SANTA CRUZ — Speaking to a packed courtroom over two days of closing arguments this week, trial attorneys for the prosecution and defense agreed on one thing: the death of Capitola woman Alice “Alyx” Herrmann came at the hands of her partner.
Left to the jury to decide after five weeks of witness testimony was to what degree — if any — the actions of tech finance worker and musician Theobald Lengyel, also known to friends as “Milo Stone,” should be mitigated to a lesser conviction.
“We listened to her in fear. We listened to her in pain. You heard her cry, you heard her frustration,” Santa Cruz County Assistant District Attorney Emily Wang told jurors on Tuesday, referring to a 3-hour-and-14-minute audio recording file retrieved from Herrmann’s phone midway through the trial. “You heard her struggle and try to fight back as she was being restrained, held down and strangled for the last 53 minutes of her life.”
The prosecution has provided evidence that Lengyel likely placed Herrmann in a choke hold until she was strangled to death, though the specifics of the death were unclear after her body had decomposed for nearly a month in a shallow grave in the East Bay’s Tilden Regional Park. The audio recording included audible sounds of Herrmann’s screaming for help and later coughing and asphyxiating.
“You heard it when her voice simply gave out,” Wang later added, describing the audio as “brutal and horrific.” “You were there when this woman left this earth.”
Wang characterized Lengyel’s motivation as an overreaction to being told “no” when Herrmann refused to go out and play pool with him on the night of her death, despite his alleged efforts to “gaslight” Herrmann.
“She did not know how much danger she truly was in that night when she decided to stand up for herself,” Wang said.
Defense attorney Annrae Angel told jurors Wednesday that she had never contested that her client had killed Herrmann, adding that there was no way they could not be affected by listening to the recording. She described the proceedings as almost two trials, before the recording was aired and after. The task at hand for jurors, she said, was not to let emotion or bias color their ability to give Lengyel fair consideration.
“Most of what you heard is true, it’s just about how you’re going to interpret it,” Angel said.
Angel argued that there were reasons to discredit the testimony of several witnesses, pointing to what she saw as inconsistencies in their testimony compared to earlier statements, intoxication, need for context and wishful thinking.
Angel said that what jurors needed to consider was that her client, when making frequent references to killing Herrmann, himself and their dog on the Dec. 4 night of Herrmann’s death, was being hyperbolic and that alcohol was a factor in the night’s outcome.
Lengyel’s actions should also be seen in light of provocation from Herrmann during a “contest of wills” between the two, Angel argued. She went on to paraphrase Herrmann’s comments during the recorded audio, including references to financial issues between the couple and shared insults. Angel reminded jurors that, though the final hours where the argument ratcheted up between the couple were “heartbreaking,” they could not use that in their decision-making.
“This is not something he would have decided to do in any rational way,” Angel said of Lengyel. “That is why I do not believe it was first-degree murder, it was not a rational event.”
Lengyel did not testify on his own behalf, leaving attorneys for both sides to speculate on his motivations
“All of this talk about provocation, which we never really got a reason why,” Assistant District Attorney Conor McCormick, co-counsel on the case, later offered as a rebuttal. “I don’t know from that argument what the provocation was, still, other than that it devolved into arguments about other things.”
Jurors were sent out to deliberate shortly before 4:30 p.m. Wednesday.
