48 Hours - Kiss of Death and the Google Exec

Episode Date: July 31, 2016

The mysterious death of a Google executive.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Santa Cruz is a small coastal town in California. It's at the northern end of Monterey Bay. It looks like paradise. Look at that beach. Look at these mountains. Breathe that air. It's a place where the blind can go sightseeing. And then in recent years, it's become a place that's become more and more favored by the people over the hill in Silicon Valley, that being the people with money. being the people with money.

Forrest Hayes started life in the Midwest, in Dearborn, Michigan, and he went out to Silicon Valley where everything was happening. He was hired by Google, he had five kids, and then one day, a friend of his emailed him a picture of a boat that was for sale, and a couple days later, he bought it. The two things he loved were his family and being on his boat. He called it escape.

I think that some part of him really wanted to, like, taste that other side of life, that kind of darker side, wilder, more exotic side of life. On the night of November 22nd, 2013, Forrest Hays was on his yacht, and he didn't come home that night. And his wife became concerned, and she called the captain they retained for this yacht. And he went and he got on the boat,

and there's Forrest Hayes lying there dead. The detectives arrive, and they start looking at the scene, and it turned out he had in fact died of a heroin overdose. There was a visible injection mark in his arm, but they don't see drugs. But you do see two wine glasses. Detective 101, someone else has been there. And the question is who?

At that point, we realized that's our person. That's who we're going after. And 157, time is 808. What is the truth behind how Forrest Hayes died? How did he find himself in this situation, in this position that took his life? What is the truth behind how Forrest Hayes died? How did he find himself in this situation, in this position that took his life? Who was on that boat? Then they're looking around and they see there's cameras.

There was indeed somebody else there. A very beautiful, dark-haired woman. They note that she has these tattoos. And they also probably figure that Forrest didn't meet her, like, you know, at parent-teacher night. This is Alex Tickleman. Do you think Alex Tickleman knew that Forrest Hayes was dying right there in front of her? I don't see how she didn't know.

Detectives then discovered that this was not the first time Alex Tickleman had been with somebody who died of a drug overdose. Is this woman a cold-blooded killer? She certainly was cold. I'm Maureen Maher. Tonight on 48 Hours. Kiss of death and the Google exec. In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island. It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn,

and it harboured a deep, dark scandal. There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reached the age of 10 that would still have heard it. It just happens to all of us. I'm journalist Luke Jones, and for almost two years, I've been investigating a shocking story that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn. When there's nobody watching, nobody going to report it, people will get away with what they can get away with.

In the Pitcairn Trials, I'll be uncovering a story of abuse and the fight for justice that has brought a unique, lonely Pacific island to the brink of extinction. Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Have you ever wondered who created that bottle of sriracha that's living in your fridge? Or why nearly every house in America has at least one game of Monopoly? Introducing the best idea yet, a brand new podcast from Wondery and T-Boy about the surprising origin stories of the products you're obsessed with and the bolder risk takers who brought them to life. Like, did you know that Super Mario, the best-selling video game character of all time, only exists because Nintendo couldn't get the rights to Popeye?

Or Jack, that the idea for the McDonald's Happy Meal first came from a mom in Guatemala? From Pez dispensers to Levi's 501s to Air Jordans, discover the surprising stories of the most viral products. Plus, we guarantee that after listening, you're going to dominate your next dinner party. So follow The Best Idea Yet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to The Best Idea Yet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+. It's just the best idea yet. When he's not out looking for the big wave, there's a big story that has consumed Stephen Baxter, a reporter for the Santa Cruz Sentinel and a 48 Hours consultant.

The mysterious death of Google executive Forrest Hayes at the city's sprawling marina. Forrest Hayes was 51 years old. He lived in a pretty upper-crust neighborhood. He was a pretty high-powered guy and obviously had a lot of assets. I mean, he lived in a $3 million house in Santa Cruz. In 2013, one of the boats docked in Santa Cruz Harbor was this majestic 46-foot-long yacht called the Escape. It belonged to Google executive Forrest Hayes. Not surprisingly, the tech exec outfitted his boat with some of the most expensive tech gear out there, about $200,000 worth,

including a sophisticated security system complete with high-def cameras. Inside, Hayes spared no expense on creature comforts, including a leather ceiling and an $8,000 captain's chair. I think he was practical and imaginative at the same time. The Google executive's death caught the attention of Michael Daly. He's an investigative reporter for the Daily Beast in New York and also a 48 Hours consultant. Forrest Hayes started in his native Michigan working at the Ford Motor Company. He went to California for Sun Microsystems, and he went on to Apple, and then he went on to Google.

