has no money to get home. She needs one last “arrangement,” Todd says, to make it back to Georgia.
Knowing she might leave the state, Santa Cruz, Calif., police launch a sting, posing as a “sugar daddy” and asking Tichelman to meet them at the Seascape Hotel in Northern California.
In this text, Todd says Alix reveals her excitement about having the money to go home. However, when Alix arrives at the resort for the date, she is arrested.
Alix Tichelman charged
Santa Cruz Police Dept.
On July 9, 2014, Alix Tichelman is charged with prostitution and manslaughter in the death of Forrest Hayes.
This story previously aired July 30, 2016. It was updated on Aug. 30, 2025.
When he’s not out looking for the big wave, there’s a big story that has consumed Stephen Baxter, a reporter for the Santa Cruz Sentinel and a “48 Hours” consultant: the mysterious death of Google executive Forrest Hayes at the city’s sprawling marina.
Forrest Hayes
Forrest Hayes Memorial Site
“Forrest Hayes was … 51 years old. He lived in a pretty upper crust neighborhood,” Baxter told “48 Hours.” “He was a pretty high-powered guy and … obviously had a lot of assets; he lives in a $3 million house in Santa Cruz.”
In 2013, one of the boats docked in Santa Cruz Harbor was the majestic 46-foot-long yacht called “Escape.” It belonged to Hayes. Not surprisingly, the tech exec outfitted his boat with some of the most expensive tech gear out there — about $200,000 worth, including a sophisticated security system complete with high-def cameras.
Inside, Hayes spared no expense on creature comforts, including a leather ceiling and a $8,000 captain’s chair.
The Google executive’s death caught the attention of Michael Daly, an investigative reporter for The Daily Beast, in New York, and also a “48 Hours” consultant.
“I think … he was practical and imaginative at the same time,” Daly said. “Forrest Hayes started in his native Michigan … at the Ford Motor Company as a manager, he went to California for Sun Microsystems and he went on to Apple …”
Hayes then went on to Google for a high-paying job at their top-secret location, where impossible dreams are transformed into reality.
“He was hired … to work in Google X, which they call their ‘moonshot factory.’ As in, you know, the most extreme, wildest, imaginative, farthest reaching ideas they could have. You know, like Google glasses, self-driving cars,” Daly explained. “He was the guy who was actually gonna make some of these things happen.”
It’s a place so secretive, colleagues from Google X refused to divulge exactly what Hayes did there. To get away from the pressures at work, Forrest Hayes would head to the marina, and onto his prized possession.
“One of the larger boats in the harbor, I think that’s fair to say,” said Baxter.
What police would eventually discover was that the married father of five had a secret liaison. She was a young and exotic dark haired woman covered with very distinctive tattoos. And she would be the last person to see Forrest Hayes alive.
“On the night of November 22, 2013 … Forrest Hayes was on his yacht … and he didn’t come home that night. And his wife became concerned. She called the captain they retained for this yacht and he went and he got on the boat,” said Daly.
Hayes’ body was found lying in the main cabin. The captain immediately called 911, but surprisingly, it would take months before the Google executive’s death made headlines.
“There was — really no report of his death,” Baxter said. “Obviously, the police in this case were trying to keep that under wraps as they investigated.”
Santa Cruz Deputy Police Chief Steve Clark has been on this case since day one.
“The media’s gonna want to know right off the bat. ‘Who is it?’ ‘Who’s responsible?’ ‘Is this a homicide?’ ‘Is this a murder?’ We didn’t have enough to really even put that out. We were busy building the case,” Clark told “48 Hours” correspondent Maureen Maher.
Building the case wasn’t easy despite some initial crime scene clues.
“There were two wine glasses there, both which appeared to have been used,” said Clark
Investigators zeroed in on Hayes’ cellphone, launching an exhaustive digital search. They made a stunning discovery. Hayes had a profile page on a dating website, called SeekingArrangement.com. It would be a critical clue in learning the identity of that mystery tattooed woman.
It was just a few days before Thanksgiving 2013. What happened that night was recorded by the boat’s video cameras. One camera in particular caught the very last moments of Hayes’ life in chilling detail.
“Initially, we were told that the video wasn’t available from that particular camera that actually showed the cabin of the boat. … there was indeed video that was uploaded to a cloud server. And the video from that camera was indeed available,” Clark explained. “That was one of those moments where you feel like, you know, it was 4th and 1. And you got a first down.
Actually, it took three months and a court order for detectives to get their hands on that video. When they did, it was explosive.
“That video was shocking to me,” said Clark.
“What do you see on this video?” Maher asked.
“Well, the video’s everything. The video is the case,” Clark replied.
Police have yet to release the video, but described in detail to “48 Hours” exactly what they say happened that night between the couple: essentially, it was a party for two — drugs included.
“They greet each other — a quick hug — just a quick embrace. You can see that they’re engaged in conversation. But there’s no audio,” Clark said. “… then, eventually, she — gets to the point where she starts to prepare drugs … for injection. We see her very clearly. She brought all of the equipment with her. She brought the drugs with her.”
