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

A former US Coast Guard soldier turned model has been sentenced to 22.5 years in prison after being found guilty of luring her alleged rapist into the woods and killing him. Now he refuses to pay compensation to his children.

Former Coast Guard member Chelsea Perkins, 35, of Alexandria, Virginia, pleaded guilty earlier this year to second-degree murder in the 2021 killing of 31-year-old Matthew Dunmire in Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

He was sentenced to twenty years behind bars in September.

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

On the day of the incident, Perkins reportedly arrived in Cleveland in a white car belonging to her husband and then went to the Airbnb where she had booked using a credit card. On March 6, 2021, the two drove to a park shortly before hikers reported hearing a gunshot.

Later, another group of hikers found Dunmire’s body, with a single gunshot wound to the back of his head.

Perkins pleaded guilty

In May, Perkins pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and using or carrying a firearm and discharging during and in connection with a crime of violence against federal property. His actual sentence fell just short of the maximum 25-year sentence he could have received.

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

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

Following his sentencing, Perkins is refusing to pay his family nearly £600,000 in compensation for lost future wages. However, he has already agreed to cover the victim’s funeral expenses and the costs of attending the sentencing hearing for a family member.

“Courts require that the amount of compensation represent the victim’s actual loss and not an estimate based on conjecture or speculation,” Perkins’ attorneys said.

The legal team argues that the government is overstating actual losses, given that the victim earned $15 an hour at her screen printing and embroidery job and worked 40 hours a week. But the government claims it uses “conservative fiscal figures” when calculating the family’s lifetime income.

Firearms hidden and ‘fake’ suicide note found

Perkins was linked to the crime through security camera footage, text message records and ballistic analysis. Federal authorities seized three firearms during a search of his home.

Investigators also found a deleted document on her cellphone that appeared to be a fake suicide note purportedly written by Dunmire and created around the time her 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 was not the only victim of this case. In 2021, his mother, Tommie Lynn Dunmire, became increasingly fed up with the police investigation into her son’s death and chose to pursue her own investigation.

His partner, John Nelson McQuillen, told investigators that he began conducting his own “investigation” into the matter when he became increasingly mentally unstable and consumed with rage, confronting the woman he suspected of killing his son and voicing his intention to kill her. In November 2021, Tommie Lynn Dunmire and John Nelson McQuillen traveled to Washington DC, where they stopped at a property in the Kingman Park neighborhood.

Armed mother disguised herself to confront her son’s killer

Tommie Lynn Dunmire, wearing a brown vest and baseball cap, approached the woman’s front door, holding a cardboard box, knocked on the door and introduced himself as a UPS delivery driver, according to WTOP News. When the woman answered, Dunmire fired two shots from the silver pistol he had hidden in an open cut in the back of the box.

Dunmire and McQuillen then made their escape, stopping briefly to change the license plate on their vehicle. However, they were soon stopped by a police officer, at which point Dunmire tragically shot himself in the head.

He succumbed to his injuries in hospital two weeks later. The other woman, who was not involved in Dunmire’s death, survived.

McQuillen, meanwhile, pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact to assault with intent to kill and was sentenced to 42 months in prison.