For a high-paying job at their top-secret location, where impossible dreams are transformed into reality. He was hired to work in Google X, which they call their moonshot factory. You know, the most extreme, wildest, imaginative, farthest-reaching ideas they could have, you know, like Google Glasses, self-driving cars. He was the guy who was actually going to make some of these things happen. A place so secretive that colleagues from Google X refused to divulge exactly what Hayes did there.

To get away from the pressures of work, Boris Hayes would head to the marina and on to his prized possession. One of the larger boats in the harbor, I think that's fair to say. What police would eventually discover was Hayes, the married father of five, had a secret liaison.

She was a young and exotic dark-haired woman, covered with very distinctive tattoos. And she would be the last person to see Forrest Hayes alive. Hayes' body was found lying here in the main cabin. The captain immediately called 911, but surprisingly, it would take months before the Google executive's death made headlines. There was no, really, report of his death. Obviously, the police in this case were trying to keep that under wraps as they investigated. Santa Cruz Deputy Police Chief Steve Clark.

1-2-2. Clark has been on this case since day one. The media is going to want to know right off the bat who is it, who's responsible, is this a homicide, is this a murder? We didn't have enough to really even put that out. We were busy building the case. Which wasn't easy, despite some initial crime scene clues. There were two wine glasses there, both which appeared to have been used. Investigators zeroed in on Hayes' cell phone, launching an exhaustive digital search. Then, a stunning discovery.

Hayes had a profile page on a dating website called SeekingArrangement.com. It would be a critical clue in learning the identity of that mystery tattooed woman. It was just a few days before Thanksgiving 2013. What happened that night was recorded by the boat's video cameras. This camera in particular caught the very last moments of Hay's life in chilling detail. Initially, we were told that the video wasn't available from that particular camera that actually showed the cabin of the boat.

There was indeed video that was uploaded to a cloud server, and the video from that camera was indeed available. That was one of those moments where you feel like, you know, it was fourth and one and you got a first down. Actually, it took three months and a court order for detectives to get their hands on that video. And when they did, it was explosive. That video was shocking to me. What do you see on this video? Well, the video is everything. The video is the case. Police have yet to release the video, but described in detail to 48 Hours exactly what they say happened that night between the couple.

Essentially, it was a party for two, drugs included. They greet each other, a quick hug, just a quick embrace. You can see that they're engaged in conversation, but there's no audio. And then eventually she gets to the point where she starts to prepare drugs for injection. She brought all of the equipment with her. She brought the drugs with her. As police would learn, the drug of choice that night was heroin. We see her prepare the syringe.

We see her, it looks like she's injecting herself, but her back's to the camera. He watches this happen, and then she eventually injects him. Do you feel like at any point when you're watching the video that this is a guy who is afraid and doesn't want to do this? I get the impression he's nervous, he's uncertain, but he's going along with it. And what happens then? Almost immediately, he starts to go into distress.

At some point, she comes to him, and it looks like she tries to revive him a bit by patting him on the face and talking to him, holding his head as he slumped forward on the chair. And you or I, if we found ourselves in that situation, would have been on the phone to 911 saying, oh my gosh, something terrible's happened, would have been on the phone to 911 saying, oh my gosh, something terrible's happened, we need help. And she does none of that. Instead, Clark says the video shows the woman trying to remove any evidence that she was ever there,

wiping fingerprints and cleaning up her drug paraphernalia. While he's slumped over on the floor? While he's on the floor. She's stepping over him? slumped over on the floor? While he's on the floor. She's stepping over him? She is literally walking around the cabin of the boat, stepping over him, grabbing her glass of wine, carrying it around the boat cabin with her. Clark says that portion of the video with Hayes on the floor of the cabin goes on for seven minutes. And that's seven minutes that emergency medical personnel could have been there, could have done something, and could have reacted to the situation to save Mr. Hayes' life. But instead, she does nothing, nothing to call for help or to fix this. And that's the crux of the

case. Armed with that video, police hit pay dirt. They were able to match the woman with those distinctive tattoos to a profile on the dating website Hayes had used. She was a 26-year-old aspiring model. Her name? Alex Tickleman. As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman. The scary cult classic was set in the Chicago housing project. It was about this supernatural killer who would attack his victims if they said his name five times into a bathroom mirror. Candyman. Candyman? Now we all know chanting his name five times into a bathroom mirror. Candyman. Candyman?

