transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Trying to lose weight can feel like an endless battle. You follow every diet, you try every workout, and still struggle to see results, and keeping it off can be even harder. Weight Loss by Hers helps simplify the process. They now offer access to FDA-approved GLP-1 medications, including the Wigovia Pill at its lowest price ever, and the Wigovia Pen, designed to help you lose weight and maintain it by regulating appetite and supporting healthier habits. Hers provides more than just medication. It gives you 24-7 access to your care team, plus in-app support with recipes, meal plans, fitness videos, sleep content, and lifestyle tips. Ready to reach your goals? Visit forhers.com/48hours to get personalized, affordable care that gets you. That's forhers.com/48hours, forhers.com/48hours, based on advertised cash price for 30-day supply of medication only, membership required, fee not included, and bills separately. Weight loss by Hers is not available in all 50 states. Wigovie is the registered trademark of Novo Nordisk AS. To get started and learn more, including important safety information, Wigovie clinical study information, and restrictions, visit forhers.com.

Speaker 2:
[01:20] Picture this, it's late at night, and you're scrolling your feeds, when all of a sudden, you see it, that one product that you've been looking for. As you're checking out, you realize you don't have your card anywhere near you, and that's when you see it, that purple pay button that has all your information saved, making checkout as simple as a tap on your screen. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, and 10 percent of all e-commerce in the United States, from household names to brands just getting started. In addition to that handy purple pay button, Shopify can help tackle tasks like inventory, payments, analytics, and more. Everything is all in one place, making your life easier and your business operation smoother. See, less carts go abandoned and more sales go. With Shopify in their shop pay button, sign up for your one dollar per month trial today at shopify.com/forty-eighthours. Go to shopify.com/forty-eighthours. That's shopify.com/forty-eighthours.

Speaker 3:
[02:48] Santa Cruz is a small coastal town in California. It's at the northern end of Monterey Bay. It looks like paradise. Look at that beach. Look at these mountains. Breathe that air. It's a place where the blind could go sightseeing. And then in recent years, it's become a place that's become more and more favored by the people over the hill in Silicon Valley, that being the people with money. Forrest Hayes started life in the midwest in Dearborn, Michigan, and he went out to Silicon Valley, where everything was happening. He was hired by Google. He had five kids. And then one day, a friend of his emailed him a picture of a boat that was for sale, and a couple days later, he bought it. The two things he loved were his family and being on his boat. He called it escape. I think that some part of them really want to like taste that other side of life. That kind of darker side, wilder, more exotic side of life. On the night of November 22nd, 2013, Forrest Hayes was on his yacht, and he didn't come home that night. And his wife became concerned, and she called the captain. They retained for this yacht. And he went and he got on the boat, and there's Forrest Hayes lying there dead. The detectives arrive, and they start looking at the scene, and it turned out he had in fact died of a heroin overdose. There was a visible injection mark in his arm, but they don't see drugs. Well, you do see two wine glasses. Detective 101, someone else has been there. And the question is who?

Speaker 4:
[04:48] At that point, we realized that's our person. That's who we're going after.

Speaker 2:
[04:53] 10157, time is 8 0 8.

Speaker 4:
[04:56] What is the truth behind how Forrest Hayes died? How did he find himself in this situation, in this position that took his life? Who was on that boat?

Speaker 3:
[05:09] Then they're looking around and they see there's cameras. There was indeed somebody else there. A very beautiful, dark-haired woman. They note that she has these tattoos. And they also probably figure that Forrest didn't meet her, like, you know, at parent-teacher night. This is Alix Tichelman.

Speaker 5:
[05:33] Do you think Alix Tichelman knew that Forrest Hayes was dying right there in front of her?

Speaker 4:
[05:38] I don't see how she didn't know.

Speaker 3:
[05:42] Detectives then discovered that this was not the first time Alix Tichelman had been with somebody who died of a drug overdose.

Speaker 5:
[05:48] Is this woman a cold-blooded killer?

Speaker 4:
[05:51] She certainly was cold.

Speaker 5:
[06:22] 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 forty-eight Hours consultant. The mysterious death of Google executive Forrest Hayes at the city's sprawling marina.

Speaker 6:
[06:44] Forrest Hayes was fifty-one years old. He lived in a pretty upper crust neighborhood. He was a pretty high-powered guy and obviously had a lot of assets. I mean, he lived in a three-million-dollar house in Santa Cruz.

Speaker 5:
[06:55] In 2013, one of the boats docked in Santa Cruz Harbor was this majestic forty-six-foot-long yacht called the Escape. It belonged to Google executive Forrest 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 hi-def cameras. Inside, Hayes spared no expense on creature comforts, including a leather ceiling and an $8,000 captain's chair.

Speaker 3:
[07:32] I think he was practical and imaginative at the same time.

