The Plan

When a man’s body is found in a national park in Ohio with an execution-style gunshot wound to the head, authorities are quick to zero in on a female suspect. But the case is far from simple.

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  Hi, park enthusiasts. It's Delia. If you listen to Park Predators, you already know that sometimes the most beautiful places can hide the darkest secrets. But what happens when the danger isn't miles from civilization? It's in your community, and sometimes even in your own backyard. On Crime Junkie, hosts Ashley and Britt dive into real cases every week, from missing persons to unsolved murders, breaking down what we know, what we don't, and the details that still don't sit right. If you care about the stories behind the headlines and the victims at the center of them, you'll want to check out Crime Junkie. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:40Speaker 00

  Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra. And the case I'm going to share with you today takes place in Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio. In 2025, this recreation space commemorated 50 years of being a designated conservation area for wildlife and plants. According to the National Park Service website, it's situated close to the cities of Akron and Cleveland, Ohio. But it couldn't be more different than the urban environment those cities are composed of. It's home to part of the Cuyahoga River, a scenic railroad, waterfalls, large swaths of farmland, and a variety of trail systems, as well as lots of other outdoor attractions. Back in March 2021, two visitors entered this park,

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  but only one returned. The story of what unfolded during their brief time on a trail together seemed straightforward, but what the investigation into this crime would uncover was anything but a simple narrative. And to this day, folks who claim to know those involved in the case, as well as parts of the internet, remain in conflict about perhaps the most important element of this crime: the motive. This is Park Predators.

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  Shortly after 11:30 in the morning on Saturday, March 6, 2021, a couple hiking in Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio heard what they believed was a gunshot.

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  The specific area they were hiking in was called the Terra Vista Natural Study Area, which, from what I saw on Google Maps, is near the Cuyahoga River. And it's adjacent to two roadways that have stores, homes, and even businesses on them. But naturally, like I would be, when you hear a gunshot in the woods, you get spooked, which was the case for this couple. They were concerned enough by the sound that they decided to get out of the area and headed back to where they'd parked their car. They returned to the parking lot shortly after noon and then bounced. From reading the court records in this case, it doesn't appear that they initially reported the gunshot to authorities or really did anything other than leave. But three days later, around 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday, March 9,

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  a group of hikers walking in that same area came across a man's body near an old cemetery in the woods. And they immediately could tell that the guy was dead because he had a gunshot wound to his head. Some news coverage states the victim had been there at least a few days, so I don't know if that means decomposition had begun to set in or what. But regardless, it was clear he had not died that morning. Now, because the body was found on federal land, the FBI became the lead investigating agency on the case. But that didn't happen until the following morning, March 10. Initially, it was officers from Valley View Police Department who'd responded to the scene, and then eventually, resources and personnel from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal

• 4:11Speaker 00

  Investigation and National Park Services Investigative Branch got involved. At some point, though, those agencies all took a backseat to the feds. From the jump, there was no doubt in anyone's mind that this was a homicide, so investigators closed the trail and began combing the crime scene for clues. Inside the victim's pocket, authorities found an ID for a 31-year-old man named Matthew Dunmire, and it was confirmed, right then and there, he was the person who'd been shot. Other than his body, the dark clothes and shoes he was wearing, there wasn't much else in terms of physical evidence. However, there was a plastic water bottle next to his body that investigators seized. But in order to learn more about Matthew and what had happened to him, they needed a full autopsy

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  to be done. So, at some point that day, they transported the victim to the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office, where his cause of death was officially determined to be a single 9-millimeter gunshot wound to the back of his head. His manner of death was ruled a homicide. Now, when news of what happened reached Matthew's loved ones, people were shocked. One of his friends told Cleveland 19 News, quote, "He didn't deserve that whatsoever. He just went missing. He was supposed to hang out with some people, and the last words I heard from him were, 'I'll see you Monday.'" And I didn't see him Monday, end quote. Now, what this friend was referring to was what Matthew had been up to a few days before he was found dead.