As police would learn, the drug of choice that night was heroin.
“We see her prepare the syringe. We see her it looks like she’s injecting herself, but her back’s to the camera,” Clark explained. “He watches this happen. And then she eventually injects him.”
“Do you feel like, at any point when you’re watching the video, that this is a guy who is afraid and doesn’t want to do this?” Maher asked.
“I get the impression … he’s nervous. He’s uncertain. But he’s going along with it,” said Clark.
“And what happens then?” Maher asked.
“Almost immediately, he starts to go into distress,” Clark explained. “At some point, she comes to him. It looks like she tries to revive him a bit … by patting him on the face and talking to him, holding his head as he slumped forward on the chair.
“And you or I, if we found ourselves in that situation, would’ve been on the phone to 911, sayin’, ‘Oh, my gosh. Something terrible’s happened. We need help.’ And she does none of that,” Clark continued.
Instead, Clark says the video shows the woman trying to remove any evidence that she was ever there — wiping fingerprints and cleaning up her drug paraphernalia.
“While he’s slumped over on the floor?” Maker asked.
“While he’s on the floor,” Clark replied.
“She’s stepping over him?” Maher asked.
“She is literally walking around the cabin of the boat … stepping over him, grabbing her glass of wine, carrying it around the boat cabin with her,” said Clark.
Clark says that portion of the video with Hayes on the floor of the cabin goes on for seven minutes.
“And that’s seven minutes that emergency medical personnel could’ve been there could have done something and could have reacted to this situation to save Mr. Hayes’ life. But instead, she does nothing, nothing to call for help or to fix this. You know, and that’s the crux of the case,” Clark told Maher.
Alix Tichelman
diaz digital media
Armed with that video, police hit pay dirt. They were able to match the woman with those distinctive tattoos to a profile on the dating website Hayes had used. She was a 26-year-old aspiring model. Her name? Alix Tichelman.
WEB OF SECRETS
The wealthy Google executive found the exotic model in a somewhat secret world, where real names are rarely used.
Technically, Alix Tichelman and Forrest Hayes met in Las Vegas — not at an upscale casino or one of the fancy hotel lobby bars — but through an online website which is headquartered just a stone’s throw from the strip. But as “48 Hours” discovered, it’s not your typical dating website.
“What year did you start SeekingArrangement?” Maher asked the site’s CEO Brandon Wade.
“It was started in 2006 from a bedroom in San Francisco, actually,” he replied.
It may have the look and feel of a start-up, but with nearly four million members worldwide, this is big business.
“SeekingArrangement.com is — a sugar daddy dating website, so we match wealthy guys and girls looking to pamper and spoil. And, of course, younger men and women looking to meet those wealthy people,” Wade explained.
Wade, a boyish 43-year old, says he’s become a multi-millionaire from all the “arranging” he’s been doing.
“Is SeekingArrangement about arranging sexual relationships for money?” Maher asked.
“It is about finding romance and passion,” Wade replied. “I’m unapologetic about the fact that sex is involved in a romantic relationship. And money is involved in a romantic relationship. But that doesn’t make the romantic relationship prostitution.”
Deputy Police Chief Steve Clark, the point man in the Hayes death case, strongly disagrees.
“It doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to take a look at that website and figure out exactly what was going on there,” he told Maher. “The titles of the individuals are Sugar Babies and Sugar Daddies. You know, that’s — there’s no innocent connotation there behind any of that.”
“What is ‘Budget’? That’s what he’s willing to spend?” Maher asked Wade as they looked at the website.
“That’s his sort of lifestyle. So it could be going out for dinners, paying for that. Going on trips,” he explained.
“OK. So does a woman think you’re gonna spend $3,000 on me? A Sugar Baby thinks, ‘You’re gonna spend — $3,000 on me,'” Maher asked.
“Yeah, on the relationship,” Wade replied.
Wade is proud that his membership ranks include employees of leading Fortune 500 companies, including, he says, from Google.
“Is Forrest Hayes a typical client?” Maher asked Wade.
“I would say he is — an average client of ours,” he replied.
“Married tech executive looking for some sort of arrangement,” Maher commented.
“Yep. Forty percent of the guys are married,” said Wade.
It’s unknown if Hayes was fulfilling the “expectations” of any Sugar Babies’ lifestyle requests, which range from a $1,000 to over $10,000 in monthly Sugar Daddy “gifts.”
“Can you tell us anything about Alix Tichelman’s profile on SeekingArrangement?” Maher asked Wade.
“Well, the only thing I can say is that it looked like any other normal profile, so it was approved. And — there was no indication that she was soliciting money for sex. At least not with that profile,” he replied.
After Hayes’death, investigators began tracking Alix Tichelman on social media. Fearing she might leave town, they hatched a plan to catch her using SeekingArrangement.com.
“When she posted on Facebook something to the effect of — I plan to go back to Georgia — that’s when they decided to really go in and pursue her on the same website, just the way Forrest had, and pose as a john and lure her back to Santa Cruz,” reporter Stephen Baxter explained.
