San Francisco: A prostitute who injected a Google executive with a lethal dose of heroin aboard his yacht off the coast of California faces a six-year jail term after pleading guilty on Tuesday.
Alix Tichelman, 27, was originally charged with manslaughter, prostitution, destroying evidence and transporting a controlled substance for her role in the overdose of 51-year-old Forrest Hayes in November 2013.
She pleaded guilty on Tuesday to administering a controlled substance and involuntary manslaughter, according to local media reports. Tichelman is to get credit for time she has already spent in custody pending trial.
As the case worked its way through court, her attorney argued that the two were taking drugs together consensually and that his client had no intent whatsoever of harming Hayes.
She was arrested on July 4 of last year by Santa Cruz police, who identified her as the woman in a surveillance video on the yacht where Hayes was found dead of an overdose some eight months earlier.
The city of Santa Cruz is a beach community in Northern California, about 64km from Google’s headquarters in the Silicon Valley city of Mountain View.
The video shows Hayes suffering “medical complications” and passing out after being injected by Tichelman — and then shows her leaving the scene, instead of administering first aid or calling for an ambulance, police said.
Tichelman stepped over Hayes at one point to finish a glass of wine, according to investigators, who added that she lowered window blinds to hide the man from view.
His body was found the next morning. Hayes was described in a local obituary as a family man with five children.
Tichelman was arrested after being lured to an upscale hotel by investigators under the pretence of meeting a rich man willing to pay for sex, according to court documents.
Tichelman used a website called “Seeking Arrangement” to connect with men and boasted of having more than 200 clients, investigators said.
Hayes reportedly met Tichelman through the website, which promises that a “sugar daddy” can use it to find “sugar babies” for “upfront and honest arrangements with someone who will cater to your needs.”
An obituary in the local newspaper, the Santa Cruz Sentinel, said Hayes had worked at Silicon Valley tech firms Sun Microsystems and Apple before taking a position at Google.
Following the Hayes case, police reopened an investigation into the death of Tichelman’s then-boyfriend Dean Riopelle, who died last September in his home near Atlanta.
Riopelle, 53, died of a heroin overdose, in what was recorded as an accident.