• 5:39Speaker 00

  According to court records and a criminal affidavit in this case, FBI agents quickly got ahold of Matthew's roommate, who was a former girlfriend, and learned from her that on Friday, March 5th, about three days before his body was found, he'd been out with some friends and coworkers at a place in Hudson, Ohio, called Tiki Underground. While hanging out there, he'd told his friends that he was planning to meet up with a girl from out of town who was staying in the area that weekend.

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  And sure enough, around 6:00 PM, Matthew's boss, who was at the bar with him, saw him leave and get into a white Smart car that was being driven by a woman with brown hair. The affidavit I mentioned explains that right before this, Matthew had gotten a message on his phone and then told his friends that the girl he was meeting was there to pick him up. The next confirmed sighting of him was about 15 minutes later at a gas station in Peninsula, Ohio. Surveillance cameras at that store showed him arriving as a passenger in the white car, getting out to buy some drinks and cigarettes, and then eventually leaving in the same white car. Now, obviously, the FBI was extremely interested in figuring out who Matthew was with. But according to what I read in the affidavit, it didn't seem like the surveillance footage from both Tiki Underground

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  and the gas station he'd stopped at showed the license plate for the car he'd gotten into. So agents tried another strategy. They hadn't found his cellphone at the crime scene, but on March 11th, they got access to his Google account, which I presume allowed them to track where his cellphone had been since the account was likely linked to his phone. And from there, they were able to use GPS data to essentially map out his path after he left Tiki Underground. The information from Google revealed that around 6:37 PM on the 5th, he traveled close to a license plate reader in the city of Cleveland, Ohio. And when investigators checked that camera's history, they saw it had captured a photo of the back of the white vehicle Matthew was riding in. And the picture not only showed the car's license plate,

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  it also showed there were several bumper stickers on the back, including one that read "U.S. Coast Guard" and another that read "Virginia is for Lovers." When the feds looked up the car's owner, it came back as belonging to a guy named John Perkins, who lived in Arlington, Virginia. And John, as it turns out, was in the U.S. Coast Guard. But the FBI was less interested in him and more focused on his wife, 31-year-old Chelsea Perkins, who, it just so happened, closely matched the description of the dark-haired woman who'd been seen picking up Matthew.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  The real cost of a break-in isn't your valuables. It's the feeling that your home stopped being safe. SimpliSafe keeps danger away from your family with three layers of protection. One, smart AI cameras and live US-based agents help stop intruders before they break in. Two, we sound the alarm at points of entry. Three, our agents request emergency response. Plans starting around $1 a day. Right now, get 60% off your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com/truecrime. Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com/licenses for alarm license information.

• 8:49Speaker 02

  One day last year, detectives knocked on the door of a multimillion-dollar mansion in Los Angeles County.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  Inside, they found a strange scene. A dining area converted into classrooms with children and toddlers seated at rows of desks.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  The couple that lived there had 21 kids.

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  It's a house that looks like a castle, but it's under investigation for being a possible factory. A baby factory.

• 9:16Speaker 02

  Where had these children come from? Almost all of them were born through surrogates. But those surrogates had been deceived.

• 9:24Speaker 04

  Me and my coworker, we named her the surrogate pimp.

• 9:27Speaker 05

  That's the one time that we called the cops because she was screaming. And then he pulled out a gun.

• 9:32Speaker 06

  I started crying. I was like, what the heck did I just get myself into?

• 9:37Speaker 02

  I'm Ava Kaufman. "The Journey" is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. Find it now in the In the Dark feed, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  The FBI's interest in Chelsea Perkins grew even more after they tracked Matthew's GPS data from his Google account to a property in Cleveland that was an Airbnb rental. Records for that rental showed that Chelsea had made the reservation using her own personal credit card and her real name. She booked the room for the night of Friday, March 5.