“We started seeing chatter from her that indicated she was either gonna move out of the country or out of the state,” said Clark.
“There’s now a clock on this ’cause she’s about to head South,” reporter Michael Daly explained. “So, they do kind of a classic sting.”
“We sold out our detective and made him set up a profile — under a different identity and made up a whole story about him. We then posted that out there and we reached out to Alix Tichelman through SeekingArrangements,” said Clark.
Code-named “Sebastian,” that detective began emailing and texting with Tichelman, hoping for a rendezvous.
“Eventually, we convinced her to come down and meet with us for an agreed-upon … arrangement for sex, for prostitution, and for a sum of money,” said Clark.
“Police said … they deposited some money — several hundred dollars into her bank account with a promise of … at least $1,000 upon arrival and everything else,” Baxter explained.
“This did not appear to you that this was the first time she had negotiated such a situation?” Maher asked Clark.
“No. In fact … she kinda called us out, called us a cheapskate. Told us that, you know, many of her clients pay twice that,” he replied.
Eight months after the death of Forrest Hayes, Alix Tichelman once again showed up in Santa Cruz County, this time at a secluded resort. Once again, she came with heroin in her bag expecting to hook up with the Sugar Daddy from SeekingArrangement. And once again, it did not go as planned.
“When you said, ‘We’re the cops. And we’re the ones you’ve been communicating with,’ what was her reaction?” Maher asked Clark.
“Oh, she — she cried,” he replied. “… that’s when we saw panic.”
Alix Tichelman booking photo
Santa Cruz Police Dept.
Alix Tichelman, 26, was stunned. Police arrested her for prostitution and charged her in the death of Forrest Hayes.
“…this was a crime. This wasn’t just some accident gone awry,” Clark said.
Or was it? What happened that night, says Tichelman’s defenders, is a lot more complicated.
WHO IS ALIX TICHELMAN?
Perhaps no one was more surprised by the arrest of AlixTichelman than Chad Cornell. The construction worker with a passion for writing and playing music was in love with her.
“For me, I mean, she was somebody completely different,” Cornell told Maureen Maher. “When I first saw her, I couldn’t help but to say something … She has a very darker style. And I always thought she was really beautiful. And almost like, you know, the Angelina Jolie kinda look.”
Alix Tichelman and Chad Cornell
Cornell had no idea how dark her life really was.
“Did you believe she was falling in love with you?” Maher asked Cornell.
“I did,” he replied.
Cornell thought his girlfriend was a model — there were countless images, a swimsuit commercial, and a makeup tutorial she did online.
And as far as he could tell, she was always answering modeling calls.
“She’d get all dolled up and go to a photo shoot,” Cornell said. “…she’d usually make about $1,000 or so when she’d go out to these modeling shoots.”
So imagine how he felt to learn months later that his beloved girlfriend was now being accused of doing something altogether different for all that money.
“I got a text with the news link on it … and kind just fell over on the couch in shock,” Cornell said.
The woman he once thought he’d spend the rest of his life with was now not only charged with prostitution — but also in the death of Google executive Forrest Hayes.
“What are you thinking? This is a woman you were in love with,” Maher commented.
“Yeah, I mean obviously, I was devastated you know. I turned white,” said Cornell.
As the news sank in, to his complete amazement, Cornell realized that just hours before Alix Tichelman met up with Forrest Hayes on that fateful night, she was with him.
“We were hanging out that day actually. She told me that some of her long-time high school friends were in Santa Cruz, and had a boat and she had planned to go hang out with them,” he explained. “Later that night, she actually woke me outta bed with a phone call. She’s you know really frantic on the phone. She sounded very upset.”
“What was she talking about?” Maher asked.
“She talked about how her friends had started doing heroin and a bunch of hardcore drugs on the boat and made her uncomfortable. And that she had to leave,” Cornell replied.
“But you believed on that call that she sounded genuinely upset?” Maher asked.
“Crying, sniffling. I mean upset upset,” said Cornell.
Because the truth, he now knows, was much worse. And it’s left him wondering whether he ever really knew who Alix was.
“Who is Alix Tichelman, right? Who is she?” said reporter Michael Daly.
Daly did what police investigators did, and using the tools of Hayes’ employer, he ‘Googled’ her.
“This, the police discovered, was Alix Tichelman’s Twitter account,” he explained, navigating through the profile AKKennedyxx.
“One x short of triple x,” Daly said of her Twitter handle. ‘Baddest bitch, model, stylist, hustler, exotic dancer.’ Those are her words. These are the pictures to go with the words.”
Twitter
“This has the charming inscription, ‘To death do us part,” Daly said of a photo Tichelman showing off a tattoo on her arm that was posted to the account. “You might start believing less in coincidence on seeing that.”
But to Daly, Tichelman’s postings looked more like someone trying to create an image rather than someone obsessed with killing. That’s because he came across this post:
“My beautiful mother and I out for lunch. *no makeup face*”
“I mean this is a young woman who wants to be with mom,” Daly commented of the tweet, which included a photo of Tichelman and her mother smiling.
