The Misery Machine - The Bizarre Case of Matthew James Dunmire

Episode Date: July 30, 2026

This week, Drewby and Yergy head to Ohio to discuss the case of Matthew James Dunmire, a a 31-year-old aspiring musician and father who was murdered in March 2021. His death became the subject of a high-profile federal investigation after his body was discovered in a secluded wooded area of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. On March 5, 2021, Matthew left a local bar to meet a woman he had been communicating with online. Surveillance footage and phone records tracked him to an Airbnb and eventually to the park's Terra Vista Natural Study Area. He was shot once in the back of the head. Hikers discovered his body three days later. Chelsea Perkins (aka Chelsea Savage), a 35-year-old U.S. Coast Guard veteran and adult film performer from Virginia, was identified as the killer. Chelsea lured Matthew to the national park under the false pretense of filming a video. Prosecutors characterized the crime as a calculated "revenge killing". Chelsea had accused Matthew of sexual assault in Virginia Beach back in 2017. Local police investigated at the time, but no charges were filed due to a lack of evidence. In May of 2025, Chelsea Perkins pleaded guilty in federal court to second-degree murder and using a firearm in a violent crime. On September 9, 2025, a federal judge sentenced her to 22.5 years in prison. She is serving her sentence at a federal facility in West Virginia. In December of 2025, a federal judge ordered Chelsea to pay restitution to Matthew's estate and family to cover funeral expenses.See if your SSN is for sale right now. My sponsor Cloaked will tell you for free in 2 secondshere: https://cloaked.com/miserymachine ✅ Support Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/themiserymachineJoin Our Facebook Group: https://t.co/DeSZIIMgXs?amp=1PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/themiserymachineOfficial Merch Store: https://miserymachine-shop.fourthwall.com/Instagram: miserymachinepodcastTwitter: misery_podcastThe Bizarre Case of Matthew James Dunmire#documentary #themiserymachine #truecrime 🚨 EDUCATIONAL, DOCUMENTARY, SCIENTIFIC, OR ARTISTIC CONTENT DISCLAIMER 🚨CONTENT WARNING: THIS VIDEO IS ABOUT A SENSITIVE TOPIC INVOLVING LOSS OF LIFE. WE'VE REMOVED ANY GRAPHIC CONTENT TO COMPLY WITH YOUTUBE'S GUIDELINES. WE AIM TO PROVIDE INFORMATIVE, FACTUAL JOURNALISM ON A TRAGIC EVENT IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST THAT DOES NOT DISMISS ITS SERIOUSNESS. ALL CLIPS ARE USED UNDER THE DOCTRINE OF FAIR USE FOR NEWS REPORTING AND ANALYSISFair Use Disclaimer: "Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for 'fair use' for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use."THE CONTENT IN THIS VIDEO IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY, BASED ON BELIEVED RELIABLE SOURCES. THEY MAY NOT BE CURRENT OR FULLY ACCURATE. VIEWERS SHOULD DO THEIR OWN RESEARCH AND NOT SOLELY RELY ON THIS INFORMATION. WE'RE NOT LIABLE FOR ANY INACCURACIES OR OMISSIONS.WE DO NOT CONDONE, ENDORSE, OR ENCOURAGE ANY OF THE BEHAVIORS OR ACTIVITIES SHOWN. WE URGE EVERYONE TO ALWAYS ACT RESPONSIBLY AND WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THE LAW.

Matthew John Dunmire was born on November 26, 1989 to parents John McQuillan and Tommy Lynn Dunmire and grew up in Smithfield, Virginia. Matthew loved music and played guitar. He had left Smithfield and relocated to Cleveland, Ohio, where he found work at the Tiki Underground Day, bar and restaurant in Valley View, in the same general vicinity as Cuyahoga Valley National Park. At the time of the events of today's story, Matthew had been telling people that he was actually turning his life around and was proud of where he was headed. He talked about the future with his co-workers and his friends. By the spring of 2021, he was 31 years old, had two young children, and by his own account,

he had his whole life ahead of him. Chelsea Denise Perkins, who built an audience in the adult entertainment industry under the stage named Selena Savage, had served briefly in the United States Coast Guard before receiving her discharge. Most of Chelsea's income was from an only fan's account and doing adult films. In her private life, she was a wife and mother of two young children. Her husband, John Perkins, was an active duty Coast Guard member. By 2021, the family was living in the Pensacola, Florida area where John was stationed for training.

