Theobald "Mylo" Lengyel has been on trial since September 4 for the December 2023 murder of his girlfriend, Alice “Alyx” Kamakaokalani Herrmann, in Capitola. And this week, a witness took the stand who only reached out to prosecutors after reading about testimony in the trial so far.
Lengyel stands accused of first-degree murder in the killing of Herrmann, likely on December 4, at her home in Capitola. She was declared missing by friends in the ensuing days, and after Lengyel was named as a person of interest in her disappearance, he disappeared from the Bay Area, traveling to Portland to see his brother.
As we've since learned from the investigation, Lengyel texted his brother "brace yourself, it’s worse than you think," before visiting on or around December 8. He had also had a two-hour phone call with his brother, in which he said, according to investigators, "he didn’t mean to hurt anybody and that people are so fragile and people break easily." He dropped off his dog and truck at his brother's house, and, the brother said, "cried and sobbed for most of a train trip back to California."
The defense has been attempting, at trial, to cast Lengyel in some kind of sympathetic light — not denying that he killed Herrmann, but attempting argue against a first-degree murder conviction, suggesting that he "loved" Herrmann, and perhaps acted out in a sudden fit of passion.
As Lookout Santa Cruz has reported, the prosecution has focused on bringing character witnesses to the stand, many of whom either never met Herrmann or knew Lengyel in the years before he met her in 2017. One of those was Lengyel's ex-wife of 16 years, Joleen Welch, who testified for two days, and spoke of several instances in which Lengyel acted out in a rage. In one of those instances, Welch tearfully recalled Lengyel putting his hands on her throat for several seconds.
Family members, including an estranged sister and niece, testified that Lengyel was an alcoholic who was prone to rages, and his sister recalled him phoning her in the middle of the night and using offensive language, calling her a "stupid bitch" and a "whore," before she cut off contact and got a restraining order against him.
But perhaps the most damning testimony came on Tuesday, as KRON4 reports. A coworker of both Herrmann's and Lengyel's, Aida Gray of Palo Alto, testified that Lengyel had once asked her to help him kill someone. She said the shilling question came when she and Lengyel were alone for a moment in her bedroom, after he had asked to see some of her expensive wardrobe during a couples' dinner party with her husband and Herrmann.
"Out of the blue … he suddenly asked me if I can help him kill someone. It was a crazy question," Gray said on the stand, per KRON4. When asked if it seemed like he might be kidding, Gray said, "No. He looked me in the eyes. He was intense."
Gray said she immediately left her closet and went back to the dinner table, where she told her husband what Lengyel had said. She said her husband responded saying, "What the fuck is his problem?", and after that they declared the dinner party over.
She also testified about another incident when she, Lengyel, and Herrmann were at a house party together, and she and Herrmann were in the kitchen talking when Lengyel was performing music in another room. "Mylo was very angry that we could care less about the music. He lost it and started yelling at us," Gray said, per KRON4.
Gray testified that she'd only come forward in the last week because, after reading some of the other coverage of testimony, she did not feel the jury was getting a full enough picture of Lengyel's character.
Both Lengyel and Herrmann worked in finance tech, and met through the course of their work.
Lengyel had been a member of the experimental rock band Mr. Bungle from 1985 to 1996, playing horns under the name Mylo Stone. Other members of the band have suggested he left the band on bad terms.
Herrmann's body was found in Berkeley's Tilden Park on January 2, after Lengyel told investigators where she could be found. Due to decomposition and the work of wild animals over the weeks she lay in the woods, a definitive cause of death was never determined, though a medical examiner found possible evidence of strangulation.
In addition to the murder charge, prosecutors are also seeking a conviction on an auto theft charge, and they have sought to suggest that Lengyel used Herrmann's car in disposing her body. Some dime-sized spots of blood were found in the vehicle, which was later found in Lengyel's El Cerrito driveway.
A rope was found near Herrmann's body, and Lengyel told investigators that he had tried to hang himself after dumping the body there, but did not succeed.