Tichelman posted it just months before her arrest for Forrest’s death
“It makes you think there’s a fuller story,” said Daly.
So how did it come to this? Childhood pictures show a cute blonde tomboy who appeared to have all the advantages in life growing up with her sister, Monica, who would become an investment counselor, her mother, Leslie Ann, and her father, Bart, a CEO for a technology company and a pretty good poker player.
“And he at one point found himself playing with some of the best poker players in the world and he won like $400,000,” said Daly.
Alix Tichelman spent her early teens in an Atlanta suburb where she played sports and won writing awards.
“Her friends say that she’s very smart, very deep,” said Daly.
But also very troubled.
“Her experiences with boys were not always happy ones,” Daly explained. “She had eating disorders … she was taking drugs.”
Desperate, her parents went looking for help and located a school that they thought would give her special attention.
“So they found this place called the Hyde School in Maine,” Daly continued.
Megan was also a student at the Hyde School, where Tichelman spent a few months.
“I can feel, like, pressure in my chest. It’s nerve-wracking,” she said driving to the school.
Megan asked “48 Hours” not to use her last name, but agreed to travel back to the Hyde School campus.
“I want people to see this very pivotal part of her life, that I feel, probably affected her at a very … huge point in her development … and why she is who she is,” she said.
“Do you remember when you first met Alix, do you happen to remember the very first time you saw her?” Maher asked.
“One-hundred percent,” Megan said. “She was gorgeous and she was very awkward.”
The cute blonde girl next door was long gone.
“She barely ate. She was very skinny. She was rail-thin,” Megan said. “She was emotionally kind of closed off.”
“I think the big question then is why? What had happened to her?” Maher asked.
“I don’t know the truth to that. She never told me there was a specific catalyst,” Megan replied.
But Megan says Alix Tichelman did hint at some traumatic events.
“We talked about … the fact that we had issues trusting men,” she said. “We had become numb to a lot of things.”
Tichelman had started cutting herself. A photo of Alix in her then-bunkmate’s scrapbook reads “psycho roomie” and “look at the cuts on her arm.”
“Alix Tichelman was actually the first person that I met who did that,” said Ashley Kent, who lived in Tichelman’s dorm. “She came to the school with the scars. She had already etched things into her arm, and she had already made this … image of herself as this like devil person … that’s how she dressed, kind of like a devil worshipper.”
But was that really who Alix was?
“She was actually a really nice girl. It was very much like a front that she putting on, an image,” said Kent.
Megan noticed it, too.
“Once you bypass those walls, she was just a normal girl who was scared,” she noted.
“And what was she scared of?” Maher asked.
“I think herself, honestly. I mean we didn’t know who we were. We had resorted to things that not every person chooses. We had been in trouble.
And at Hyde, it seemed like Tichelman was always in trouble. Megan says they punished her.
“You’re forced to do manual labor, physical labor. They basically tell you what you can and can’t do,” Megan explained.
Megan says she and Alix were forced to build a road.
“We hoed it, each person, and we weeded it. And then they made us cart like wheelbarrows — like huge wheelbarrows full of rocks up and spread ’em, so we basically built a dirt road on campus,” she said.
Ashley Kent remembers one night waking up to Alix screaming. What happened sounds like a scene out of a Stephen King movie.
“She like kinda walked down the halls and like was cutting herself really late at night,” she said.
“She began just to hurt herself because she felt that’s what she deserved,” said Megan.
When it didn’t work out at Hyde, Tichelman’s parents tried other schools. But the worse was still to come.
“Well, she talked about taking heroin when she was in her teens,” said Daly.
And by her early 20s, Tichelman was living in San Francisco, working strip clubs like Larry Flint’s Hustler, and then a place called the Condor. Eventually, she found her way back home to Atlanta, where her life would take a dramatic turn.
“This kinda great thing happens. She meets a guy named Dean,” said Daly.
Alix Tichelman and Dean Riopelle
Dean Riopelle was much older but so in love with Alix Tichelman he wanted to marry her.
“So maybe there’s gonna be a happy ending anyway,” Daly commented.
Then, in September of 2013, two months before Forrest Hayes died, Tichelman’s fiancé, Dean Riopelle, died with heroin in his system:
911 CALL: Um, I don’t know I think my boyfriend overdosed or something like he … he won’t respond, and he’s just laying on the ground. Oh no.
Was it an unfortunate coincidence? Or something more sinister?
ANOTHER HEROIN DEATH
The Masquerade — it’s one of the hottest concert venues in Atlanta, Georgia, and it all belonged to 53-year-old Dean Riopelle, a former cross dressing singer for the rock band the “Impotent Sea Snakes.”
In September of 2013, Riopelle died of a heroin overdose. His girlfriend at the time: Alix Tichelman.
Tichelman called 911 after she says she discovered Riopelle unconscious in his North Atlanta home. That was just two months before she was with Google exec Forrest Hayes when he died.
“We were surprised the similarities in their case to our case,” said Santa Cruz Deputy Police Chief Steve Clark.