Now, we all know chanting a name won't make a killer magically appear, but did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? I was struck by both how spooky it was, but also how outrageous it was. We're going to talk to the people who were there. And we're also going to uncover the larger story. My architect was shocked when he saw how this was created. Literally shocked. And we'll look at what the story tells us about injustice in America. If you really believed in tough on crime,

then you wouldn't make it easy to crawl into medicine cabinets and kill our women. Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, wherever you get your podcasts. Hot shot Australian attorney Nicola Gaba was born into legal royalty. Her specialty, representing some of the city's most infamous gangland criminals. However, while Nicola held the underworld's darkest secrets, the most dangerous secret was her own. She's going to all the major groups within

Melbourne's underworld, and she's informing on them all. I'm Marsha Clark, host of the new podcast Informants Lawyer X. In my long career in criminal justice as a prosecutor and defense attorney, I've seen some crazy cases, and this one belongs right at the top of the list. She was addicted to the game she had created. She just didn't know how to stop. Now, through dramatic interviews and access, I'll reveal the truth behind one of the world's most shocking legal scandals. Listen to Informant's Lawyer X exclusively on Wondery+.

Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. And listen to more Exhibit C True Crime shows early and ad-free right now. The wealthy Google executive found the exotic beauty in a somewhat secret world where real names are rarely used. Technically, Alex Tickleman and Forrest Hayes met here in Las Vegas, not at an upscale casino or a fancy hotel lobby bar, but rather through an online website, which is headquartered just a stone's throw from the strip. And as 48 Hours discovered, it's not your typical dating website. And as 48 Hours discovered, it's not your typical dating website.

What year did you start Seeking Arrangement? It was started in 2006 from a bedroom in San Francisco, actually. It may have the look and feel of a startup, but with nearly 4 million members worldwide, this is big business. What is Seeking Arrangement? SeekingArrangement.com is a sugar daddy dating website. So we match wealthy guys and girls looking to pimp and spoil and of course younger men and women looking to meet those wealthy people. CEO Brandon Wade, a boyish 43-year-old, says he's become a multi-millionaire from all the arranging he's been doing. He's seeking arrangement about arranging sexual relationships for money. It is about finding romance and passion. I'm unapologetic about the fact that sex is involved

in a romantic relationship and money is involved in a romantic relationship, but that doesn't make the romantic relationship prostitution. Deputy Police Chief Steve Clark, the point man in the Hayes death case, strongly disagrees. It doesn't take a Sherlock Holmes to take a look at that website and figure out exactly what was going on there. The titles of the individuals are sugar babies and sugar daddies. There's no innocent connotation there behind any of that. What is budget? That's what he's willing to spend? That's his sort of lifestyle. So it could be going out for dinners, paying for that, going on trips. Okay, so does a woman think

you're going to spend $3,000 on me? A sugar baby thinks you're going to spend? Yeah, on the relationship. Okay. Yeah. Wade is proud that his membership ranks include employees of leading Fortune 500 companies, including, he says, from Google. Was Forrest Hayes a typical client of yours? I would say he is an average client of ours. Married, tech executive, looking for some sort of arrangement. Yep, 40% of the guys I married. looking for some sort of arrangement.

Yep, 40% of the guys are married. It's unknown if Hayes was fulfilling the, quote, expectations, unquote, of any sugar baby's lifestyle requests, which range from $1,000 to over $10,000 in monthly sugar daddy gifts. Can you tell us anything about Alex Tickleman's profile on Seeking Arrangement? Well, the only thing I can say is that it looked like any other normal profile, so it was approved, and there was no indication that she was soliciting money for sex, at least not with that profile.