Speaker 5:
[07:37] The Google executive's death caught the attention of Michael Daly. He's an investigative reporter for the Daily Beast in New York and also a 48 Hours consultant.

Speaker 3:
[07:47] Forrest Hayes started in his native Michigan working at the Ford Motor Company. He went to California for Sun Microsystems and he went on to Apple and then he went on to Google.

Speaker 5:
[08:00] For a high-paying job at their top-secret location, where impossible dreams are transformed into reality.

Speaker 3:
[08:08] He was hired to work in Google X, which they call their moonshot factory, you know, the most extreme, wildest, imaginative, farthest-reaching ideas they could have, you know, like Google Glasses, self-driving cars. He was the guy who was actually going to make some of these things happen.

Speaker 5:
[08:25] A place so secretive that 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 on to his prized possession.

Speaker 6:
[08:43] One of the larger boats in the harbour, I think that's fair to say.

Speaker 5:
[08:47] What police would eventually discover was Hayes, 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. Hayes' body was found lying here in the main cabin. The captain immediately called 911, but surprisingly, it would take months before the Google executive's death made headlines.

Speaker 6:
[09:23] There was no really report of his death. Obviously, the police in this case were trying to keep that under wraps as they investigated.

Speaker 5:
[09:32] Santa Cruz Deputy Police Chief Steve Clark.

Speaker 4:
[09:35] 122-11.

Speaker 5:
[09:36] Clark has been on this case since day one.

Speaker 4:
[09:39] The media is going to 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.

Speaker 5:
[09:51] Which wasn't easy, despite some initial crime scene clues.

Speaker 4:
[09:56] There were two weighing glasses there, both of which appeared to have been used.

Speaker 5:
[10:01] Investigators zeroed in on Hayes' cell phone, launching an exhaustive digital search. Then, 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. This camera in particular caught the very last moments of Hayes' life in chilling detail.

Speaker 4:
[10:41] 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. That was one of those moments where you feel like, you know, it was fourth and one and you got a first down.

Speaker 5:
[11:00] Actually, it took three months and a court order for detectives to get their hands on that video, and when they did, it was explosive.

Speaker 4:
[11:11] That video was shocking to me.

Speaker 5:
[11:13] What do you see on this video?

Speaker 4:
[11:15] Well, the video is everything. The video is the case.

Speaker 5:
[11:19] 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.

Speaker 4:
[11:33] 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, and then eventually, she gets to the point where she starts to prepare drugs for an injection. She brought all of the equipment with her. She brought the drugs with her.

Speaker 5:
[11:52] As police would learn, the drug of choice that night was heroin.

Speaker 4:
[11:57] We see her prepare the syringe. We see her, it looks like she's injecting herself at her back to the camera. He watches this happen, and then she eventually injects him.

Speaker 5:
[12:13] 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?

Speaker 4:
[12:23] I get the impression he's nervous, he's uncertain, but he's going along with it.

Speaker 5:
[12:28] And what happens then?

Speaker 4:
[12:30] Almost immediately, he starts to go into distress. At some point she comes to him, and 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 have been on the phone to 911 saying, oh my gosh, some of the terribles happened, we need help. And she does none of that.

Speaker 5:
[12:58] 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 slumped over on the floor?

Speaker 4:
[13:12] While he's on the floor.

Speaker 5:
[13:14] She's stepping over him?

Speaker 4:
[13:16] 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.

Speaker 5:
[13:25] Clark says that portion of the video, with Hayes on the floor of the cabin, goes on for seven minutes.

Speaker 4:
[13:33] And that's seven minutes that emergency medical personnel could have 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.

Speaker 5:
[13:53] 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 twenty-six-year-old aspiring model. Her name, Alix Tichelman.

Speaker 2:
[14:20] Traditional banking hasn't exactly evolved. There are fees for this, fees for that. It can feel like your money's working against you, and that's where Chime comes in. Chime is changing the way people bank with fee-free smart banking built for you. This isn't your typical banking app. With features like MyPay, you can access up to $500 of your paycheck anytime. And with Direct Deposit, you can get paid up to two days early, something a lot of banks still don't offer. On top of that, the new Chime card lets you build credit using your own money while earning cash back on everyday purchases. No interest and no annual fees, the Chime card sounds like something my younger self could have used. Chime is not just smarter banking, it is a rewarding way to bank. Join the millions who are already banking and be free today. It just takes a few minutes to sign up. Head to chime.com/forty-eighthours. That's chime.com/forty-eighthours.

Speaker 7:
[15:28] Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services, a secure Chime Visa credit card, and MyPay line of credit provided by the Bancorp Bank NA or Stride Bank NA. MyPay eligibility requirements apply and credit limit ranges $20 to $500. Optional services and products may have fees or charges. See chime.com/feesinfo. Advertised annual percentage yield with Chime Plus status only. Otherwise 1.00% APY applies. No min balance required. Chime card on time payment history may have a positive impact on your credit score. Results may vary. See chime.com for details and applicable terms.