Like many who work in content creation, Chelsea also maintained personal social media accounts entirely separate from her performance profiles. Her now defunct username was, I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead. It was where she stayed in contact with the people who knew her history and her grievances. It was an account that Matthew Dunmire did not know existed. Chelsea and Matthew met in 2017 while both were living in Virginia. Court documents confirmed that they had a physical relationship during that period. March 16, 2017, an incident occurred between them that Chelsea would later describe as SA.

Six days afterwards, on March 22nd, she filed a formal complaint with the Coast Guard inspection service and the Virginia Beach Police. Investigators reviewed the allegation, looked into the evidence, and concluded that they could not move forward. Thus, Matthew was never charged. Those Coast Guard records sat in their files until March of 2021 when the FBI later came looking for them. According to court records, Chelsea had been allegedly molested by a babysitter before she

turned five years old, allegedly essayed by a male student. during high school and allegedly abused by a superior during her brief Coast Guard service. Each time, she said she reported what had happened, but nothing ever came of those reports. Matthew later moved to Cleveland. Chelsea continued to keep her personal social media accounts open to the people who knew what had been going on with her. It was on that account in late February of 2021. The silence between her and Matthew ended.

On February 26, 2021, Instagram's algorithm suggested Matthew, a mutual connection Chelsea might know. In a private exchange with another user identified in court records as Metal Gary Solid, Chelsea said she had just saw Matt. Metal Gary Solid immediately removed Matthew for their suggested contacts. Chelsea replied, I bet he got dumped, ha-ha. The other user called Matthew A, walking turd. Chelsea said she didn't understand how people still tolerated him.

Metal Gary Solid said he didn't understand. he didn't understand how Matthew had lived with himself. Chelsea wrote that Matthew will get his someday. Metal Gary Soled's final words in the exchange were, Yes, he will. Karma is an evil bitch. That conversation took place eight days before Chelsea drove to Cleveland. Now, it should be clear that we are not here to give our opinion

on whether Matthew did or did not essay Chelsea. There's not enough available information to do a deep dive into it even if we wanted to. We're going to present the facts of the case from this point forward, and I welcome everyone's opinion in the comments below. In the days between February 26 and March 2nd, Chelsea arranged the trip. She booked an Airbnb in the Cleveland area using a credit card in her own name. That booking would be later tied directly to Matthew's final known location. Then, on March 2, 2021, she sent Matthew his first message. Meta generated notifications to Matthew's email address every time Chelsea sent him a message.

More messages followed on March 3rd, 4th, and 5th. The content of those exchanges was never made public. On March 3rd, Chelsea made a public post to her personal Facebook page. The posts read, Dead men tell no tale. At 725 that same day, Matthew accepted Chelsea's friend request. They were in contact for days before she left Virginia. Matthew didn't tell anyone that she was coming to visit him or why. We'll be back in just one minute.

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use cloak.com slash misery machine to get 30% off any plan. Thanks and back to the episode. On the evening of Friday, March 5th, Matthew was at the Tiki Underground with his co-workers. He was on his phone throughout much of this evening. He said he was planning on meeting a woman who was coming from out of town for the weekend. When she texted that she had arrived, Matthew told his co-workers he was going outside to meet her. The supervisor followed and watched Matthew get into a small white car driven by a woman with brown hair.

The supervisor noted the stickers on the rear of the car, the U.S. Coast Guard decal, a Virginia's for lover sticker, and a bow-house sticker. the band not the German art school. That was the last time any of Matthew's friends saw him again. His roommate received text from him through Friday night into early Saturday morning, but then the messages stopped altogether. The white vehicle in question was a smart car belonging to Chelsea's husband John, registered to their address in Nolan, Virginia. Chelsea had driven it more than 300 miles to reach Cleveland.

GPS data pulled from Matthew's Google account, placed him at the Airbnb on Friday night. Video surveillance from a pot-belly restaurant in the Cleveland area where Matthew's GPS had tracked him Friday evening and from a Verizon store nearby appeared to show Matthew and a woman matching Chelsea's description walking together that evening before they reached the Airbnb. There, the two spent the night together.