After Hayes' death, investigators began tracking Alex Tickleman on social media. Fearing she might leave town, they hatched a plan to catch her using seekingarrangement.com. Reporter Stephen Baxter. When she posted on Facebook something to the effect of, I plan to go back to Georgia, that's when they decided to really go in and pursue her on the same website, just the way Forrest had, and pose as a John and lure her back to Santa Cruz. We started seeing chatter from her that indicated she was either going to move out of the country or out of the state. Now, there's a clock on this because she's about to head south,

so they do kind of a classic sting. We sold out our detective and made him set up a profile under a different identity and made up a whole story about him. We then posted that out there and we reached out to Alex Tickleman through Seeking Arrangement. Codenamed Sebastian, that detective began emailing and texting with Tickleman, hoping for a rendezvous. Eventually, we convinced her to come down and meet with us for an agreed-upon arrangement for sex, for prostitution, and for a sum of money. Police deposited some money, several hundred dollars, into her bank account with a promise of at least $1,000 upon arrival and everything else. This did not appear to you that this was the first time she had negotiated such a situation?

No, in fact, she kind of called us out, called us a cheapskate, and told us that, you know, many of her clients pay twice that. Eight months after the death of Forrest Hayes, Alex Tickleman once again showed up in Santa Cruz County, this time at the secluded resort behind me. Once again, she came with heroin in her bag, expecting to hook up with the sugar daddy from Seeking Arrangement. And once again, it did not go as planned.

When you said, we're the cops and we're the ones you've been communicating with, what was her reaction? Oh, she cried, she panicked. That's when we saw panic. 26-year-old Alex Tickleman was stunned. Police arrested her for prostitution and charged her in the death of Forrest Hayes. This was a crime. This wasn't just some accident gone awry. Mr. Hayes is a victim of the murder committed by Alex Tickleman. Or was he? What happened that night, say Alex's a shoot with somebody completely different.

somebody completely different. Perhaps no one was more surprised by the arrest of Alex Tickleman than struggling musician Chad Cornell. He was in love with her. When I first saw her, you know, I couldn't help but to say something. She has a very darker style. You know, I just thought she was really beautiful, almost like the, you know, Angelina Jolie kind of look. Chad had no idea how dark her life really was.

Did you believe she was falling in love with you? I did. Chad thought his girlfriend was a model. There were countless images, a swimsuit commercial, and a makeup tutorial she did online. Just going to apply liberally. Pretty, pretty, pretty. Okay.

And as far as Chad could tell, she was always answering modeling calls. She'd get all dolled up and go to a photo shoot. She would usually make about $1,000 or so once she'd go out to these modeling shoots. So imagine how he felt to learn months later that his beloved girlfriend was now being accused of doing something altogether different for all that money. I got the text with the news link on it and kind of just fell over on the couch like in shock. I got the text with the news link on it and kind of just fell over on the couch like in shock.

The woman he once thought he'd spend the rest of his life with was now not only charged with prostitution, but also in the death of Google executive Forrest Hayes. What are you thinking? This is a woman you were in love with. Yeah, I mean, obviously I was devastated. You know, I turned white. as a woman you were in love with. Yeah, I mean, obviously I was devastated. You know, I turned white. As the news sank in to his complete amazement, Chad realized that just hours before Alex met up with Forrest on that fateful night, she was with him.

We were hanging out that day, actually, and she told me that some of her longtime high school friends were in Santa Cruz and had a boat and she had planned to go hang out with them. Later on that night, she actually woke me up out of bed with a phone call. She was really frantic on the phone. She sounded very upset. What was she talking about? She talked about how her friends had started doing heroin and a bunch of hardcore drugs on the boat

and made her uncomfortable and that she had to leave. But you believed on that call that she sounded genuinely upset? Crying, sniffling, I mean, upset, upset. Because the truth, he now knows, was much worse. And it's left him wondering whether he ever really knew who Alex was. Who is Alex Tickleman, right? Who is she? Reporter Michael Daly did what police investigators did. And using the tools of Forrest's employer, he Googled her.

This, the police discovered, was Alex Tickleman's Twitter account. Calling herself AK.K. Kennedy XX. One X short of triple X. Baddest bitch, model, stylist, hustler, exotic dancer. Those are her words. These are the pictures to go with the words. This has the charming inscription, to death do us part. You might start believing less in coincidence on seeing that.