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  Around 8:00 PM that night, Matthew's GPS indicated he left that Airbnb and went to a nearby sandwich shop. When agents reviewed surveillance video from a cellphone store near that shop, it showed him and Chelsea walking together back in the direction of their rental. In the footage, Matthew was wearing dark-colored clothing, similar to what he was found in after his murder. And Chelsea was in a dark-colored outfit as well, and was wearing distinct knee-high boots. The pair then returned to their Airbnb, spent the night, and then checked out the following morning shortly after 9:00 AM. According to the criminal affidavit in this case that was prepared by the FBI, text message history from Matthew's phone revealed that around that time, he'd sent his roommate/former-girlfriend

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  a text. And it said something to the effect that he'd just woken up and was planning to donate plasma before coming back to their apartment. He went on to type another message that stated, "She shouldn't be upset because he had not slept with her," meaning Chelsea, the previous night. It's unclear if Matthew's roommate responded to that message, but I tend to think that she didn't, because not long after sending the text, he sent another text that said, "He guessed she didn't miss him or was mad at him because of his activities the previous night with Chelsea." In one of his messages, Matthew wrote, quote, "Well, I pissed this chick off anyway, so I hope you're happy," end quote. According to the wording in the FBI's affidavit, it's pretty clear that the chick he was claiming

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  to have pissed off was Chelsea. Anyway, shortly after 9:00 AM, Matthew's phone executed a Google search for Terra Vista Natural Study area. And by 9:45 AM, his GPS data showed his cellphone was pinging there. Some 45 minutes after that, at 10:29 AM, his phone sent another message to his roommate/former-girlfriend, which stated, quote, "Okay, I'll see you in a little while," end quote. After that, it doesn't appear that his phone sent any more texts, and the GPS data didn't show it leaving Terra Vista Natural Study area. On March 15th, so this would have been six days after he was found, that couple who'd been in the park on the morning of the 6th, you know, the ones who heard the gunshot,

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  well, they contacted authorities to report what they knew. According to the FBI's affidavit, that couple said that in addition to hearing gunfire, they also remembered seeing a white Smart car with bumper stickers on the back of it parked in the parking lot at the trailhead. They said the car had been there around 10:30 a.m. when they'd arrived, and it was still parked by itself, unoccupied, when they left around noon time. Authorities were also able to interview another couple who lived in the area, who said that on the 6th, while walking their dog, they bumped into a dark-haired young woman who told them she was lost. She claimed she was trying to find a nearby cemetery, but had gotten turned around. The couple who'd interacted with her didn't think she was scary or anything,

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  but they did tell investigators that she was dressed in clothing that didn't seem appropriate for hiking. She was in knee-high black boots, tight black pants, and a hoodie, which, in my personal experience, is not attire you'd sport while in the woods. Anyway, after walking with the woman for a bit, the couple said they branched off on their own path, and the mystery woman went in the direction of a small cemetery in the woods.

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  Based on what I read in the news coverage and court records for this case, it's clear that law enforcement's investigation into Chelsea as a person of interest for Matthew's murder moved quickly. But at the same time, they also had to use discretion. You see, on March 17th, eight days into the investigation, authorities began surveilling Chelsea and her husband at their apartment in Virginia. Investigators noted that their white Smart car was parked outside their place, but some of the unique bumper stickers that had previously been on the back of it had been taken off. Almost two weeks later, on March 30th, the FBI formally conducted a search of the car and inside the couple's apartment. Agents ended up seizing three firearms from their residence,

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  all of which were 9mm pistols, and capable of firing the type of ammunition that had been used in Matthew's murder. One of the guns was found inside a black bag that also contained Chelsea's ID. Weeks earlier, when the medical examiner had conducted Matthew's autopsy, they recovered a 9mm bullet from his head. So in early May, the FBI had the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation perform ballistics testing on that round, and the Perkins guns to determine whether any of them might be the murder weapon. They also swabbed the firearms for DNA. When the results came in, they revealed Chelsea's DNA was all over the 9mm pistol that had been found in her bag.