Speaker 8:
[15:49] At this time of year, many of us take a look inside our closets and ask the same question. Do I really need all of this? With quints, you can keep fewer things, but better ones. Pieces that are well made and easy to wear, which can make getting dressed feel effortless. Their fabrics feel elevated and the pricing makes sense. Take their men's linen pants and shirts. Lightweight, breathable and balanced between laid back and polished. Their flow-knit line is ideal for those who are into active wear. These pieces are soft, moisture-wicking and anti-odor. Quints says their clothing is fifty to sixty percent less than similar brands because they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. Refresh your wardrobe with quints. Go to quince.com/forty-eighthours for free shipping and three hundred sixty-five day returns. Now available in Canada too, go to quince.com/forty-eighthours for free shipping and three hundred sixty-five day returns. quince.com/forty-eighthours.

Speaker 5:
[17:11] The wealthy Google executive found the exotic beauty in a somewhat secret world, where real names are rarely used. Technically, Alix Tichelman and Forrest Hayes met here in Las Vegas, not at an upscale casino or a fancy hotel lobby bar, but rather through an online website, which is headquartered just a stone's throw from the strip. And as 48 Hours discovered, it's not your typical dating website. What year did you start Seeking Arrangement?

Speaker 9:
[17:46] It was started in 2006 from a bedroom in San Francisco, actually.

Speaker 5:
[17:50] It may have the look and feel of a startup, but with nearly four million members worldwide, this is big business. What is Seeking Arrangement?

Speaker 9:
[18:01] seekingarrangement.com is a sugar daddy dating website. So we match wealthy guys and girls looking to pimp and spoil, and of course younger men and women looking to meet those wealthy people.

Speaker 5:
[18:13] CEO Brandon Wade, a boyish forty-three year old, says he's become a multi-millionaire from all the arranging he's been doing. Is Seeking Arrangement about arranging sexual relationships for money?

Speaker 9:
[18:28] It is about finding romance and passion. 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.

Speaker 5:
[18:42] Deputy Police Chief Steve Clark, the point man in the Hayes death case, strongly disagrees.

Speaker 4:
[18:49] It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to take a look at that website and figure out exactly what was going on there. The titles of the individuals are sugar babies and sugar daddies. There's no innocent connotation there behind any of that.

Speaker 5:
[19:02] What is budget? That's what he's willing to spend?

Speaker 9:
[19:05] That's his sort of lifestyle. So it could be going out for dinners, paying for that, going on trips.

Speaker 5:
[19:09] Okay, so does a woman think you're going to spend $3,000 on me? A sugar baby thinks you're going to spend $3,000?

Speaker 9:
[19:15] Yeah, on the relationship.

Speaker 10:
[19:17] Okay.

Speaker 5:
[19:18] Wade is proud that his membership ranks include employees of leading Fortune 500 companies, including, he says, from Google. Was Forrest Hayes a typical client of yours?

Speaker 9:
[19:29] I would say he is an average client of ours.

Speaker 5:
[19:33] Married, tech executive, looking for some sort of arrangement.

Speaker 9:
[19:37] Yep, forty percent of the guys are married.

Speaker 5:
[19:40] It's unknown if Hayes was fulfilling the, quote, expectations, unquote, of any sugar baby's lifestyle requests, which range from a thousand to over $10,000 in monthly sugar daddy gifts. Can you tell us anything about Alix Tichelman's profile on seeking arrangement?

Speaker 9:
[20:00] 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.

Speaker 5:
[20:12] 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. Reporter Stephen Baxter.

Speaker 6:
[20:29] 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.

Speaker 4:
[20:45] We started seeing chatter from her that indicated she was either going to move out of the country or out of the state.

Speaker 3:
[20:53] Now, there's a clock on this because she's about to head south. So, they do kind of a classic sting.

Speaker 4:
[20:59] 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 Seeking Arrangement.

Speaker 5:
[21:10] Codenamed Sebastian, that detective began emailing and texting with Tichelman, hoping for a rendezvous.

Speaker 4:
[21:19] 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.

Speaker 6:
[21:31] Police deposited some money, several hundred dollars, into her bank account with a promise of at least a thousand dollars upon arrival and everything else.

Speaker 5:
[21:40] This did not appear to you that this was the first time she had negotiated such a situation.

Speaker 4:
[21:44] No, in fact, she kind of called us out, called us a cheapskate and told us that, you know, many of her clients pay twice that.

Speaker 5:
[21:52] Eight months after the death of Forrest Hayes, Alix Tichelman once again showed up in Santa Cruz County. This time at the secluded resort behind me. Once again, she came with heroin in her bag, expecting to hook up with the sugar daddy from seeking arrangement. 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?

