Quick Take
As the murder trial of Theo Lengyel, accused of killing his partner, Capitola's Alice Herrmann, enters its second week, prosectors shared entries from Herrmann's diary and testimony from Lengyel's neighbor about his erratic behavior as they work to paint Lengyel as someone who struggled with alcohol and anger issues.
The murder trial in the death of Capitola’s Alice “Alyx” Herrmann, 61, heads into its second week of testimony on Tuesday, with prosecutors hinting that witnesses would include the ex-wife of the accused, Theo Lengyel, 55, of El Cerrito, and a caretaker prosecutors say witnessed an altercation between Herrmann and Lengyel in fall 2023.
On Friday, the third day of the trial in Santa Cruz County Superior Court, prosecutors showed pages from Herrmann’s diary revealing interior thoughts about her partner and her accused killer.
Meanwhile, a physician neighbor who lived across the street from Lengyel in El Cerrito, Dr. Arthur Swislocki, recalled a bizarre incident in April 2023 in which Lengyel knocked at his door late at night and demanded that he play music with him.
Both Herrmann’s diary entries and the testimony of Lengyel’s neighbor appeared to be prosecutors’ attempts to convince jurors of Lengyel’s character as someone with money problems and alcohol-imbued anger issues.
During his opening statement, Assistant District Attorney Conor McCormick described Lengyel as prone to “anger and abuse towards his romantic partners, oftentimes fueled by his alcoholism.” Herrmann died in December 2023, and her remains were discovered in a Berkeley park in January 2024 after Lengyel told police where to find her body.
McCormick and another assistant district attorney, Emily Wang, admitted as evidence photographs of pages from Herrmann’s leatherbound diary, which was found in a search of Lengyel’s home in El Cerrito.
Detective Michael Olivieri of the El Cerrito Police Department, who examined the diary, read aloud some of these diary pages as prosecutors projected them on screens for the jury to see.
“Being a manipulative c–t, according to Milo,” one page read. Milo Stone was one of Theo Lengyel’s pseudonyms.
Another page read: “More complaints. So I’m now on the hook for many Milo bills. House etc. Because we set up autopay. But now what? No record of loan agreement, despite repeated requests. So I’m f—ed.”
One of the pages had writing on it that was in a different handwriting. “Based on the content of the note itself, I believe it was written by the defendant,” Olivieri said of that page.
Olivieri read this page aloud in court: “My brain runs on alcohol and nicotine. Food is only incidental.”
Another El Cerrito Police Department detective, Ryan Trac, testified that he had found dried blood in several places in Herrmann’s Toyota Highlander. Trac brought a human-remains detection dog, also known as a cadaver dog, to sniff around Lengyel’s property, and said the dog “had a focus on the trunk area of the Highlander.”
Lengyel, through his lawyer, has never denied that he killed Herrmann. The defense’s strategy thus far has been to argue that Lengyel’s actions were not deliberate and premeditated in a way that would constitute first-, second- or third-degree murder. “He is not guilty of murder because he did not have the proper state of mind to murder,” defense attorney Annrae Angel told jurors in her opening statement.
Earlier in the hearing, Swislocki, Lengyel’s neighbor, testified that he had lived in his home on the same street as Lengyel for 34 years. He described the street they lived on in El Cerrito, Craft Avenue, as a “middle-class neighborhood” on a “dead-end street of about 15 houses.”
Swislocki said that he met Lengyel and his wife and family when they moved into the house across the street in 2008. When asked how well he knew Lengyel, Swislocki replied, “Not well. They came over to our home after they moved in. Showed us some plans for remodeling, but that was pretty much the extent of most of the interaction.”
McCormick asked Swislocki to recall an incident in April 2023, when Lengyel came over to his house late one Friday night. Swislocki said that on the night in question, he and his wife were “returning home from an engagement.”
“We came in the house, and got ready for a quiet evening at home,” Swislocki said. Then, Lengyel “came to the house and asked me to play music with him.”
Lengyel knew that Swislocki played guitar, but the two of them had never played music together.
“I declined, because I was looking forward to a quiet evening at home,” Swislocki said. “And he began yelling. He used language not appropriate for a courtroom.”
The prosecutor asked Swislocki to recount what words Lengyel used for the court record.
“I can’t totally recall, but he said either, ‘you are being a c–t’ or ‘stop being a c–t,’” Swislocki said.
“Did he say that jokingly?” the prosecutor asked.
“No,” Swislocki replied. “He was yelling, he sounded angry.”
“At some point I decided I had three options,” Swislocki continued. “I could ignore him, I could play music with him, or I could call the police.”
Swislocki chose to play music with him in order to “defuse the situation and be neighborly.”
They spent the next “couple of hours” outside on the porch, playing music, with Swislocki on the guitar and Lengyel on the saxophone. “He played a couple of his songs that he had composed, we played music, and eventually he went home,” Swislocki said, adding that after they began playing, Lengyel’s anger dissipated.
Swislocki noted that a few days later, Lengyel came over and apologized “for being intoxicated and obnoxious.”
Prosecutors asked Swislocki to characterize the degree of his intoxication.
“He brought a beer over to our front porch, he smelled like beer. He wasn’t slurring his speech, but he was a little belligerent and intoxicated,” he added.
Though this was the first and last time that Swislocki and Lengyel ever jammed together, Lengyel was a professional musician for much of his career. He played clarinet and saxophone for the Eureka-based jazz-rock band Mr. Bungle from 1985 to 1996.
Prosecutors then asked Swislocki if he recalled ever seeing any “concerning” behavior between Lengyel and his ex-wife. Swislocki said he did not.
In cross-examination, defense lawyer Angel asked Swislocki to characterize Swislocki’s degree of discomfort during the impromptu jam session.
Swislocki said he was “uncomfortable with [Lengyel’s] initial approach,” but after “sitting outside freezing” they both relaxed a little bit. “It was late and I was tired and I was still a little wary of … his belligerence earlier.”
Swislocki was also questioned about his observations of Lengyel’s house on Dec. 7, 2023, around the time of Alice Herrmann’s death, which evidence suggests took place at Lengyel’s house. Swislocki recalled that Lengyel’s usually long hair and beard were both “cut very short.” Swislocki didn’t recall much else besides that Lengyel was in the front yard that day.
Through the course of the trial, Lengyel’s sudden change in appearance after Herrmann’s disappearance has been a fixation of prosecutors, who have sought repeated testimony from witnesses regarding Lengyel’s suddenly clean-shaven face and head. In murder trials, a change in appearance is often used as evidence for “consciousness of guilt,” or of an intent to evade law enforcement.
The jury trial will continue with more witness testimony on Tuesday. Prosecutors suggested that future witnesses would include Lengyel’s ex-wife, Joleen Welch, whom Lengyel married in 2000 and divorced in 2017. Court records from Contra Costa County show that Welch was granted a domestic violence restraining order against Lengyel in November 2017.
“[Welch] knows about [Lengyel’s] controlling behavior, she knows about his fits of rage, she knows about his alcoholism, she knows how he made her feel isolated,” McCormick said in his opening statement on Wednesday, Sept. 4.
Other upcoming witnesses will also include a caretaker for Herrmann’s father in Hana, Hawaii, who witnessed altercations between Herrmann and Lengyel in fall 2023. Prosecutors allege that the caretaker told Herrmann, “Alice, you are in an abusive relationship.”
The caretaker “was met with serious excuses until Alice eventually conceded, ‘I know I am, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how to leave,’” McCormick said.
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