On the morning of March 6, Chelsea drove Matthew to Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Valley View, Ohio. They entered through the Terra Vista Natural Study. area, which is on federal land. A couple who arrived to hike the trails at around 10.30 a.m. noted the white smart car in the parking lot and recognized the Bauhaus sticker. Between 1130 and 1150 a.m., they heard a single gunshot. And returned to the parking lot at around 12.10, the white car was still there. Chelsea and Matthew had walked off the marked trail and deep into the heavily wooded area. She'd come prepared with a loaded Springfield Armory 9mm pistol carried in her

backpack. Chelsea shot Matthew once in the back of the head. At 12.46 p.m., Chelsea removed Matthew from her Facebook friends list. She left the park and drove towards Michigan. Before leaving Cleveland, she had already been in contact with a tattoo artist near Detroit, telling him she was coming from Cleveland. That afternoon, she arrived at the shop. She had a noose tattooed on her forearm alongside the words, tighten up. Then she drove home to Virginia. In approximately 5.55, 5 p.m. that evening, Chelsea deactivated her Facebook account. Three days later, hikers in the Terra Vista Natural Study area came across a body in a wooded section of the park, not far from the local cemetery. It was Matthew Dunmire. He had been there

since Saturday and was identified that same day through an ID he was carrying in his coat. An autopsy was performed on Wednesday, March 10th. A 9-millimeter bullet was recovered from the inside of his skull, and the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner ruled his death a homicide. That Wednesday, the FBI's Cleveland Field Office joined the Valley View Police Department in the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, or BCI for short. Near Matthew's body, crime scene investigators had collected a water bottle, the coat he was wearing, a pair of black gloves, and a blue surgical mask. Those items, along with a bullet from his skull, hair samples, and swabs from both of his hands were submitted to the BCI lab.

The investigation moved on multiple fronts at once. On March 11th, the BCI executed a search warrant on Matthew's Google account. His GPS data showed his phone traveling from the Cleveland area to the Terra Vista Natural Study area on Saturday morning, going silent and never moving again. The Google account also contained Facebook email notifications confirming that a username Chelsea Savage had sent Matthew. messages on multiple days in early March. Agents already knew that Savage was Chelsea Perkins' performance surname.

That same day, the BCI obtained Ohio Turnpike surveillance footage and transponder records. During March 5th and March 7th, a vehicle registered to John Perkins of Nolan, Virginia, had been captured at Turnpike toll point six times. Consistent with travel from Virginia to Cleveland, Cleveland to a city near Detroit, and then back to Virginia. On March 10th, a couple who lived in the neighborhood adjacent to the park came forward about an encounter on the afternoon of March 6th while walking their dog. They had met a woman in the woods near where Matthew's body was later found.

She was approximately 5 feet 3 inches tall, around 120 pounds, dark hair, wearing a hoodie, black leggings, and knee-high boots. She appeared disoriented and said she was trying to find a nearby cemetery. They walked with her part of the way before their paths diverged. One of them later recognized the Bauhaus sticker on a car in the parking lot. She knew the band and remembered the car. March 15th, the hiking couple who'd been at Terra Vista on the morning of March 6 came forward separately. They described the white smart car with its distinctive stickers in the lot at 10.30 a.m.

A single gunshot they heard between 1130 and 1150, and the car still parked in the lot when they left at 1210. Chelsea's own cell phone records, obtained later through a search warrant, showed that her phone, pinged off cell towers in the Terra Vista Natural Study area on Saturday morning, approximately the same window when the hikers heard the gunshot. On March 19th, the Coast Guard Inspection Service sent investigators Chelsea's 2017 essay complaint against Matthew Dunmire. As we mentioned previously, the Virginia Beach Police had investigated and found insufficient evidence to prosecute. March 30th, 2021, the FBI executed a search warrant at Chelsea's home in northern Virginia. They found three 9mm pistols, including one Glock and two Springfield Armory models.