Speaker 4:
[22:16] Oh, she cried, she panicked. That's, that's when we saw panic.

Speaker 5:
[22:23] Twenty-six-year-old Alix Tichelman was stunned. Police arrested her for prostitution and charged her in the death of Forrest Hayes.

Speaker 4:
[22:34] This was a crime. This wasn't just some accident gone awry. Mr. Hayes is a victim of the murder committed by Alix Tichelman.

Speaker 5:
[22:45] Or was he? What happened that night, say Alix's defenders, is much more complicated.

Speaker 11:
[23:12] For me, I mean, she was somebody completely different.

Speaker 5:
[23:15] Perhaps no one was more surprised by the arrest of Alix Tichelman than struggling musician Chad Cornell. He was in love with her.

Speaker 11:
[23:26] When I first saw her, you know, I couldn't help but to say something. She has a very darker style. Yeah, I just thought she was really beautiful, almost like the, you know, Angelina Jolie kind of look.

Speaker 5:
[23:38] Chad had no idea how dark her life really was. Did you believe she was falling in love with you?

Speaker 11:
[23:44] I did.

Speaker 5:
[23:47] Chad thought his girlfriend was a model. There were countless images, a swimsuit commercial, and a makeup tutorial she did online.

Speaker 2:
[23:59] I'm just going to apply liberally here.

Speaker 12:
[24:03] Pretty, pretty, pretty.

Speaker 11:
[24:04] Okay.

Speaker 5:
[24:05] And as far as Chad could tell, she was always answering modeling calls.

Speaker 11:
[24:10] You should get all dolled up and go to a photo shoot. She would usually make about a thousand or so when she'd go out to these modeling shoots.

Speaker 5:
[24:20] So imagine how he felt to learn months later that his beloved girlfriend was now being accused of doing something all together different for all that money.

Speaker 11:
[24:33] I got the text with the news link on it and kind of just fell over on the couch like in shock.

Speaker 5:
[24:39] 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.

Speaker 11:
[24:54] Yeah, I mean, obviously I was devastated. You know, I turned white.

Speaker 5:
[24:58] As the news sank in to his complete amazement, Chad realized that just hours before Alix met up with Forrest on that fateful night, she was with him.

Speaker 11:
[25:10] We were hanging out that day, actually, and 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. Now, later on that night, she actually woke me up out of bed with a phone call. She was really frantic on the phone. She sounded very upset.

Speaker 5:
[25:33] What was she talking about?

Speaker 11:
[25:35] 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.

Speaker 5:
[25:46] But you believed on that call that she sounded genuinely upset.

Speaker 11:
[25:50] Crying, sniffling, I mean upset, upset.

Speaker 5:
[25:53] Because the truth, he now knows, was much worse, and it's left him wondering whether he ever really knew who Alex was.

Speaker 3:
[26:02] Who is Alix Tichelman? Right? Who is she?

Speaker 5:
[26:05] Reporter Michael Daly did what police investigators did, and using the tools of Forrest's employer, he googled her.

Speaker 3:
[26:13] This the police discovered was Alix Tichelman's Twitter account.

Speaker 5:
[26:18] Calling herself AK. Kennedy, double X.

Speaker 3:
[26:22] One X short of triple X, baddest bitch, model, stylist, hustler, exotic dancer. Those are her words. These are the pictures to go with the words. This has the charming inscription, to death do us part. You might start believing less in coincidence on seeing that.

Speaker 5:
[26:41] But to Daly, Alex's postings looked more like someone trying to create an image, rather than someone obsessed with killing. That's because he came across this photo.

Speaker 3:
[26:54] My beautiful mother and I out to lunch, no makeup face. And this is a young woman who wants to be with mom.

Speaker 5:
[27:01] Alex posted it just months before her arrest for Forrest's death.

Speaker 3:
[27:06] Makes you think that there's a fuller story.

Speaker 5:
[27:11] 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 Anne, and her father, Bart, a CEO for a technology company, and a pretty good poker player.

Speaker 3:
[27:32] And he at one point found himself playing with some of the best poker players in the world and he won like $400,000.

Speaker 5:
[27:39] Alex spent her early teens in an Atlanta suburb where she played sports and won writing awards.

Speaker 3:
[27:46] Her friends say that she's very smart, very deep.

Speaker 5:
[27:50] But also very troubled.

Speaker 3:
[27:55] Her experiences with boys were not always happy ones. And she had eating disorders. She was taking drugs.

Speaker 5:
[28:07] Desperate, her parents went looking for help and located a school that they thought would give her special attention.

Speaker 3:
[28:16] So they found this place called the Hyde School in Maine.

Speaker 13:
[28:22] We are in Maine, in route to Hyde.

