Ex-model executes man she accused of rape, then gets noose tattoo | US | News

A former U.S. Coast Guard servicewoman turned model has been handed a 22.5-year prison sentence after being convicted of luring her alleged rapist into the woods and murdering him. She is now refusing to pay restitution to his children.

Chelsea Perkins, a 35 year old ex-Coast Guard member from Alexandria, Va., admitted to second-degree murder earlier this year, relating to the 2021 killing of Matthew Dunmire, 31, at Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

She was sentenced in September to two decades behind bars.

According to the FBI, Dunmire had told friends he was planning to meet a woman on the weekend he was killed.

On the day of the incident, Perkins reportedly arrived in Cleveland in a white car owned by her husband, before they drove to an Airbnb she had booked using a credit card. On 6 March 2021, the pair then drove to a park, shortly before hikers reported hearing a gunshot.

Another group of hikers later found Dunmire’s body, which had a single gunshot wound to the back of the head.

Perkins makes guilty plea

In May, Perkins pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and using or carrying and discharging a firearm during, and in relation to, a crime of violence on federal property. Her actual sentence fell just short of the maximum 25 years in prison she could have received.

The court heard that Perkins had travelled to Michigan, where she got a noose tattooed on her forearm, before returning to her home in Virginia. She had previously accused Dunmire of sexual assault, but he was never formally charged.

Her sexual assault allegation against Dunmire was dismissed by authorities due to insufficient evidence.

Following her sentencing, Perkins is now refusing to pay nearly £600,000 in restitution to his family for the loss of future wages. However, she has already agreed to cover the victim’s funeral expenses and the cost for one of his family members to attend her sentencing hearing.

“Courts require that the restitution amount represent the victim’s actual loss, not an estimate based on conjecture or speculation,” stated Perkins’ lawyers.

Her legal team argues that the government has inflated the actual losses, given that the victim earned $15 an hour at a screen printing and embroidery business and worked 40 hours per week. The government, however, contends that they used “conservative financial figures” in calculating the family’s lifetime income.

Firearms stashed and ‘fake’ suicide note found

Perkins was linked to the crime through surveillance footage, text message records, and ballistic analysis. During a search of her residence, federal authorities recovered three firearms.

Investigators also discovered a deleted document on her mobile phone that appeared to be a fake suicide note purportedly written by Dunmire, created around the time his body was found, according to the U.S. Attorney’s statement.

Matthew Dunmire’s mother took matters into her own hands

In an extraordinary turn of events, Dunmire wasn’t the sole victim in this case. In 2021, his mother, Tommie Lynn Dunmire, became increasingly exasperated with the police inquiry into her son’s death and chose to pursue her own investigation.

Her partner, John Nelson McQuillen, told investigators that she had begun conducting her own “research” into the matter, becoming progressively mentally unstable and consumed with fury, voicing intentions to confront and kill the woman she suspected of murdering her son. In November 2021, Tommie Lynn Dunmire and John Nelson McQuillen travelled to Washington, D.C. , where they stopped at a property in the Kingman Park neighbourhood.

Armed mother confronted ‘her son’s killer’ while in disguise

Tommie Lynn Dunmire donned a brown vest and baseball cap, clutching a cardboard box as she approached the woman’s front door, knocking and presenting herself as a UPS delivery driver, according to WTOP News. When the woman answered, Dunmire discharged two rounds from a silver revolver she had hidden within an opening cut in the rear of the box.

Subsequently, Dunmire and McQuillen made their getaway, stopping briefly to change the number plate on their vehicle. However, they were stopped by a police officer shortly afterwards, at which point Dunmire tragically shot herself in the head.

She succumbed to her injuries in hospital two weeks later. The other woman, who was not connected to Dunmire’s death, survived.

Meanwhile, McQuillen admitted guilt to being an accessory after the fact to assault with intent to kill and received a 42-month prison sentence.