But to Daly, Alex's postings looked more like someone trying to create an image, rather than someone obsessed with killing. That's because he came across this photo. My beautiful mother and I out to lunch, no makeup face. And this is a young woman who wants to be with mom. Alex posted it just months before her arrest for Forrest's death. It makes you think that there's a fuller story. So how did it come to this?

Childhood pictures show a cute blonde tomboy who appeared to have all the advantages in life. Growing up with her sister Monica, who would become an investment counselor, her mother, Leslie Ann, and her father, Bart, a CEO for a technology company, and a pretty good poker player. And he, at one point, found himself playing with some of the best poker players in the world, and he won like $400,000. Alex spent her early teens in an Atlanta suburb where she played sports and won writing awards. Her friends say that she's very smart, very deep.

But also very troubled. Her experiences with boys were not always happy ones And she had eating disorders She was taking drugs Desperate, her parents went looking for help And located a school that they thought would give her special attention So they found this place called the Hyde School in Maine. We are in Maine, en route to Hyde. Megan was a student at the Hyde School where Alex spent a few months. I can feel like pressure in my chest. It's nerve-wracking. She asked us not to use her last

name but agreed to travel back to the Hyde School campus. I want people to see this very pivotal part of her life that I feel probably affected her at a very huge point in her development, why she is who she is. So do you remember when you first met Alex? Do you happen to remember the very first time you saw her? 100%. She was gorgeous, and she was very awkward. The cute blonde girl next door was long gone. She barely ate. She was very skinny.

She was real thin. She was emotionally kind of closed off. I think the big question then is why? What had happened to her? I don't know the truth to that. She never really told me there was a specific catalyst. But Megan says Alex did hint at some traumatic events. We talked about the fact that we had issues trusting men. We had become numb to a lot of things.

Alex had started cutting herself. This is a photo of Alex her then bunkmate put in a scrapbook. It reads, Psycho Rumi. Look at the cuts on her arm. Alex Tickleman was actually the first person that I met who did that. Ashley Kent lived in Alex's dorm. She came to the school with the scars. She had already etched things into her arm, and she had already made this image of herself as this, like, devil person. Like, that's how how she dressed kind of like devil worshiper but was that really who alex was she was actually a really nice girl um it was very much like a friend that she was putting on an image megan noticed it too once you bypass those walls she was just a normal girl who who

was scared and what was she scared of? I think herself, honestly. I mean, we all, we didn't know who we were. We had resorted to things that, you know, not every person chooses. We had been in trouble. And at Hyde, it seemed Alex was always in trouble. Megan says they punished her. You're forced to do manual labor, physical labor. They basically tell you what you can and can't do.

This is the area, Megan says, where she and Alex were forced to build a road. We hoed it, each person, and we weeded it. And then they made us cart wheelbarrows, huge wheelbarrows full of rocks up and spread them. So we basically built a dirt road on campus. Ashley remembers one night waking up to Alex screaming. What happened sounds like a scene out of a Stephen King movie. She like kind of walked down the halls and like was cutting herself really late at night. She began just to hurt herself because that's what she thought she deserved. When it didn't work out at Hyde, Alex's parents tried other schools.

But the worst was still to come. She talked about taking heroin when she was in her teens. And by her early 20s, Alex was living in San Francisco, working strip clubs like Larry Flint's Hustler and The Condor. Eventually, she found her way back home to Atlanta, where her life would take a dramatic turn. If this kind of great thing happens, she meets a guy named Dean.

Dean was much older, but so in love with Alex, he wanted to marry her. So maybe there's going to be a happy ending here anyway. Then, in September 2013, I don't know, I think my boyfriend overdosed or something. Two months before Forrest Hayes died, Alex's fiancée, Dean, died with heroin in his system. He won't respond.

And he's just laying on the ground. I don't know. heroin in his system. Was it an unfortunate coincidence or something more sinister? It is one of the hottest concert venues in Atlanta, Georgia. The Masquerade, and it all belonged to this man, 53-year-old Dean Riopelle, a former cross-dressing singer for the rock band The Impotent Sea Snakes. In September of 2013, Dean died of a heroin overdose. His girlfriend at the time, Alex Tickleman. I think my boyfriend overdosed or something. He won't respond. Alex made that 911 call after she says she discovered Dean unconscious in his North Atlanta home. That was just two months before Alex was with Google executive Forrest Hayes when he died. Santa Cruz Deputy Police Chief Steve Clark.