One of the Springfield Armory pistols was inside a black bag alongside Chelsea's photo ID. 2 AR-15 rifles were also present and were returned to her husband as they were registered to him. The BCI issued a ballistics report on May 6th. The bullet recovered from Matthew's skull was consistent with the Springfield Armory pistols. The DNA report followed on May 10th. Chelsea's DNA was the major contributor to the profile found on the Springfield Armory pistol that was found in her bag with her ID. DNA was also found on Matthew's pubic hair and on his right-hand fingernail. Investigators also extracted a note from Chelsea's iPhone, then created a March 9th, the same day hikers found Matthew's body and then deleted. The note read verbatim, if you are reading this, it is too late. I'm sorry I beat you, and I

a couple of chicks years ago. I am a shi-person and paid for my sins with blood. I've decided to leave this cruel world. Sorry I didn't warn you first. The note was written to look like a confession from Matthew. Chelsea created it the same day his body was discovered, designed to make his death appear to be a guilty man's final act. On the evening of March 9th, Chelsea decided to reactivate her Facebook account.

Through the summer and fall of 2021, investigators continued executing search warrants on social media accounts, email accounts, and phone records. September 2nd, investigators served a warrant on Chelsea's Instagram account. This returned with her personal profile in the full February 26th exchange with Medell Gary Solid. September 7th, they served a warrant on her Facebook account, which returned the account's activities surrounding the murder, including the misspelled Dead Men Tell No Tale Post, the befriending of Matthew at 1246 p.m. on March 6, and the accounts deactivation that afternoon. Nearly nine months into the investigation,

investigators finally had enough evidence to make an arrest. On December 9th, Chelsea was taken into federal custody at her residence in Pensacola, Florida. She was 31 years old. The FBI Cleveland Division, the Valley View Police Department, the Cuyahoga Valley National Park Police, and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Ohio announced the arrest publicly.

An initial appearance was held, held in Florida before she was transferred to Ohio. A federal grand jury returned a three-count indictment. Murder in the first degree. Murder in the second degree. And using or carrying and discharging a firearm during an in relation to a crime of violence on federal property. The first two counts each carried a maximum sentence of life or death, a $250,000

statutory fine in five years of supervised release. The firearm charge carried a mandatory minimum of 10 years, consecutive to any other sentence imposed in the case. Chelsea was represented by the federal public defender's office for the Northern District of Ohio. At a detention hearing on February 1st, 2022, before magistrate judge Thomas M. Parker, the government called FBI Special Agent Gregory Craig. He walked through the full arc of the investigation.

He covered the GPS and easy pass data, the Airbnb reservation, surveillance footage from Tiki Underground, the two pairs of witnesses at Terra Vista, the DNA, and ballistics matches, fake note, a noose tattoo, and the social media evidence. The defense countered that Chelsea had known she was under investigation for eight months

after the March 2021 search, and all of that time had not fled the country, had not threatened anybody, and had produced no evidence that she was a danger to any person. She had two young children, and her husband was willing to take her home. Family members in the Toledo area were also prepared to house her.

Judge ultimately ordered Chelsea held in custody pending trial. Case would stretch on for nearly four years. During that time, Matthew's family waited. His children grew older without their father. His uncle, Dan Dunmire, spoke publicly about Matthew in the immediate aftermath of the arrest, telling news outlets about the kind of man his nephew had been and the void that his death had left behind.

The original trial date was set and moved to 2023, but it was pushed back multiple times. In early 2020, prosecutors announced that they would not seek the death penalty. January of 2025, after President Trump signed an executive order restoring federal executions, that decision was briefly reconsidered.

Prosecutors ultimately did not pursue capital punishment. Chelsea later rejected a plea agreement offering between 27 and a half and 31 years in prison. July of 2024, more than three years after Matthew's death, Chelsea's defense team announced that they intended to argue self-defense. She maintained that position through the pretrial filings and motion practice. Their strategy rested on what Chelsea claimed she had believed about the threat Matthew posed to her on March 6,

grounded in her PTSD from the 2017 essay and the broader history of trauma she described. Defense argued she had not gone to the park that morning as the aggressor, but as someone who had run out of other options. In preparation for that defense, Chelsea's attorneys also sought to introduce character evidence about Matthew. A pretrial motion referenced an allegation that Matthew had essayed a woman identified in court documents only by the initials SS when the two were in high school together between 2005 and 2009. The defense argued this alleged pattern of behavior was relevant to establishing Matthew's character and Chelsea's state of mind. On May 15, 2025, prosecutors filed their opposition.

They argued that character evidence about a victim is not an essential element of any charge or self-defense claim, and that specific prior acts are inadmissible under federal rules of evidence 404 and 405. They further argued that Chelsea had no firsthand knowledge of the SS incident and could not testify about it. The court had not yet rules. 12 days later, Chelsea Perkins entered a guilty plea. On May 27th, less than a week before the trial was scheduled to begin, Chelsea pled guilty to murder in the second degree into the firearms charge. The first degree murder count was dropped entirely.

