Chilling final words of killer rocker’s girlfriend who recorded her own murder

A former ’80s cult band rocker has been found guilty of strangling his girlfriend after shocking audio of the murder was discovered during the trial.

Alice “Alyx” Kamakaokalani Herrmann, 61, captured her final moments as Theobald Lengyel, 55, choked the life out of her on December 4.

Lengyel, a former saxophonist in the 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 had recorded on her phone was found, blowing the case open.

The filing showed Lengyel playing the piano at their home in Capitola, near Santa Cruz, California, and then becoming angry that she wouldn’t go outside to play pool.

”Why is it so important to you? Why is it a will competition? Have fun,” Hermann told him after the argument started at 9:09 p.m.

“I could crush your fucking brain,” he was heard saying at 9.53pm – the first of his threats.

“When you drink, things happen, we argue,” Herrmann replied.

Lengyel responded by threatening to kill her dog, Trav, “to show how I could kill you.”

‘You have to go outside. You should find another girlfriend. Bye! Bye! Hello, why are you still here?’ Hermann shouted and ordered him to leave the house.

Lengyel then held her and said, “Are you at my mercy now? “You’re fucking dying now. Are you ready?’

‘OK. How do you want to die? Blunt force trauma or something else… do you think you should be choked to death? How about that?’

‘Stop it. Do you want your children to be the children of a murderer? Come on, stop it,’ Hermann begged.

But Lengyel told her, “It’s too damn late for that.”

The jury listened in horror as Herrmann was slowly strangled, gasping for air and begging Lengyel to stop 43 times between 11:32 p.m. and 11:33 p.m.

‘Why should I stop?’ Lengyel told her. It took five agonizing minutes for her to die.

The recording didn’t stop until 12:11 when Lengyel realized he was going through and stopped – but he mostly didn’t think about deleting the file.

Santa Cruz County Assistant District Attorney 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 her heart went into bradycardia at 11:35 p.m., and we know her body was in the cold ground in that park for 28 days,” she said.

Wang said Lengyel asking Herrmann how she wanted to die showed he had “express intentions to kill.”

“Theobald Lengyel is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the first-degree murder of Alice Herrmann,” she said.

Herrmann’s body was later found dumped in Tilden Regional Park in Berkley.

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 hit his now ex-wife and pushed his sister to the ground, they testified.

Lengyel was unceremoniously asked to leave Mr. Bungle in 1996, but character witnesses at the Santa Cruz Superior Court murder trial said he remained a charismatic and happy man.

He had graduated from Cornell University a year earlier with a bachelor’s degree in physics, and in February 1999 he met Joleen Welch outside a San Francisco cafe when she stopped to pet his dog.

The couple traveled through Europe the following year and officially married in 2001. They went on to have three children, and Welch said their marriage — which lasted until 2017 — got off to a good start.

“He was a good father of newborn babies and he far exceeded my expectations,” she said when she took the stand on September 10.

But towards the end of the 2000s, Lengyel’s temperament suddenly began to change and he became resentful of 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, hoping to start a restaurant with their savings, the jury heard.

At that point, Welch said, Lengyel turned his vices — from pot smoker to an alcoholic, and his drinking increased around 2015.

That year, the family planned to attend an afternoon Giants game, but Lengyel was “already drinking” before they left, Welch said.

She told how Lengyel drove drunk and parked in the garage of his workplace, from where they would walk to the stadium.

But as they walked, Welch said she noticed her husband getting more and more drunk.

“He said things that made me feel like I wished he would speak softer,” Welch said.

She claimed that Lengyel would admonish her when she expressed her discomfort, telling her that she was “no fun” or “couldn’t take a joke.”

“I just wanted him to go away,” Welch said. “I was ashamed.”

So she 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.

Still, Lengyel later showed up at the house and smashed 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 her in the stomach.

“He was screaming, 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 drank.

But when Assistant District Attorney Conor McCormick asked her if Lengyel was only “creepy” when he drank, she replied, “Not necessarily.” There were times when I was scared, even when he wasn’t drunk.’

Other family members also spoke out about the former rocker’s change in behavior in the years before he started dating Herrmann.

Ariana Frances Allgeier, Lengyel’s niece, even corroborated the story Welch told, saying her uncle confided in her that he had punched 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 disappointed in me.”

Tess Lengyel, Theobald’s sister, also shared how she tried to intervene when her brother got into a shouting match with their stepfather on Thanksgiving 2016 and her brother pushed her to the ground.

She said she and other family members then emailed Lengyel with resources to encourage him to seek help for his alcohol and anger problems, but her brother “adamantly refused,” calling their resources “useless” and saying he ‘didn’t believe in getting therapy’. and didn’t believe in getting help.’

Still, Tess said, she tried to maintain a relationship with her brother.

But eventually he became too rude.

“He would call in the middle of the night, very late, and when I answered he would sound drunk, and he would say things that were very rude and vulgar,” Tess testified, recounting how her brother would call her a “stupid boy.” b***h’ and a ‘w***e’ in calls and voicemails.

She eventually obtained a restraining order against her brother in 2017.

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 at 11:44 p.m. on December 4 — which was also the last day she logged into her work VPN.

Lengyel then drove to Portland, Oregon on or about December 8 to visit his brother Jed, whom he had previously sent to “brace yourselves, 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 Hermann’s body and turned over his cell phone.

El Cerrito police later found Herrmann’s Toyota Highlander in front of Lengyel’s home in El Cerrito.

During the trial, Brendan Kellman of the Contra Costa Sheriff’s Office testified that he conducted a forensic examination of the vehicle and found “several visible bloodstains” inside it.

Lengyel’s sentencing hearings begin on November 7, and he will almost certainly spend the rest of his life in prison.