Speaker 5:
[28:25] Megan was a student at the Hyde School where Alix spent a few months.

Speaker 13:
[28:30] I can feel like pressure in my chest. It's nerve wracking.

Speaker 5:
[28:34] She asked us not to use her last name, but agreed to travel back to the Hyde School campus.

Speaker 13:
[28:40] 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, why she is who she is.

Speaker 5:
[28:50] So do you remember when you first met Alix? Do you happen to remember the very first time you saw her?

Speaker 13:
[28:54] One hundred percent. She was gorgeous and she was very awkward.

Speaker 5:
[28:57] The cute blonde girl next door was long gone.

Speaker 13:
[29:01] She barely ate, she was very skinny, she was real thin, she was emotionally kind of closed off.

Speaker 5:
[29:09] I think the big question then is why, what had happened to her?

Speaker 13:
[29:13] I don't know the truth to that. She never really told me there was a specific catalyst.

Speaker 5:
[29:19] But Megan says Alix did hint at some traumatic events.

Speaker 13:
[29:24] We talked about the fact that we had issues trusting men, we had become numb to a lot of things.

Speaker 5:
[29:30] Alix had started cutting herself. This is a photo of Alix, her then-bunkmate put in a scrapbook. It reads, Psycho Roomie. Look at the cuts on her arm.

Speaker 12:
[29:44] Alix Tichelman was actually the first person that I met who did that.

Speaker 5:
[29:47] Ashley Kent lived in Alix's dorm.

Speaker 12:
[29:50] 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. Like, that's how she dressed, kind of like devil worshiper.

Speaker 5:
[30:01] But was that really who Alix was?

Speaker 12:
[30:04] She was actually a really nice girl. It was very much like a front that she was putting on, an image.

Speaker 5:
[30:09] Meghan noticed it too.

Speaker 13:
[30:11] Once you bypass those walls, she was just a normal girl who was scared.

Speaker 5:
[30:16] And what was she scared of?

Speaker 13:
[30:17] I think herself, honestly. I mean, we all, we didn't know who we were. We had resorted to things that, you know, not every person chooses. We had been in trouble.

Speaker 5:
[30:26] And at Hyde, it seemed Alix was always in trouble. Megan says they punished her.

Speaker 13:
[30:33] You're forced to do manual labor, physical labor. They basically tell you what you can and can't do.

Speaker 5:
[30:39] This is the area, Megan says, where she and Alix were forced to build a road.

Speaker 13:
[30:44] 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 them. So we basically built a dirt road on campus.

Speaker 5:
[30:55] Ashley remembers one night waking up to Alix screaming. What happened sounds like a scene out of a Stephen King movie.

Speaker 12:
[31:03] She kind of walked down the halls and was cutting herself really late at night.

Speaker 13:
[31:08] She began just to hurt herself because that's what she thought she deserved.

Speaker 5:
[31:18] When it didn't work out at Hyde, Alix's parents tried other schools, but the worst was still to come.

Speaker 3:
[31:25] She talked about taking heroin when she was in her teens.

Speaker 5:
[31:28] By her early twenties, Alix was living in San Francisco, working strip clubs like Larry Flint's Hustler and the Condor. Eventually, she found her way back home to Atlanta, where her life would take a dramatic turn.

Speaker 3:
[31:45] When this kind of great thing happens, she meets a guy named Dean.

Speaker 5:
[31:49] Dean was much older, but so in love with Alix, he wanted to marry her.

Speaker 3:
[31:55] So maybe there's going to be a happy ending here anyway.

Speaker 5:
[31:59] Then, in September 2013, I don't know, I think my boyfriend overdosed or something. Two months before Forrest Hayes died, Alix's fiance, Dean, died with heroin in his system.

Speaker 2:
[32:15] He won't respond, and he's just laying on the ground. I don't know.

Speaker 5:
[32:21] Was it an unfortunate coincidence or something more sinister?

Speaker 1:
[32:36] Spring always feels like a reset. The days get longer, routines shift, and life starts moving fast again. And when your schedule is packed, complicated wellness habits are usually the first thing to disappear. Groons makes that part simpler. Groons are a convenient, comprehensive formula packed into a snack pack of gummies a day. This isn't a multivitamin, a greens gummy, or a prebiotic. It's all those things, and then some at a fraction of the price. Each serving includes more than twenty vitamins and minerals and sixty ingredients which include nutrient-dense and whole foods. It also has six grams of prebiotic fiber. That is three times more dietary fiber than leading greens powders, and more than two cups of broccoli. And because you can't fit this level of nutrition into just one gummy, Groons comes as a full daily pack, making it both functional and easy to work into your routine. With ingredients backed by over 35,000 research publications, Groons is built to simplify wellness when life gets busy. Save up to 52% off with code HOURS at groons.co. That's code HOURS at g-r-u-n-s dot c-o.