The agreement called for Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. to sentence her to between 20 and 25 years in prison. At the plea hearing, Chelsea gave a brief, quiet answer to the judge's questions. When Judge Oliver asked her directly whether she was, she had killed Matthew Dunmire and used the firearm, she softly said, yes. Chelsea appeared in federal court on September 9th in an orange jumpsuit. During the proceedings, she caught her sister's eye across the courtroom and made a heart sign toward her and smiled. Chelsea's sister addressed the court first saying,

My sister is not a violent person. She's a very big heart. My heart is heavy today for my family and for the family of Matthew. This never should have happened. Matthew's father spoke next. He shared with the court that, My son was a good person too, and now his children have no father.

Dan Dunmire told Judge Oliver, I was in the Marine Corps and never met anyone as evil or vile. Someone who can do this can do it to anyone. Chelsea's defense attorney had argued to the court that Chelsea had tried to report the 2017 essay had been victimized a second time by a system that did not take her claim seriously and had been left to take matters into her own hands.

Chelsea then addressed math, Matthews family herself saying, I take full responsibility for what I've done. Judge Oliver said from the bench, there's no real way to put value on a human life. He agreed with prosecutors that the motive was revenge. He also acknowledged that the lifetime of trauma described by the defense warranted some consideration alongside the gravity of the offense. He sentenced Chelsea to 22 and a half years in federal prison, getting five years less than the bottom end of her proposed plea deal.

Five years of supervised release would follow. After the sentencing, Matthew's uncle Dan told the media that Chelsea got off easy. At her attorney's request, Chelsea was assigned to a federal prison in West Virginia to be closer to her family during her sentence. She will be in her mid-50s when she is released. But the fight for restitution wasn't over. Prosecutors had sought more than $596,000 to cover Matthew's projected future lost income, his funeral expenses and his family's travel costs to attend proceedings in Cleveland. Chelsea's attorneys objected to the income calculation and argued that his projected living expenses

should be deducted from any figure the court ordered. Prosecures responded in a court filing saying, she should not now be able to avoid paying into his estate, which one day will belong to his minor children by claiming that he did not make any money despite having a full-time job and being capable of work. To order otherwise would be to give him. defendant a windfall despite her crime. The restitution hearing was held behind closed doors. As of December of 2025, no public decision has been announced. The consequences of Matthew's

murder extended far beyond what a courtroom in Cleveland could address. While the FBI spent nine months building its case against Chelsea Perkins, Matthew's mother was trying to build a case of her own. Fifty-four-year-old Tommy Lynn Dunmire could not accept that her son's killer remained free. She launched a private investigation working to identify the person responsible. She was operating from whatever information she could piece together.

The general timeline, the description of the woman who had picked Matthew up at the bar, the white smart car with Virginia plates and the Coast Guard sticker. She pursued that information as far as she possibly could. At some point, she became convinced

that she identified the person who had killed her. her son, but she was dead wrong. The woman that she had targeted was a 30-year-old living in Washington, D.C., who had no connection to Matthew's death and no connection to Chelsea Perkins. On November 5th, approximately five weeks before the FBI would arrest Chelsea in Florida, Tommy Lynn drove to the woman's home in Washington, D.C. She disguised herself as a UPS driver, and when the door opened, she shot the woman twice in the abdomen. The woman thankfully survived.

Police stopped Tommy Lynn's car shortly afterward. Before they could reach her, she chose to remove herself from this earth. Matthew's father, John McQuillan, had driven her to the shooting. He later pled guilty in federal court in Washington, D.C., to being an accessory after the fact to an assault with the intent to kill. The case was described in federal court as sad and extraordinarily unusual. He was sentenced to 42 months in prison and was released in March of 2025. Matthew Dunmire's body was brought home to Virginia.

A celebration of Matthew's life was held on March 27, 2021, at the Claytor Rollins Funeral Chapel. Restrictions at the time limited the chapel to 35 people per service. For those who could not get inside, the service was broadcast over the radio for cars parked outside the funeral home. His obituary reads, and I quote, Matthew was a free spirit who loved music, playing his guitar, and being with his friends. He will forever be remembered.