Based on Tichelman’s arrest in Santa Cruz for the death of Forrest Hayes, police in Milton, Georgia, are now taking a second look at Riopelle’s death. What was first ruled an accidental overdose might very well become a criminal matter.
One person who believes Tichelman should be held responsible for Riopelle’s death is his former employee, Khristina Brucker.
“I think she had something to do with his death, I really do,” said Brucker.
For a few months in 2012, Brucker, an aspiring model, lived in Riopelle’s house, taking care of his children from his previous marriage and his pet hobby: raising dozens of monkeys.
“He said he had a dream about monkeys one day and he just started collecting them. He had the money. So why not?” Brucker told Maureen Maher.
Riopelle told an Atlanta TV station he had hopes of turning his property into a zoo.
“Anybody would spend 20 minutes or an hour with one would see they have a little bit more personality than most other animals,” he said.
But Brucker says his real passion was the woman also featured in that news story, Riopelle’s live-in girlfriend, Alix Tichelman.
“Oh, he loved her. He absolutely loved her. He wanted to marry her and she wanted to marry him, too,” said Brucker.
Dean Riopelle loved everything about Alix Tichelman — except the drugs. By the time Tichelman hooked up with Riopelle, she was a full blown heroin addict. Brucker says Riopelle didn’t share Tichelman’s bad habits.
“Did you ever see him drink?” Maher asked.
“Never,” Brucker replied.
“Smoke?”
“Never.”
“Do drugs?” Maher pressed.
“Not once,” said Brucker.
Brucker stopped working for Riopelle almost a year before he died. Still, she’s sure he would never inject himself with heroin. But she wonders if Alix Tichelman might have.
“Do you think that’s what happened?” Maher asked Brucker.
“I think it’s possible, especially with the case in Santa Cruz where she actually did that,” she replied.
“The idea that she’s going around randomly sticking people with heroin needles is preposterous. These are grown men. They know exactly what they’re doing,” said Todd, an Atlanta businessman.
Todd asked “48 Hours” not to use his last name, but says, as a close friend of Alix Tichelman, he could no longer keep quiet about what he knows about the couple.
“She was devastated after Dean passed away,” he said.
Todd says, not only did Riopelle drink — he drank a lot.
“But she loved him and he loved her. If he were alive today, he would be the first one to bail her out of jail,” he said. “And he would be absolutely mortified at how the people around him … have treated her.”
And Todd says Riopelle was determined to get Tichelman off heroin. He sent her to rehab and even bought her an engagement ring. He texted Todd.
“This is August 30th of 2013 … he was getting Alix a wedding ring. They were going to get married,” Todd said of the text.
That’s just three weeks before Dean Riopelle would overdose.
“She gets her ring, she picked it out today. We drug test every week. If she can stay clean for 14 months we will get married Halloween night 2014…” Todd said, reading aloud one of the text messages that have never been made public. He showed them exclusively to “48 Hours.”
“Alix says this is the first time in 10 years she has gotten out of detox or rehab and lasted a whole week before shooting up again,” Todd said, reading another text.
But Tichelman didn’t stay clean for long. On Sept. 7, 2013, just 10 days before his fatal overdose, Dean Riopelle made a shocking discovery: Alix was online, advertising herself to men.
“She hated that she was compelled to do it because she had this addiction,” Todd said. “There were guys who wanted to rent her penthouse apartments … men with a lot of power and a lot of status. …But she wasn’t interested in anything except getting the money to support her habit. She loved Dean, she wanted to be with Dean, but she had this deep dark secret.”
And, Todd says, when Riopelle found out, he flipped out.
“He said, ‘Can I move all of the prostitute’s s— into your place tomorrow … She is better over there and I would like to bring her stuff to you today so I don’t have to see the whore again,'” Todd said, reading Riopelle’s text.
But Riopelle didn’t kick Tichelman out. Instead, Todd says, he hit the bottle — hard.
“Once he discovered the ad things began to fall apart. Dean desperately loved her. Dean wanted to keep her. But he couldn’t figure out how to reconcile all of this,” said Todd.
So, Todd believes, Riopelle tried something new.
Tichelman would later tell police she was in the bathroom when she heard what sounded like a crash. She went to the bedroom and found Riopelle on the floor.
An autopsy would show he had a fatal mix of heroin, pain killers and alcohol in his system.
“I’m convinced that what happened was Dean was trying to reach a connection with Alix on a deeper level. And he thought that if they could share this thing, this thing she was so attached to, that she couldn’t let go of no matter what, that they could actually be together. And that’s what he wanted more than anything in life,” said Todd.
Following Riopelle’s death, Tichelman sent text messages to Todd: “Gd why did dean have to die?”
In the texts she writes that her mother is coming and will move her to California to the family’s new home two hours outside San Francisco. But Tichelman is trying to detox and tells Todd she is worried:
“I know that city well, like the Tenderloin where I used to live is the third biggest open drug market in the U.S. It takes two minutes to score and you don’t have to know anyone. You can see why I’m worried,” Todd said, reading the text aloud.
