Alyx Herrmann recorded her own murder, prosecutors say

A newly discovered recording on Alyx Herrmann's cellphone captured the violent struggle that preceded her murder, prosecutors said this week.

Authorities found the recording on Sunday – a month after her murder trial began.

According to authorities, Theobald Lengyel, who Herrmann had been dating for five years, killed her on December 4, 2023 and buried her in a remote area of ​​Tilden Regional Park in the Berkeley Hills.

For weeks, Lengyel refused to reveal where he put them, police said.

Officers eventually found the body hidden under rocks near the Mineral Springs picnic area on Wildcat Canyon Road.

The newly discovered recording illustrates the defendant's “brutality against the victim in the last 50 minutes of her life,” a motion said this week, and “shows that the murder was premeditated and involved torture.”

“This has always been, in the eyes of the people, a brutal domestic violence murder,” prosecutors wrote.

Lengyel has not denied that he killed Alyx Herrmann, but his attorney has argued to the jury and court that his actions did not constitute murder.

The new admission will likely require the defense to change its entire strategy as the trial resumes Monday in Santa Cruz Superior Court.

The authorities had already checked Herrmann's cell phone before the trial. But they only discovered the three-hour recording when they opened the Just Press Record app last weekend.

In the days that followed, prosecutors filed a 12-page motion detailing some of the key moments in the recording – which they said should lead to a harsher sentence if Lengyel were convicted.

In the motion, prosecutors painted a dark and disturbing picture of Herrmann's final hours.

Prosecutors wrote that the audio recording began around 9 p.m. on Dec. 4, when Herrmann and Lengyel were at Herrmann's home in Capitola.

The two began arguing a short time later when Herrmann declined Lengyel's invitations to play pool with him.

Herrmann told Lengyel she had to go to Berkeley the next morning and go to bed.

Lengyel “continues to insist that Ms. Herrmann plays pool,” prosecutors wrote. “She is becoming increasingly frustrated with him.”

In the recording, Lengyel repeatedly “molests” Herrmann for about an hour, asking her to go for a walk and making sex suggestions to her. She declined invitations while she was washing dishes, the motion says.

“Do you entertain the idea that … I could walk over there right now … I could smash your damn brains,” Lengyel said shortly before 10 p.m., according to the motion.

The argument continued when Herrmann brought up Lengyel's drinking problems and flushed a bottle of his liquor down the toilet, prosecutors wrote.

Herrmann repeatedly tried to get Lengyel to leave, which only angered him, according to the motion.

“I could fucking kill you right now … but I won’t because I’m holding back,” he once told her, according to the motion. “How about I just kill Trav? [their dog] to show how I could kill you?”

The verbal altercation lasted until about 10:40 p.m., then became physical, prosecutors wrote.

In the recording, Herrmann suggested that Lengyel held her in a “controlled manner” and pulled her hair.

“I’m just… lying here,” she told him, urging him to leave her alone.

“Are you at my mercy right now?” he asked her.

“From 10:40 p.m. until her death at 11:33 p.m., Ms. Herrmann was physically restrained or threatened with violence in some form by the defendant so that she was unable to leave or escape from him,” they wrote Prosecutors. “At various times during these 53 minutes, while the defendant is either sitting on Ms. Herrmann or holding her arms, Ms. Herrmann attempts to break free from the restraint and is able to strike the defendant once.”

Alyx Herrmann fought for her life. Her bite mark may have helped catch her killer.

Theo Lengyel played cat and mouse with police, reportedly mocking them for “mistakes” and trying to figure out why he hadn't been arrested.

The recording also recorded how Herrmann bit Lengyel once while he was strangling her, the public prosecutor said.

In the final 46 minutes of Herrmann's life, Lengyel subjects her to “physical violence, painful bondage and multiple episodes of strangulation before ultimately killing her in the final episode,” the motion says.

During that time, Lengyel repeatedly threatened to kill Herrmann, prosecutors wrote, “and asked her if she wanted to die by 'the telephone cord,' 'blunt force trauma,' or 'asphyxia.'

Herrmann tried several times to convince Lengyel to release her and leave, the application says.

She also told him that she loved him but that their relationship was over.

According to the prosecution, the recording also included the sound of Lengyel strangling Herrmann while she gasped and coughed.

“Stop,” she managed to tell him. “You want your children to be the children of a murderer?”

“It’s damn late for this,” he told her, according to the motion.

“It’s not my fault,” she managed to say once.

In the final minutes of the recording, Herrmann “screams for her life” and begs Lengyel to stop, the motion says.

“Why should I stop?” he asked her.

Prosecutors wrote that the recording captured the sounds of an increasingly violent struggle as Herrmann continued to scream.

The sound “appears to end when the defendant detects that the phone is recording and the application stops at 12:11 a.m.,” the motion states.

What happens next in the murder trial against Alyx Herrmann?

Prosecutors' discovery of the recording on Sunday threw the expected schedule of last week's trial into disarray.

When the jury filed into court Monday morning expecting to hear more evidence in the case, the judge immediately announced that they would be released for a week until next Monday, September 30th.

Jurors were not given a reason for the delay, but Judge Nancy de la Peña told them it could not be avoided.

The prosecution then requested that the charges against Lengyel be amended to allow him a sentence of life in prison without parole, as the record shed light on the circumstances of the crime.

In a hearing on Wednesday, de la Peña rejected that request. But she hasn't closed the door to future inquiries in a similar vein.

The jury is expected to return to court on Monday to hear further evidence in the case – including the recording from Herrmann's cellphone.

The Scanner was the only news outlet to attend the murder trial this week.