Speaker 14:
[33:50] Do you have a dark curiosity? Heart Starts Pounding, Horrors, Hauntings and Mysteries is a weekly podcast hosted by me, Kailyn Moore. Each week, I'll take you on a dark journey through terrifying true urban legends, bizarre true crime cases, chilling tales of backwoods horror and more. If you're looking to join a passionate community of the darkly curious, check out Heart Starts Pounding on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember, stay curious.

Speaker 1:
[34:21] There's something about springtime that makes me want to redecorate every room in my home. A fresh start for the season's change. If you know what I'm talking about, you also know that redesigns can add up really fast. But with Bob's Discount Furniture, you can keep your home makeover up to date and under budget. From living room upgrades to bedroom essentials, Bob's focuses on stylish functional pieces at everyday low prices. Their Play Day sectional has built-in bookshelves and a pop-up sleeper for overnight guests. Bob's best-selling lush mattress comes with high-density Bobopedic memory foam and a cooling cover. It's priced at $999 and that includes a warranty that Bob says is ten years longer than the competition. Then there's the modular Bob sectional featuring family-proof construction and it comes in multiple colors. Plus each piece is just $250. So when you're ready to get going on that long-awaited home makeover, Bob wants you to know that there's a better way to score wow-worthy pieces at everyday low prices. Stop into your local Bob store or shop online and see for yourself.

Speaker 15:
[35:41] Yeah, it's good to be here, it's good to be back.

Speaker 5:
[35:46] It is one of the hottest concert venues in Atlanta, Georgia. The Masquerade, and it all belonged to this man, fifty-three-year-old Dean Riopel, a former cross-dressing singer for the rock band, the Impotent Sea Snakes. In September of 2013, Dean died of a heroin overdose. His girlfriend at the time, Alix Tichelman. I think my boyfriend overdosed or something, like he won't respond. Alix made that 911 call after she says she discovered Dean unconscious in his North Atlanta home. That was just two months before Alix was with Google Executive Forrest Hayes when he died.

Speaker 16:
[36:35] 101.7, time is 8.08.

Speaker 5:
[36:38] Santa Cruz Deputy Police Chief Steve Clark.

Speaker 4:
[36:42] We were surprised, the similarities in their case to our case.

Speaker 5:
[36:48] Based on Alix's arrest in Santa Cruz for the death of Forrest Hayes, police in Milton, Georgia are now taking a second look at Dean Riapel's death. What was first ruled an accidental overdose might very well become a criminal matter.

Speaker 16:
[37:07] I think she had something to do with his death. I really do.

Speaker 5:
[37:10] One person who believes Alix should be held responsible for Dean's death is his former employee, Christina Brooker.

Speaker 16:
[37:19] That's cute.

Speaker 5:
[37:20] An aspiring model, for a few months in 2012, she lived in Dean's house, taking care of his children from a previous marriage. And his pet hobby, raising dozens of monkeys.

Speaker 16:
[37:35] He said he had a dream about monkeys one day and he just started collecting them. You know, he had the money too, so why not?

Speaker 2:
[37:41] Sampson, Delilah, Jezebel, some have names.

Speaker 5:
[37:44] Dean told an Atlanta TV station that he had hopes of turning his property into a zoo.

Speaker 15:
[37:50] Anybody would spend 20 minutes or an hour with one would see they have a little bit more personality than most other animals.

Speaker 5:
[37:56] But Christina says he's real passion was the woman also featured in that news story. Dean's live-in girlfriend, Alix Tichelman.

Speaker 16:
[38:06] Oh, he loved her. He absolutely loved her. He wanted to marry her and she wanted to marry him too.

Speaker 5:
[38:11] Dean loved everything about Alix except the drugs. By the time Alix hooked up with Dean, she was a full blown heroin addict. Dean, Christina says, did not share Alix's bad habits. Did you ever see him drink?

Speaker 12:
[38:28] Never.

Speaker 5:
[38:28] Smoke?

Speaker 16:
[38:29] Never.

Speaker 12:
[38:29] Do drugs?

Speaker 16:
[38:30] No, not once.

Speaker 5:
[38:32] Christina stopped working for Dean almost a year before he died. Still, she's sure Dean would never inject himself with heroin. But she wonders if Alix might have. Do you think that's what happened?

Speaker 16:
[38:49] I think it's possible, especially with the case in Santa Cruz where she actually did that.

Speaker 17:
[38:55] 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. So this is the masquerade. This is Dean's club.

Speaker 5:
[39:07] Todd is an Atlanta businessman. He has asked us 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.

Speaker 17:
[39:20] She was devastated after Dean passed away.

Speaker 5:
[39:24] He says not only did Dean drink, he drank a lot.

Speaker 17:
[39:29] 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, and he would be absolutely mortified at how the people around him have treated her.