Around Oct. 30, 2013, Alix Tichelman arrived in California. She immediately went back online and started advertising herself. Texting Todd: “Guys out here got mad money.”
And within days she had a prospect. She was about to come into serious cash.
“This is on the second of November and she says an ‘amazing guy’ found her…’He is the real deal.’ Tomorrow she’s going on his boat and for a few hours he’s giving her $400 to $500 cash. Then a check for $2,000,” Todd said of another text. “Now, I’m relatively certain that the guy on the boat she’s referring to was Forrest.”
Three weeks later, on Nov. 22, Alix Tichelman was definitely with Forrest Hayes on his boat, where Todd believes she was simply making money to feed her addiction.
“Tell me one thing that happened on that yacht that was not absolutely consensual between two adults,” Todd said. “Nothing.”
STUNNING DEVELOPMENTS
On May 19, 2015, Alix Tichelman is back in court to have a date set for her trial.
She’s been in jail for almost a year — her past modeling life a distant memory. Tichelman faces almost 20 years behind bars, charged in the killing of Forrest Hayes, along with drug possession and prostitution.
Her public defenders, Jerry Christensen and Larry Biggam, have insisted she is not a cold-blooded killer.
“Alix Tichelman did nothing that Mr. Hayes didn’t want her to do. Two adults engaged in mutual and cooperative drug usage. And it went wrong. But it was an accident,” Biggam told reporters.
Defense lawyers say Hayes was an eager participant that night, even using his own cell phone light to show Tichelman where to inject him. And they are adamant she then simply panicked.
“This video will show that it’s an accident. Everything about this video indicates accident and panic, everything about it,” Christensen told reporters.
For months they’ve investigated Forrest Hayes’ past, asking prosecutors to hand over video from the “Escape’s” cameras as far back as six months before he died.
“We have some indications from other material that there may have been previous encounters on the boat. It would be highly relevant in regard to whether or not there is — drug usage along with sex,” Christensen told reporters.
Judge: Do you understand that when you plead no contest or guilty you’re getting two felonies and five misdemeanors?
Alix Tichelman: Yes
Alix Tichelman in court on May 19, 2015.
“48 Hours”
And through her lawyer, she apologizes to the Hayes family: “It was accident and panic and she’s so, so sorry for it.”
Tichelman was sentenced to six years in a local jail, but with credit for her time served and a reduction by the judge, she’ll likely serve just a little over two years.
After the hearing, there was another stunning development. Prosecutor Rafael Vasquez says the family of Forrest Hayes told him they never wanted Alix Tichelman charged.
“The family did not want this case to be filed, they would have been very happy if this case had been dismissed,” Vasquez explained. “They were terrified about the prospect of this case going to trial.”
The family, he said, did not want that video from Hayes’ boat to ever be made public.
“I can only imagine what further pain, what further humiliation they would endure if that video was released out into the public,” said Vasquez.
What’s more, he says Alix was never a cold-blooded killer, as described by law enforcement.
“That was never depicted in that surveillance video,” said Vasquez.
In fact, the prosecutor agrees with the defense attorneys that Alix was anything but callous when Forrest collapsed.
“And the fact that she made some effort to wake him up, hit him in the chest, smack him in the face, holding him up trying to lift him up, then holding him, hugging him at one point, and then you can see her crying in one instance, and then yelling for him to wake up in one instance — that clearly showed somebody who appeared concerned at that time. And that is certainly inconsistent with somebody who acted with an obvious intent to kill,” he explained.
But, the prosecutor says, what she is guilty of is not doing enough.
“She was the only one who could have rendered help and she neglected to do so, she failed to do so and instead took liberties to destroy evidence and to make her getaway while leaving the man there to die,” said Vasquez.
In the end, one of Tichelman’s attorneys, Athena Reis, says her time in jail has been helping turn Alix’s life around.
“You know, she’s clean and sober. She’s closer with her family than ever, and I think she’s really used this time to reflect,” said Reis.
But for Forrest Hayes’ family , there is no turning around. And they’ll try to put the scars of his actions behind them.
“From this point on, the family no longer has to worry about the concern associated with all the scrutiny, all the ridicule and all the scorn generated by all the media attention in this case,” Vasquez said. “This family has been through a lot.”
Todd, one of Tichelman’ s closest friends, reveals never-before-made-public text messages between the two. He tells “48 Hours” why Tichelman arranged to meet another “sugar daddy” on an online dating site and why that meeting did not go as she planned.
A former Ukrainian speaker of parliament who was a leading figure in the country’s pro-European protest movements in 2004 and 2014 was shot dead on Saturday in western Ukraine, officials said.
Andriy Parubiy, 54, who also previously served as secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, was killed in the city of Lviv. Local media reports say he was shot multiple times by a gunman dressed as a courier on an e-bike, according to CBS News partner BBC News.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned it as a “horrific murder” and said “all necessary forces and means” would be used in the investigation.
Prosecutors have opened a murder probe and said police were still searching for the shooter but have not mentioned possible motives at this stage.
