A former rocker from a cult 80s band has been found guilty of strangling his girlfriend after shocking audio of the murder was discovered during his trial.
Alice ‘Alyx’ Kamakaokalani Herrmann, 61, recorded her final moments as Theobald Lengyel, 55, choked her to death on December 4.
Lengyel, a former saxophonist for the cult experimental rock band Mr. Bungle, did not deny killing her, but argued that his actions did not amount to murder.
But four weeks into the six-week trial, the three-hour audio file Herrmann recorded on his phone was found, breaking open the case.
Theobald Lengyel, 55, former saxophonist with cult experimental rock band Mr Bungle, was found guilty of the murder of his girlfriend.
The file showed Lengyel playing the piano at his home in Capitola, near Santa Cruz, California, and then getting angry because he didn’t want to go out and play pool.
”Why is it so important to you? Why is it a contest of wills? “Have fun,” Herrmann told him after the discussion began at 9:09 p.m.
“I could crush your fucking brain,” he was heard saying at 9:53 p.m., the first of his threats.
“When you drink, this shit happens, we fight,” Herrmann responded.
Lengyel responded by threatening to kill his dog, Trav, “to show how he could kill you.”
‘You have to get out. You should find another girlfriend. Bye bye! Bye bye! Goodbye, why are you still here? Herrmann shouted, ordering him to leave the house.
Lengyel then grabbed her and said, ‘Are you at my mercy right now? ‘You’re going to die right now. ‘Are you ready?’
‘OK. How do you want to die? Blunt trauma or something else… Do you think you should suffocate to death? How about that?
‘Enough. Do you want your children to be the children of a murderer? Come on, stop it,” Herrmann pleaded.
But Lengyel told him: “It’s too late for that.”
Alice ‘Alyx’ Kamakaokalani Herrmann, 61, was murdered by strangulation in December 2023
The jury listened in horror as Herrmann was slowly strangled, gasping for air and pleading 43 times with Lengyel to stop between 11.32pm and 11.33pm.
‘Why should I stop?’ Lengyel told him. It took him five agonizing minutes to die.
The recording only stopped at 00:11 when Lengyel noticed and stopped it, but the most important thing is that he did not think to delete the file.
Santa Cruz County Deputy Prosecutor Emily Wang told the court in her closing argument that the recording showed what Lengyel did was nothing short of murder.
‘He strangles her for a total of five minutes. “We know that his heart suffers bradycardia at 11:35 p.m. and we know that his body remains on the cold floor of that park for 28 days,” he said.
Wang said Lengyel asking Herrmann how he wanted to die showed that he had “express intent to kill.”
“Theobald Lengyel is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the first-degree murder of Alice Herrmann,” he said.
Herrmann’s body was later found dumped in Tilden Regional Park in Berkley.
Lengyel played saxophone in the cult experimental rock band Mr. Bungle
Prosecutors painted a picture of the former rocker as an alcoholic who had a history of anger problems despite his $200,000-plus-a-year job in financial technology and his family.
He even allegedly hit his now ex-wife and pushed his sister to the ground, they testified.
Lengyel was unceremoniously asked to leave Bungle in 1996, but witnesses at the Santa Cruz Superior Court murder trial said he remained a happy, charismatic guy.
He had graduated from Cornell University with a bachelor’s degree in physics a year earlier, and in February 1999, he met Joleen Welch outside a San Francisco cafe when she stopped to pet his dog.
The couple spent the next year traveling through Europe and officially married in 2001. They went on to have three children, and Welch said their marriage, which lasted until 2017, started well.
“He was a good father of newborns and far exceeded my expectations,” she said when she took the stand on September 10.
But in the late 2000s, Lengyel’s temperament suddenly began to change, and he began to resent his job as a programmer for investment banks.
He told his wife the job was becoming too stressful and time-consuming as he dreamed of a different life for his family and hoped to open a restaurant with his savings, the jury heard.
Herrmann, 61, was last seen in Santa Cruz on December 3. Her car was found parked in front of her famous ex-boyfriend’s El Cerrito home.
At that time, Welch said, Lengyel changed his vices from being a marijuana smoker to an alcoholic, and his alcohol consumption increased around 2015.
That year, the family planned to attend an afternoon Giants game, but Lengyel “was already drinking” before they left, Welch said.
He told how Lengyel drove drunk and parked in the garage of his workplace, from where they walked to the stadium.
But as they walked, Welch said she noticed her husband was getting increasingly drunk.
“He was saying things that… made me feel like I wanted him to lower his voice,” Welch said.
She claimed that when she expressed discomfort, Lengyel would admonish her, telling her that she was “not funny” or that she “couldn’t take a joke.”
“I just wanted him to go away,” Welch said. “I felt embarrassed.”
She then decided to take her children home and told her husband not to follow them.
“I didn’t want to be around him when he was really drunk,” Welch explained.
However, Lengyel showed up at the house later anyway and broke the back door window when Welch told him to leave.
He also allegedly pushed Welch against the wall and then onto the couch, where he punched him in the stomach.
“He was screaming, almost foaming at the mouth, calling me an idiot,” Welch testified through tears.
Welch went on to describe her ex-husband as “scary,” “unpredictable” and even “violent” when he was drinking.
But when asked by deputy prosecutor Conor McCormick if Lengyel was only “scary” when she drank, she replied: “Not necessarily.” There were times when I felt scared even when he wasn’t drunk.
Lengyel allegedly showed officers where to find his remains and handed over his cell phone.
Other family members also spoke about the former rocker’s change in behavior in the years before he began dating Herrmann.
Ariana Frances Allgeier, Lengyel’s niece, even corroborated the story Welch told, saying that her uncle confided in her that he had beaten his wife.
She said she remembers him saying, “If she stays with me, I don’t know if I’ll be more disappointed in her or in me.”
Tess Lengyel, Theobald’s sister, also recounted how she tried to intervene when her brother got into a shouting match with their stepfather on Thanksgiving Day 2016, and her brother pushed her to the ground.
She said she and other family members emailed Lengyel with resources to encourage him to seek help with his alcohol and anger issues, but her brother “adamantly refused,” calling her resources “useless” and saying that “he didn’t believe in receiving therapy.” and I didn’t believe in getting help.’
Still, Tess said, she tried to maintain a relationship with her brother.
But over time it became too rough.
“He would call me in the middle of the night, very late, and if I answered, he would sound drunk and say some things that were very rude and vulgar,” Tess testified, recounting how her brother called her “stupid.” b***h’ and a ‘w***e’ in calls and voice messages.
He was finally granted a restraining order against his brother in 2017.
Bungle poses for a group portrait backstage at San Francisco’s Warfield Theater in April 1992, four years before Lengyel was unceremoniously kicked out of the band.
Herrmann, who worked for the financial firm Moody’s, was last seen in Santa Cruz on December 3, 2023 and was reported missing by her family on December 12.
Authorities now say Herrmann was strangled when her Apple Watch stopped registering a heartbeat on December 4 at 11:44 p.m., which was also the last day she logged into her work VPN.
Lengyel then drove to Portland, Oregon, around December 8, to visit his brother Jed, whom he had previously texted: “Get ready, it’s worse than you think.”
He then left his truck at his brother’s house and returned to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he told police where to find Herrmann’s body and handed over his cell phone.
El Cerrito police later found Herrmann’s Toyota Highlander in front of Lengyel’s El Cerrito home.
At trial, Brendan Kellman of the Contra Costa Sheriff’s Office testified that he performed a forensic examination of the vehicle and found “several visible blood stains” inside.
Lengyel’s sentencing hearings will begin Nov. 7 and he will almost certainly spend the rest of his life in prison.