Speaker 5:
[39:46] And Todd says Dean was determined to get Alix off heroin. He sent her to rehab and even bought her an engagement ring. He texted Todd.

Speaker 17:
[39:58] This is August 30th of 2013. He was getting Alix a wedding ring. They were going to get married.

Speaker 5:
[40:03] That's just three weeks before Dean would overdose.

Speaker 17:
[40:07] 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.

Speaker 5:
[40:15] These are text messages that have never been made public. Todd showed them exclusively to forty-eight Hours.

Speaker 17:
[40:23] Alix says this is the first time in ten years she has gotten out of detox or rehab and lasted a whole week before shooting up again.

Speaker 5:
[40:29] But Alix didn't stay clean for long. And on September 7th, 2013, just ten days before his fatal overdose, Dean made a shocking discovery. Alix was online, advertising herself to men.

Speaker 17:
[40:49] She hated that she was compelled to do it because she had this addiction. 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.

Speaker 5:
[41:15] And Todd says when Dean found out, he flipped out.

Speaker 17:
[41:19] He said, can I move all of the prostitute to 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.

Speaker 5:
[41:28] But Dean didn't kick Alix out. Instead, Todd says he hit the bottle hard.

Speaker 17:
[41:35] 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.

Speaker 5:
[41:47] So Todd believes Dean tried something new. Alix would later tell police she was in the bathroom when she heard what sounded like a crash. She went to the bedroom and found Dean on the floor. An autopsy would show Dean had a fatal mix of heroin, painkillers and alcohol in his system.

Speaker 17:
[42:10] 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 that 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.

Speaker 5:
[42:34] Following Dean's death, Alix text messages Todd. Why did Dean have to die? Her mother is coming and will move her to California, to the family's new home two hours outside San Francisco. But Alix is trying to detox and tells Todd she's worried.

Speaker 17:
[42:55] I know that city well. Like the Tenderloin where I used to live is the third biggest open drug market in the US. It takes two minutes to score and you don't have to know anyone. You can see why I'm worried.

Speaker 5:
[43:12] Around October 30th, 2013, Alix arrived in California. She immediately went back online and started advertising herself, texting Todd.

Speaker 17:
[43:26] Guys out here got mad money.

Speaker 5:
[43:27] And within days, she had a prospect. She was about to come into serious cash.

Speaker 17:
[43:34] This is on the second of November, and she says, an amazing guy found her, he's the real deal. Tomorrow, she's going to go to his boat, and for a few hours, he's giving her four to five hundred dollars cash. Then a check for two thousand. Now, I'm relatively certain that the guy on the boat she's referring to was Forrest.

Speaker 5:
[43:56] Three weeks later, on November 22nd, Alix Tichelman was definitely with Forrest Hayes on his boat, where Todd believes she was simply making money to feed her addiction.

Speaker 17:
[44:11] Tell me one thing that happened on that yacht that was not absolutely consensual between two adults.

Speaker 18:
[44:31] Do you love your pets? Do you love suspense? Do you love it when your pets keep you in suspense because they ate something mysterious and who knows what the vet visit will cost? If you answered yes twice and then no, you should protect your pet with Lemonade Pet Insurance. It can save you up to 90% on vet bills for checkups, emergencies, diagnostics, all the stuff that leaves you financially on the edge of your seat. Get a quick and easy quote at lemonade.com/pet and get your suspense somewhere else, like from a riveting podcast. And now, the next chapter of the Cerda Counting Sheep.

Speaker 13:
[45:03] Hey, Uncle Number One, why aren't we counted anymore?

Speaker 19:
[45:05] Let me tell you a story. Long ago, Cerda invented the Perfect Sleeper Mattress.

Speaker 13:
[45:10] Oh, no.

Speaker 19:
[45:11] Oh, yes. It says the all-new Cerda Perfect Sleeper with the Q4 support system has four in one perfectly interlinked coils that help relieve aches and back pain for perfect sleep night after night.

Speaker 20:
[45:24] We'll never get counted again.

Speaker 19:
[45:26] Uh, nope.

Speaker 21:
[45:27] Cerda, we make the world's best mattress.

Speaker 22:
[45:35] Both a matter of people versus Alix Tichelman.

Speaker 5:
[45:39] On May 19th, 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. She faces almost twenty years behind bars, charged in the killing of Forrest Hayes, along with drug possession and prostitution.

Speaker 22:
[46:04] So, stipulating, counsel?

Speaker 5:
[46:07] Her public defenders, Jerry Christensen and Larry Bigum, have insisted she is not a cold-blooded killer.

Speaker 23:
[46:15] Alix Tichelman did nothing that Mr. Hayes did not want her to do. Two adults engaged in mutual and cooperative drug usage, and it went wrong, but it was an accident.

