Ex-wife alleges pattern of abuse in Theo Lengyel murder trial

Joleen Welch, the ex-wife of Theo Lengyel, tearfully described a man who was angry, controlling and sometimes violent over the course of their 17-year marriage in testimony Tuesday afternoon in Lengyel’s trial on charges he murdered Capitola woman Alice “Alyx” Herrmann in December 2023 and buried her body in a Berkeley park. 

Her testimony was hinted at in lawyers’ opening statements last week, when Assistant Santa Cruz County District Attorney Conor McCormick described Lengyel as someone who exhibited “anger and abuse towards his romantic partners, oftentimes fueled by his alcoholism.” 

Lengyel and Welch split in 2017, according to her testimony. He dated Herrmann for five years before she was killed in 2023.

Welch described the early years of their relationship in positive terms. She said she first met Lengyel when, in 1999, she walked past his “beautiful” dog outside a San Francisco cafe, and after stopping to admire it, met the “handsome man” who owned the dog. 

They married in 2001, and had three children between 2003 and 2008. In those early days, “the marriage was good,” Welch testified, calling Lengyel a “great father to [their] newborn babies.” 

“He far exceeded my expectations,” she added. 

At the time, Lengyel worked in information technology for a financial firm, she said. The two of them lived in her house in San Francisco’s Mission District, and later, also in his El Cerrito home, which they bought together in 2008. The family would go back and forth between the two. 

Under questioning from the prosecutor, Welch described how Lengyel’s alcohol consumption changed over the years. “When I first met him, he mostly smoked pot,” she said. His increasing alcohol use “concerned” her, she said — particularly in the later years of their marriage, and especially around 2015. 

His alcoholism “made things kind of scary,” she said. Lengyel was “violent” and “a lot of times unpredictable,” she added.

“There were times I felt scared even when he wasn’t drunk,” she added. She described him as “unpredictable, violent, breaking things [and] yelling … just aggressive.” 

Lengyel “talked a lot about his drinking being a problem” and tried different tactics to quell it, she said. 

She recalled a particularly disturbing incident when she told Lengyel she didn’t want to have sex with him. After that, Lengyel left their San Francisco house and returned early in the morning, when the two of them took their three kids to Arizmendi Bakery in the Mission to get pastries. 

“He’d taken my wallet,” Welch recounted, and as they were ordering pastries for the children, Lengyel told the children, “Oh, Momma doesn’t get pastries. Momma’s been naughty.” 

Welch “didn’t want to make a scene in front of the kids,” she said, so she didn’t say anything. 

When they got back to the house, Lengyel closed the gate to block her entry. 

“This was in response to me saying no to sex, to telling him no,” she recalled. “Sometimes it was easier to say yes. He wouldn’t accept people saying no.”

She recalled another harrowing incident in which Lengyel “said, ‘You’re f–king stupid’ in earshot of the kids.” 

All of these “outbursts” would be “followed by remorse and apologies,” Welch added, when he would “say he’d try not to drink.”

She described Lengyel as someone who would occasionally drink and drive, but was confident that he would never get caught. “I can talk my way out of it” was his attitude, she said. 

The prosecution homed in on an incident that took place at an afternoon Giants baseball game they attended in San Francisco with their children, sometime in the period between 2015 and 2017. Lengyel drank before the game, then drove the family to the stadium. Welch saw him frequently leave to obtain more drinks. She described feeling “embarrassed” at the way he was behaving in the stadium. 

After the game, she took the children to their El Cerrito home and insisted he stay in San Francisco. “I was putting my foot down,” she said, which she was nervous about; however, she “didn’t want to be around him when he was being really drunk.” 

But later, Lengyel appeared drunk at the back door of the El Cerrito home, looking “very upset.” “I remember telling him, ‘You need to leave, go back to the city,’” Welch said. 

Lengyel then “took his fist and smashed the window” of the door, spilling glass all over the floor. Welch said one of their children was nearby when this happened. 

At this point, Welch said that Lengyel “pinned me against the wall.” She said she hit her head on the wall, which left a bruise. 

She specifically remembered him punching her in the stomach, and then being pinned down on the couch. She described him as “almost foaming at the mouth, screaming, calling me ‘f–king idiot,’” and spitting as he yelled. Welch said she felt like she couldn’t do anything; “If I fought back it would make it worse,” she said. Lengyel then put his hands on her throat, she said. 

Eventually, he left, and Welch said she was left to comfort their children. 

In a pre-trial hearing in June, a forensic pathologist for the Santa Cruz County coroner’s office testified that Herrmann had a thyroid cartilage injury that suggested “neck compression or strangulation” was a possible cause of death.

Welch also described other incidents, including a time when Lengyel hit the family dog, Barnabus, “over and over” as they were getting in the car in Emeryville. One of their children was present as he struck the terrier mix, she said.

The prosecutor highlighted her testimony about Lengyel’s controlling nature through careful questioning of Welch, and she said that, over the years, Lengyel would take her wallet, checkbook and phone from her. 

Welch moved out in 2017 and physically separated from Lengyel. Legally, they were both on the title of the El Cerrito property that Lengyel lived in, though Lengyel was responsible for mortgage payments, she said.  Welch was “surprised” when, sometime in 2022 or 2023, the bank notified her that the house was being foreclosed upon. 

Pages from Herrmann’s diary, shown last week in court, revealed that Herrmann was helping pay Lengyel’s mortgage. 

Prosecutors also showed evidence of a text exchange between Lengyel and Welch from Dec. 5, 2023, which prosecutors say was the day after Herrmann was killed. 

At 9:33 a.m. that day, Lengyel texted his ex-wife: “Brace yourself. It is worse than you can possibly imagine.” 

At 9:49 a.m., Welch responded with a question mark. She testified that she thought he was talking about the financial situation with the house.

Earlier in the day, prosecutors also called on Brendan Kellmann, a crime scene investigator from the Contra Costa County Office of the Sheriff, to testify about his forensic examination of Herrmann’s Toyota Highlander. Kellmann testified that he found “several blood stains” in her car, and showed photographs as to where he found them. 

A criminalist from the California Department of Justice, Linh Schulz, testified briefly regarding taking swabs of Herrmann’s house in Capitola. She said she found bloodstains on a bottle of Clorox in the kitchen, and on the box frame of Herrmann’s bed. 

The trial will continue at 10 a.m. Wednesday with more testimony from Welch, followed by the defense’s cross-examination.

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