We were surprised the similarities in their case to our case. Based on Alex's arrest in Santa Cruz for the death of Forrest Hayes, police in Milton, Georgia are now taking a second look at Dean Riople's death. What was first ruled an accidental overdose might very well become a criminal matter. I think she had something to do with his death. I really do. One person who believes Alex should be held responsible for Dean's death is his former employee, Christina Brooker. That's cute.

An aspiring model, for a few months in 2012, she lived in Dean's house, taking care of his children from a previous marriage. And his pet hobby, raising dozens of monkeys. He said he had a dream about monkeys one day and he just started collecting them. You know, he had the money too, so why not? Samson, Delilah, Jezebel, some have names. Dean told an Atlanta TV station that he had hopes of turning his property into a zoo. Anybody would spend 20 minutes or an hour with one would see they have a little bit more personality than most other animals. But Christina says his real passion was the woman also featured in that news story,

Dean's live-in girlfriend, Alex Tickleman. Oh, he loved her. He absolutely loved her. He wanted to marry her, and she wanted to marry him, too. Dean loved everything about Alex, except the drugs. By the time Alex hooked up with Dean, she was a full-blown heroin addict. Dean, Christina says, did not share Alex's bad habits. Did you ever see him drink? Never smoke? Never do drugs? Not once. Christina stopped working for Dean almost a year before he died. Still, she's sure Dean would never inject himself with heroin. But she wonders if Alex might have. Do you think that's what happened? I think it's possible, especially with the case in Santa Cruz where she actually did that. The idea that she's going around randomly sticking

people with heroin needles is preposterous. These are grown men. They know exactly what they're doing. So this is the masquerade. This is Dean's club. Todd is an Atlanta businessman. He has asked us not to use his last name, but says as a close friend of Alex Tickleman, he could no longer keep quiet about what he knows about the couple. She was devastated after Dean passed away. He says not only did Dean drink, he drank a lot. But she loved him and he loved her. If he were alive today, he would be the first one to bail her out of jail, and he would be absolutely mortified at how the people around him have treated her. And Todd says Dean was determined to get Alex off heroin.

He sent her to rehab and even bought her an engagement ring. He texted Todd. This is August 30th of 2013. He was getting Alex a wedding ring. They were going to get married. That's just three weeks before Dean would overdose. She gets her ring. She picked it out today. We drug test every week. If she can stay clean for 14 months, we will get married Halloween night 2014. These are text messages that have never been made public. Todd showed them exclusively to 48 Hours. Alex says this is the first time in 10 years she has gotten out of detox or rehab and lasted a whole week before shooting up again.

But Alex didn't stay clean for long. And on September 7, 2013, just 10 days before his fatal overdose, Dean made a shocking discovery. Alex was online, advertising herself to men. She hated that she was compelled to do it because she had this addiction. There were guys who wanted to rent her penthouse apartments. Men with a lot of power and a lot of status, but she wasn't interested in anything except getting the money to support her habit. She loved Dean. She wanted to be with Dean, but she had this deep, dark secret.

And Todd says when Dean found out, he flipped out. He said, can I move all of the prostitute s*** into your place tomorrow? She is better over there, and I would like to bring her stuff to you today so I don't have to see the whore again. But Dean didn't kick Alex out. Instead, Todd says he hit the bottle hard. Once he discovered the ad, things began to fall apart. Dean desperately loved her. Dean wanted to keep her, but he couldn't figure out how to reconcile all of this.

So, Todd believes, Dean tried something new. Alex would later tell police she was in the bathroom when she heard what sounded like a crash. She went to the bedroom and found Dean on the floor. An autopsy would show Dean had a fatal mix of heroin, painkillers, and alcohol in his system. I'm convinced that what happened was Dean was trying to reach a connection with Alex on a deeper level, and he thought that if they could share this thing, this thing that she was so attached to, that she couldn't let go of no matter what, that they could actually be together.

And that's what he wanted more than anything in life. Following Dean's death, Alex text messages Todd. Why did Dean have to die? Her mother is coming and will move her to California, to the family's new home two hours outside San Francisco. But Alex is trying to detox and tells Todd she's worried. I know that city well. Like the Tenderloin where I used to live

is the third biggest open drug market in the U.S. it takes two minutes to score and you don't have to know anyone you can see why I'm worried around October 30th 2013 Alex arrived in California. She immediately went back online and started advertising herself, texting Todd. Guys out here got mad money.