Speaker 5:
[46:27] Defense attorneys say Hayes was an eager participant that night, even using his own cell phone light to show Alix where to inject him. And they are adamant she then simply panicked.

Speaker 24:
[46:39] Everything about this video indicates accident and panic. Everything about it.

Speaker 5:
[46:45] For months, they have investigated Forrest Hayes' past, asking prosecutors to hand over video from the escape's cameras as far back as six months before he died.

Speaker 24:
[46:56] 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.

Speaker 5:
[47:08] But at the hearing, there's a bombshell. With her parents watching, Alix Tichelman pleads guilty.

Speaker 22:
[47:16] What is your plea to Comp 1, a violation of Penal Code section 192B as a felony is involuntary manslaughter?

Speaker 5:
[47:26] Guilty to involuntary manslaughter, as well as the lesser charges.

Speaker 22:
[47:31] Do you understand that if you plead no contest or guilty, you're admitting two felonies and five misdemeanors? Yes.

Speaker 5:
[47:37] And through her lawyer, she apologizes to the Hayes family.

Speaker 24:
[47:41] This was in no form intentional, malicious or anything of that sort. It was accident and panic, and she's so, so sorry for it.

Speaker 22:
[47:51] Ms. Tichelman, the total will be six years to be served pursuant to Penal Code section 192B.

Speaker 5:
[47:54] Tichelman was sentenced to six years in a local jail, but with credit for her time served and a reduction by the judge, she will likely serve just a little over two years.

Speaker 22:
[48:06] Good luck to you, Ms. Tichelman.

Speaker 5:
[48:07] After the hearing, another stunning development.

Speaker 20:
[48:10] There are two charges that were...

Speaker 5:
[48:12] Prosecutor Rafael Vasquez says the family of Forrest Hayes told him they never wanted Alix Tichelman charged.

Speaker 20:
[48:20] The family did not want this case to be filed. They would have been very happy if this case simply would have been dismissed. They were terrified about the prospect of this case going to trial.

Speaker 5:
[48:31] The family, he said, did not want that video from Forrest's boat to ever be made public.

Speaker 20:
[48:37] I can only imagine what further pain, what further humiliation they would endure if that video was released out into the public.

Speaker 5:
[48:46] And what's more, he says, Alix was never a cold-blooded killer as described by law enforcement.

Speaker 20:
[48:53] That was never depicted in that surveillance video.

Speaker 5:
[48:57] In fact, the prosecutor agrees with defense attorneys that Alix was anything but callous when Forrest collapsed.

Speaker 20:
[49:05] And the fact that she actually made some efforts to try to wake him up, hit him in the chest, smack him in the face, holding him up, trying to lift him up, and then holding him, hugging him at one point. And then you can see her crying in one instance and yelling for him to wake up in another instance. That clearly shows somebody who appeared concerned at that time. And that certainly is inconsistent with somebody who acted with an obvious intent to kill.

Speaker 5:
[49:29] But he says what she is guilty of is not doing enough.

Speaker 20:
[49:35] She was the only one that can render help, and she neglected to do so. She failed to do so and instead took liberties to destroy evidence and to make her get away while leaving the man there to die.

Speaker 5:
[49:47] In the end, one of Tichelman's attorneys, Athena Reeves, says Alex's time in jail has been helping her turn her life around.

Speaker 10:
[49:55] 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.

Speaker 5:
[50:02] But for the family of Forrest Hayes, there is no turning around, and they will have to try to put the scars of his actions behind them.

Speaker 20:
[50:11] 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 that's been generated by a lot of the media attention in this case. This family has been through a lot.

Speaker 21:
[50:43] In 2017, Alix Tichelman was released from prison after completing her sentence, and she was deported to Canada.

Speaker 14:
[50:53] From the trusted team behind 48 Hours, welcome to Case by Case, your weekly update on the biggest true crime stories unfolding right now.

Speaker 23:
[51:02] Nick Ryder remains in custody without bail.

Speaker 25:
[51:04] Luigi Mangione accused of stalking and gunning down United Healthcare CEO, Brian Thompson.

Speaker 14:
[51:09] From high-profile trials and stunning evidence to major breaks in cold cases, we'll follow it all, Case by Case. Follow and listen to 48 Hours, Case by Case, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2:
[51:23] Pluto TV has thousands of free movies and TV shows.

Speaker 8:
[51:27] We're coming at you with everything we got.

Speaker 2:
[51:36] With movies like Pineapple Express, the entire Star Trek film franchise and Gladiator, and TV shows like Survivor, SpongeBob SquarePants, The Fairly Odd Parents, and Ghosts, Pluto TV is always free.

Speaker 12:
[51:49] Huzzah!

Speaker 25:
[51:50] Pluto TV.

Speaker 14:
[51:51] Stream now.

Speaker 2:
[51:52] Pay never.