Family of Alice Herrmann sheds light on relationship with boyfriend Theo Lengyel in second day of murder trial

Both brothers and a neighbor of Capitola resident Alice “Alyx” Herrmann told the murder trial of Theo Lengyel on Thursday that they never saw the musician act violently toward his girlfriend in the months leading up to her death in December 2023.

In Santa Cruz County Superior Court, Eric Herrmann, Alice’s brother and a Mill Valley resident, said he interacted with Lengyel “about two dozen times” throughout the five years that Lengyel and Alice Herrmann were dating. 

In opening statements on Wednesday, the first day of the jury trial, district attorneys painted Lengyel as a characteristically violent alcoholic. 

Then on Thursday, prosecutors asked witnesses to recall any emotional, argumentative, violent or abusive moments between Lengyel, 55, and Herrmann, 61. Most of the brothers’ recollections were neutral, and both said that only in retrospect did certain interactions they witnessed seem off. Neither brother, nor a Capitola neighbor of Alice’s, recalled witnessing violence between the two.

Santa Cruz County Assistant District Attorney Emily Wang asked Eric Herrmann what he thought of his sister’s relationship with Lengyel. “To be perfectly honest, I didn’t see them being particularly close — not like a chummy, holding-hands kind of relationship,” Eric Herrmann, 59, testified. “But they seemed to spend a lot of time together.”

Eric Herrmann mentioned that both his sister and Lengyel had a shared interest in music, and the two of them had set up a music room in the house owned by the Herrmann family in Richmond, where Lengyel brought a drum set. “They would do jams there from time to time, and I participated in one or two of them,” Eric Herrmann said. 

A few months after he met Lengyel, Eric Herrmann learned that Lengyel “had been in a band that had at one point had some fame,” referring to Mr. Bungle, the popular jazz-rock band for whom Lengyel played clarinet and saxophone from 1985 to 1996.

Herrmann said he was introduced to Theo as “Milo Stone,” and only later learned his real name. “I looked up the Wikipedia entry on his band and it listed a different name than Theo,” which was when he realized his real name was not Milo, Herrmann said.

“Did you ever observe any verbal arguments between them in all those times that you saw them together?” Wang asked Eric Herrmann. 

“In the first few years, I couldn’t think of anything,” Eric Herrmann replied. He said one incident that gave him pause occurred in April 2021, when Alice texted him asking him to come over to the family house in Richmond. “She made it sound urgent,” he said. 

When he arrived, he found Alice inside the house with Lengyel, who was “inebriated” but “calm.” He said Alice hinted that things were “not out of control,” and she drove Lengyel home without incident. 

When Eric arrived, Lengyel seemed in a normal mood, and acted like he wanted to have a drunken conversation with Eric, he testified.

“To be fair, I never had a concern for her safety,” Eric continued. “When he was drunk, I thought, ‘He’s drunk, it happens sometimes.’ I thought it was a one-time thing.”

When asked to clarify if he ever witnessed violence, Eric Herrmann said he “never saw [Lengyel] act violently towards her.” 

The youngest brother in the Herrmann family, Conrad, 58, was called to the witness stand in the afternoon. Conrad, who lives in San Francisco, had fewer interactions with Lengyel than Eric — ”four or five,” he recalled — all with Alice present. He recalled one incident in Hawaii, when they were visiting their father. Conrad was staying in an apartment across the street from where Lengyel and Alice were staying; Lengyel walked over to Conrad’s apartment and solicited his aid in resolving an unspecified argument between Lengyel and Alice. 

Lengyel asked Conrad to “come back and talk to my sister at the house,” Conrad said. But everything seemed fine when he went back over to the house. 

“It seemed odd that when I got to the house, there didn’t seem to be anything particularly worth coming to get me for,” Conrad said.

Conrad couldn’t remember the specifics of the argument, but said that Lengyel “had some kind of communication problem with my sister and wanted to see if I could get her to talk.” 

He specified that this struck him as odd only in retrospect, after his sister was killed. 

Both Conrad and Eric Herrmann were asked about the last time they spoke with Alice, and prosecutors showed screenshots of a group chat among the three siblings. Messages sent by Alice on Dec. 1, 2023, to both brothers constituted their final communication. 

In two messages sent to the group chat that day, Alice told the brothers she was flying to Maui on Dec. 12 to visit their father. In a subsequent text, she communicated some of the problems with her father’s house that their father’s caretaker had relayed. “The dryer is kaput and the solar hot water is cold,” she wrote.

This would be the last that both brothers would hear from her. On Dec. 12, someone from Alice’s Berkeley workplace, the financial services company Moody’s, left a voicemail on Eric’s phone asking if he knew where Alice was. 

That prompted Eric to reach out to her via text. At first he assumed that Alice was not responding because she was on a plane to Hawaii, but he grew more concerned as the day went on. 

That night, Conrad called the police and reported Alice missing. 

The next morning, Eric drove to Capitola to see if Alice was home. Eric recorded a video of himself walking around her house, searching to see if anything looked off. Nothing “jumped out” at him, Eric said, though there were a few unusual things — including a key on the counter and a note that said “shed” next to it. The handwriting didn’t resemble his sister’s. 

He also saw that Alice’s wallet, ID, watch and phone were all at her house. “That was unusual because if someone was going on a trip they would probably take that with them,” he said.

Alice Herrmann’s neighbor in Capitola, Christine Sieburg, testified briefly about her relationship with Lengyel and Alice. Sieburg described their relationship as “neighborly,” and said they had exchanged numbers and that she would sometimes take out the trash or take in packages for Herrmann. 

Sieburg said she saw Lengyel come by the house many times over the years. “We do exchange pleasantries,” she said of their interactions. “I didn’t know his name until December.” 

Sieburg said that on Dec. 6 — two days after Alice’s Apple Watch stopped recording her heartbeat — Sieburg drove her son to school and then “returned to find the defendant in [Herrmann’s] front yard, mowing the lawn with the hand mower.” 

Sieburg said she was surprised to see him “fully clean-shaven, no more beard.” His head had been shaved too, she said.

“I saw him and went inside,” she said. “I believe we made eye contact.” 

Sieburg said that she never overheard an argument occurring next door, and that Herrmann never talked to her about any of her relationships.

At a pre-trial hearing in June, the forensic pathologist from the Santa Cruz County coroner’s office testified regarding the autopsy results for Herrmann. The pathologist believed that Herrmann’s death was from “homicidal means,” and noted a thyroid cartilage injury consistent with “neck compression or strangulation.”

Herrmann’s body was found in Tilden Park in Berkeley in January, and was “partially skeletonized” when discovered due to scavenging animals.

At the start of the trial on Wednesday, Lengyel’s attorney, Annrae Angel, made it clear that the defense is not arguing that Lengyel did not kill Herrmann, but that the killing does not rise to the legal standard of murder. The California Penal Code states that there are specific legal hurdles for a killing to constitute murder in any degree. These include whether the murder was premeditated and deliberate, the degree to which the accused attempts to conceal the murder, and the mental state of the accused. Manslaughter is a lesser charge than murder, but still falls under the umbrella of homicide.

Day 3 of the trial, presided over by Judge Nancy A. de la Peña, will continue Friday at 1:30 p.m. at Santa Cruz County Superior Court.

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