“An unidentified man fired several shots at the politician, killing Andriy Parubiy on the spot,” the prosecutor general’s office said.
Ukraine’s public broadcaster Suspilne cited anonymous sources saying the shooter was dressed as a delivery rider and was on an electric bike.
The body of former Ukrainian parliamentary speaker Andriy Parubiy, who was killed this morning, lies on the ground in Lviv, Ukraine August 30, 2025.
Roman Baluk / REUTERS
Photos purporting to show the crime scene were published by Ukrainian media, showing a man with a bloodied face lying in the street.
Some of the tributes to Parubiy from Ukrainian officials hinted at suspicions against Russia.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, both sides have accused each other of assassinations of political and military figures.
Former President Petro Poroshenko said the killing of Parubiy was “a shot fired at the heart of Ukraine,” BBC News reported.
“Andriy was a great man and a true friend. That is why they take revenge, that is what they are afraid of,” he wrote on Telegram.
Last month, one of Ukraine’s security top service members, Colonel Ivan Voronych, was killed in a bold daylight attack in Kyiv. Days later, Ukraine’s security agency said it tracked down and killed two Russian agents suspected of murdering Voronych.
An Amish woman who told authorities she was testing her faith when she threw her 4-year-old son into an Ohio lake was charged Wednesday with two counts of aggravated murder in the boy’s death.
Authorities said Ruth R. Miller, 40, of Millersburg, Ohio, told investigators she believed she was acting at the direction of God when she allegedly killed her son Vincen at Atwood Lake early Saturday.
The lead investigator with the Tuscarawas County Sheriff’s Office, Capt. Adam Fisher, said Wednesday that Ruth Miller repeatedly said in interviews with police that she threw the boy off the dock and into the water to give him to God.
“It did not appear that the gravity of the situation had sunk in,” Fisher said.
The woman’s husband, Marcus J. Miller, 45, had apparently drowned while attempting to swim to an offshore sandbank hours earlier in another test of faith, Sheriff Orvis Campbell told reporters at a news conference Monday. Their other children, a 15-year-old girl and twin 18-year-old boys, were also directed to perform water-based trials of their belief but survived, Campbell said.
New Philadelphia Municipal Court online records indicate Ruth Miller was also charged with domestic violence and child endangerment regarding the older children. Authorities said Ruth Miller was receiving treatment at a secure mental health facility and had not been arrested by late Wednesday afternoon. A message seeking comment was left for her attorney, Scott Fromson.
When first responders began to treat Ruth Miller, she was allegedly making concerning statements, CBS affiliate WOIO-TV reported.
People stand over the site where investigators say 40-year-old Ruth Miller of Millersburg, Ohio, drove a golf cart into Atwood Lake, Ohio Aug. 23, 2025, after she allegedly killed her 4-year-old son by throwing him into the lake.
Tuscarawas County, Ohio, Sheriff’s Office via AP
As deputies questioned her, Campbell said the mother spoke about placing her son in the water, “to give him to God,” the station reported.
She also attempted to run from deputies and hide in a bush, WOIO reported, citing police.
Family members and the Millers’ church said in a statement that the deaths “do not reflect our teachings or beliefs but are instead a result of a mental illness. The ministry and extended family had been walking with them through their challenges, and they had also received professional help in the past.”
Campbell said Ruth Miller told investigators she believed she could walk on water but when she tried doing so off the end of the dock, she simply fell into the water.
“She and her husband went to this dock and they jumped in the water because God was speaking to them and telling them to do things, things to prove their worthiness to God,” Campbell said.
Marcus and Vincen Miller were apparently both dead when authorities were called Saturday morning for a report of a golf cart having gone into the lake. Campbell said Ruth Miller had driven it at a high speed into a stone wall on the lake shore with the three older children on board. The cart ended up fully submerged but visible, and her three children stood on it before getting out of the water.
When a rescuer tried to get Ruth Miller out of the water, she told them to “just pray for her,” Campbell said.
Park rangers heard “concerning type statements” from Ruth Miller, the sheriff said: “There was a pretty immediate statement made that she had given her son to the Lord.” Authorities soon realized her husband and 4-year-old son were missing.
“She began to express more that she had thrown the child in the water to give that child to God,” Campbell said. “But we didn’t know where in the water – it’s a big lake.” He said Ruth Miller was in mental crisis.
Searchers focused near the dock where authorities said the Millers had apparently tried to walk on water the night before. Around 6 p.m. local time on Saturday, a diver found Vincen on the lake bed not far from the end of the dock. Early Sunday morning, divers found Marcus Miller’s body 53 yards (48 meters) from the dock.
The coroner said autopsies and an investigation will determine the manner of the two deaths.
The couple’s surviving children were “extremely confused” and upset, Campbell said. “Their mindset was that whatever their mother and father says is the way it is. They don’t question anything. So when they were told to jump in the lake, they jump in the lake,” he said.
Amish are part of a Christian movement professing non-violence although they have their cases of domestic violence and sexual abuse. Advocates for abuse victims among the Amish say that although church leaders have acknowledged the problem, they need to do more to respond to abuse as a crime to be reported to civil authorities, not just as a matter of church discipline.