And within days, she had a prospect. She was about to come into serious cash. This is on the 2nd of November. And she says an amazing guy found her and he's the real deal. Tomorrow she's going to go to his boat and for a few hours he's giving her four to five hundred dollars cash. Then a check for two thousand. Now I'm relatively certain that the guy on the boat she's referring to was Forrest. Three weeks later on on November 22nd, Alex Tickleman was definitely with Forrest Hayes on his boat, where Todd believes she was simply making money to feed her addiction. Tell me one thing that happened on that yacht that was not absolutely consensual between two adults.

Nothing. It's called The Matter of People versus Alex Tickleman. called The Matter of People versus Alex Tickleman. On May 19, 2015, Alex Tickleman is back in court to have a date set for her trial. She's been in jail for almost a year, her past modeling life a distant memory. She faces almost 20 years behind bars, charged in the killing of Forrest Hayes, along with drug possession and prostitution. So stipulated, counsel? Stipulated.

Her public defenders, Jerry Christensen and Larry Bigum, have insisted she is not a cold-blooded killer. Alex Tickleman did nothing that Mr. Hayes did not want her to do. The woman did nothing that Mr. Hayes did not want her to do. Two adults engaged in mutual and cooperative drug usage, and it went wrong. But it was an accident. Defense attorneys say Hayes was an eager participant that night, even using his own cell phone light to show Alex where to inject him. And they are adamant she then simply panicked.

Everything about this video indicates accident and panic. Everything about it. For months, they have investigated Forrest Hayes past, asking prosecutors to hand over video from the escape's cameras as far back as six months before he died. We have some indications from other material that there may have been previous encounters on the boat. It would be highly relevant in regard to whether or not there is drug usage along with sex. But at the hearing, there's a bombshell. With her parents watching, Alex Tickleman pleads guilty. What is your plea to count one, a violation of penal code section 192B Guilty to involuntary manslaughter as well as the lesser charges. And through her lawyer, she apologizes to the Hayes family.

This was in no form intentional, malicious, or anything of that sort. It was accident and panic, and she's so, so sorry for it. Ms. Tickleman, the total will be six years to be served pursuant to Penal Code Section... Tickleman was sentenced to six years in a local jail. But with credit for her time served and a reduction by the judge, she will likely serve just a little over two years. Good luck to you, Ms. Tickleman. After the hearing, another stunning development.

There are two charges that were... Prosecutor Rafael Vasquez says the family of Forrest Hayes told him they never wanted Alex Tickleman charged. The family did not want this case to be filed. They would have been very happy if this case simply would have been dismissed. They were terrified about the prospect of this case going to trial. The family, he said, did not want that video from Forrest's boat to ever be made public.

I can only imagine what further pain, what further humiliation they would endure if that video was released out into the public. And what's more, he says, Alex was never a cold-blooded killer as described by law enforcement. That was never depicted in that surveillance video. In fact, the prosecutor agrees with defense attorneys that Alex was anything but

callous when force collapsed. And the fact that she actually made some efforts to try to wake him up, hit him in the chest, smacking him in the face, holding him up, trying to lift him up, and then holding him, hugging him at one point. And then you can see her crying in one instance and yelling for him to wake up in another instance that clearly shows somebody who appeared concerned at that time and that certainly is inconsistent with somebody who acted with an obvious intent to kill but he says what she is guilty of is not doing enough she was the only one that can render help and she neglected to do so. She failed to do so and instead took liberties to destroy evidence and to make her get away while leaving the man there to die. In the end,

one of Tickleman's attorneys, Athena Reese, says Alex's time in jail has been helping her turn her life around. You know, she's clean and sober. She's closer with her family than ever. And I think she's really used this time to reflect. But for the family of Forrest Hayes, there is no turning around. And they will have to try to put the scars of his actions behind them. From this point on, the family no longer has to worry about the concern associated with all the scrutiny, all the ridicule and all the scorn that's been generated by a lot of the media attention in this case. This family has been through a lot. Alex Tickleman is scheduled to be released from jail in June 2017. She will be 29 years old. The Dean-Riappel case is still open and under investigation.