The East Bay man arrested last month for the murder of Capitola resident Alice “Alyx” Kamakaokalani Herrmann, who was his girlfriend, was arraigned Thursday in Santa Cruz County.
Lengyel, 54, who also goes by the name Mylo Stone, disappeared briefly in December following the disappearance of his girlfriend, before being arrested in early January. Herrmann's car had been seen outside Lengyel's home in El Cerrito, and her remains were found in Tilden Regional Park in December — police found them there based on a tip, reportedly.
As Bay Area News Group reports, Lengyel appeared in court Thursday to enter a not-guilty plea. The case is being tried in Santa Cruz County because, apparently, that is where investigators believe Herrmann's murder took place. None of the circumstances have yet been made public.
Police told the public in mid-December to be on the lookout for anything unusual if they happened to be in a regional park, so the tip about Herrmann's wherabouts must have come early in the investigation.
Herrmann was last seen by friends in the Outrigger paddle club in Santa Cruz on December 3, and her family reported her missing on December 12 after they had not heard from her in a week.
A longtime friend, Betsy Marvit, told the Santa Cruz Sentinel that Herrmann was something of a prodigy from Hawaii who attended Pomona College at age 16. She went on to get a Bachelor of Sciences degree from Cal Tech, a doctorate in neuroscience, and had a black belt in taekwondo and was multilingual. At 61, she was reportedly very active with the paddle club, and worked as a software engineer.
"[Alyx] was a musician, pescatarian, soft-spoken lover of life, and an adventurous athlete even at 61, with a strong connection to the sea, to her daughter, and to the many friends who loved her very much," Marvit told the paper.
Lengyel, who was also both an engineer and a musician, had been an early member of the experimental band Mr. Bungle, which was formed by high school students in Humboldt County — and whose lead singer, Mike Patton, went on to become the singer of Faith No More. Lengyel played saxophone, clarinet and keyboards.
As the New York Post reported in December, Lengyel left Mr. Bungle on bad terms in the mid 90s. Member Trevor Dunn said of Lengyel in 2005, "We unanimously decided to go on without him because he wasn’t growing with the rest of the band and we were running out of things for him to do. He got pissed off and I haven’t heard from him since."
Lengyel is due back in court on April 4, at which point a preliminary hearing will be set.