The family lived in Holmes County, Ohio, which has a large Amish community. They had gone to Atwood Lake, about 82 miles south of Cleveland, in a recreational vehicle as a getaway, arriving Friday, Ruth Miller’s birthday.
LAWRENCE — Master barber Joe Terilli spent Sunday afternoon giving free haircuts to kids at a back-to-school and family fun event on the Campagnone Common.
But as he left the common, he was stabbed in the back, an unprovoked assault that collapsed one of his lungs and sent him into emergency surgery at Lawrence General Hospital, he said.
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Viktoria Nasyrova is accused of using cheesecake as a murder weapon. Her motive was to steal the identity of Olga, who looks a lot like her. “48 Hours” correspondent Peter Van Sant reports.
A Central Valley man was convicted on Wednesday for the murder of an Amazon semi-truck driver during a shooting on Interstate 5 two years ago. On June 15, 2023, around 12:45 p.m., Andrew Watson, of Manteca, merged onto northbound I-5 from Highway 120 and began swerving erratically before pulling up alongside the victim’s truck and firing multiple shots. The San Joaquin County District Attorney’s office said the deadly encounter was captured on dash camera footage.(Previous coverage in the video player above.)The shooting killed a truck driver, 37-year-old Ilkhom Shodiev. Following the shooting, Shodiev’s truck left the interstate and crashed into two parked vehicles and a business. No one else was injured. Beyond the dash camera footage, the district attorney’s office said surveillance video, witness accounts, bank and cell phone records, and gunshot residue tied the crime to Watson. On Wednesday, a jury found Watson guilty of second-degree murder with a firearm enhancement and shooting at an occupied vehicle with a firearm enhancement. “This senseless act of violence stole the life of a hardworking husband and father who was simply doing his job, leaving his family in profound grief,” said District Attorney Ron Freitas in a news release. Freitas also said the conviction ensures Watson “faces the consequences of his savage actions.”Shodiev lived in Charlotte, North Carolina, with his wife and two young children, who were ages 1 and 3 when he was killed. VIDEO BELOW: Loved ones grieve Amazon big rig driver shot, killed in LathropOfficials have not revealed a motive in the shooting. Watson is set to be sentenced on Sept. 23.See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel
A Central Valley man was convicted on Wednesday for the murder of an Amazon semi-truck driver during a shooting on Interstate 5 two years ago.
On June 15, 2023, around 12:45 p.m., Andrew Watson, of Manteca, merged onto northbound I-5 from Highway 120 and began swerving erratically before pulling up alongside the victim’s truck and firing multiple shots. The San Joaquin County District Attorney’s office said the deadly encounter was captured on dash camera footage.
(Previous coverage in the video player above.)
The shooting killed a truck driver, 37-year-old Ilkhom Shodiev. Following the shooting, Shodiev’s truck left the interstate and crashed into two parked vehicles and a business. No one else was injured.
Beyond the dash camera footage, the district attorney’s office said surveillance video, witness accounts, bank and cell phone records, and gunshot residue tied the crime to Watson.
On Wednesday, a jury found Watson guilty of second-degree murder with a firearm enhancement and shooting at an occupied vehicle with a firearm enhancement.
“This senseless act of violence stole the life of a hardworking husband and father who was simply doing his job, leaving his family in profound grief,” said District Attorney Ron Freitas in a news release.
Freitas also said the conviction ensures Watson “faces the consequences of his savage actions.”
Shodiev lived in Charlotte, North Carolina, with his wife and two young children, who were ages 1 and 3 when he was killed.
VIDEO BELOW: Loved ones grieve Amazon big rig driver shot, killed in Lathrop
Officials have not revealed a motive in the shooting.
A federal prison inmate has been sentenced to life behind bars, after he was convicted of murder and hate crime charges in the beating death of a fellow inmate who was Jewish.
Federal prosecutors said Brandon “Whitey” Simonson, 41, of Minnesota, conspired with fellow inmate Kristopher “No Luck” Martin to kill Matthew Phillips at FCI Thomson, a low-security federal prison in western Illinois in 2020.
Simonson and Martin punched and kicked Phillips in the face and head on March 2, 2020, even after he was knocked unconscious and unable to defend himself, prosecutors said.
Phillips died three days later.
Prosecutors said Simonson and Martin conspired to kill Phillips to gain recognition and membership within the white supremacist prison gang the Valhalla Bound Skinheads.
On May 13, following a seven-day trial, a federal jury in Rockford convicted Simonson of second-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, hate crime, and assault.
On Monday, a federal judge in Rockford sentenced him to life in prison.
“Antisemitic violence has no place in our society,” U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros said in a statement. “Violence against people of faith is illegal and unacceptable and will not be tolerated anywhere in our district, including in our prison system. My Office and our law enforcement partners will aggressively enforce federal laws to ensure that all Americans feel safe in practicing and expressing their faith.”
Martin, 43, of Indiana, pleaded guilty earlier this year. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 9.
