Update: While police initially booked Alix Tichleman on second-degree murder, Santa Cruz County Superior Court confirms that prosecutors have charged her with eight counts including felony manslaughter, destruction of evidence, and transporting and providing narcotics. Her arraignment has been postponed until next week.
It sounds like a Silicon Valley made-for-TV movie—complete with a dead Google executive, a call girl, a luxury yacht, and a heroin overdose—but this is allegedly real.
Santa Cruz Police announced Tuesday, July 8, that 26-year-old alleged prostitute Alix Tichleman of Folsom was arrested in the murder of 51-year-old Forrest Hayes, a Google executive and married father of five. Tichleman is accused of shooting Hayes up with heroin and fleeing the scene as he overdosed.
The incident, which took place on November 26, 2013, was first considered a suicidal overdose. Santa Cruz Deputy Police Chief Steve Clark told the Santa Cruz Sentinel that an investigation led them to Tichleman, who had met Hayes a few times after they met online.
Text messages revealed that Tichleman was with Hayes on the night of his death and, according to ABC7, police say video surveillance shows her supplying and injecting the heroin.
Once Hayes started to become unconscious, police say Tichleman did not step in to help or call 911, but rather gathered her stuff, including the heroin and needles, and left. Not before finishing her glass of wine though.
"She was so callous that in gathering her things, she was literally stepping over the body and at one point stepped over the body to grab a glass of wine and finish the glass of wine," Clark told ABC7. Tichleman's fingerprints were found on the glass.
Detectives posed as a client to lure Tichleman back to Santa Cruz, they agreed upon a $1,000 as the cost, and she was arrested upon arrival and booked into Santa Cruz County Jail, KTVU reports.
Police say Tichleman is under investigation in another state for a similar case.
[Santa Cruz Sentinel]
[ABC7]
[KTVU]