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  Ballistics tests also confirmed that the bullet from Matthew's head had likely been fired from that same pistol. Also while searching the Perkins property on March 30th, investigators had obtained a sample of Chelsea's DNA and gained access to her cellphone records, which were both evidentiary gold for authorities. Forensic experts seeking to find traces of DNA tested swabs from Matthew's fingernails, some of his clothing, samples of his pubic hair, a medical mask he'd been wearing, and the plastic water bottle that had been found near his body. They compared Matthew's roommate/former girlfriend's DNA and Chelsea's DNA to profiles extracted from those items. And the results showed that Chelsea's DNA was underneath one of Matthew's fingernails

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  on his right hand. And her DNA was also found on his pubic hair. In addition to that, both Matthew and Chelsea's DNA was on the water bottle, which, in tandem with everything else that authorities had found, is what the FBI's affidavit claimed further implicated her in the crime. Chelsea's cellphone was also a key piece to the puzzle. Pings from her device followed a similar path as Matthew's had on the morning of March 6th. Her phone's GPS indicated it had pinged off a cell tower to the east of Terra Vista Natural Study area around the same time Matthew's phone had. And then around noon time, it pinged again off a different tower that was located slightly west of the recreation space.

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  Chelsea had also posted a photo on X, formerly Twitter, on either the 5th or 6th, which showed her standing inside what investigators knew was the Airbnb that she'd rented for her and Matthew. When investigators probed even further into her online activity, they discovered Facebook messages from March 5th and 6th between Chelsea and a tattoo artist she knew near Detroit, Michigan. Those messages discussed her coming there on the afternoon of the 6th to get a new tattoo. According to the criminal affidavit in this case and additional court records, Chelsea told the artist on Friday evening that she was staying in Cleveland at an Airbnb, but would be checking out the following morning.

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  And she wanted a new tattoo on her forearm of a noose with the words "tighten up" written next to it.

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  And sure enough, toll records from the Ohio Turnpike, as well as highways in Toledo, showed that around 1:00 PM on the 6th, Chelsea's car had traveled toward Michigan. And she'd eventually arrived at the tattoo parlor her friend worked at. During the wee hours of Sunday, March 7th, her vehicle was captured again at several toll plazas in Michigan, Ohio, and eventually the western part of Pennsylvania. Her EZ Pass records also clocked her passing through even more toll plazas as she made her way back to her home in Virginia. Now, I know it sounds like investigators were getting all this evidence and information super fast, but in reality, it took a little over nine months for authorities to gather all this.

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  But on December 9th, 2021, after months of investigating, the FBI arrested Chelsea for Matthew's murder. At the time, she was living in Pensacola, Florida, and after being detained, she made her first appearance in federal court in Florida before being extradited back to Ohio. After her arrest, one of Matthew's friends told WEAR ABC 3 News that it was encouraging to see the case, which hadn't been reported about as much during the months authorities were working on it, was at least moving forward towards prosecution. She said, quote, "I mean, it was hard not to love Matt. Everyone that knew him loved him. Everyone that grew up with him, we all know how fun-loving, carefree, kind, pretty much did what he wanted kind of thing.

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  Didn't care what anyone thought. I was completely in awe of why somebody? How could somebody want to hurt him of all people? We're happy that he finally got some sort of justice, you know? It's still hard, but she's getting what she deserves." End quote. From what I was able to find out about Matthew, he had two kids of his own and a pretty big extended family, which included his parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, who all celebrated his life at a memorial service a few weeks after his death. He was originally from Virginia Beach, Virginia, but had moved to Ohio at some point in his life. His obituary states that he loved music, his friends, and playing the guitar.

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  A week or so after Chelsea was arrested for his murder, a grand jury in Ohio formally indicted her on three charges: using or discharging a firearm in relation to a crime of violence, second-degree murder, and first-degree murder. The murder charges alone carried maximum sentences of life in prison. But the nagging question no one could seem to answer was why? Why had Chelsea and Matthew's lives intersected in this way? Based on the evidence law enforcement had gathered, there was no denying that the two of them had been together. But the question was, for what reason? On February 1, 2022, less than two months after her arrest, Chelsea appeared via video from jail for a detention hearing.

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  The sole purpose of this proceeding was so the court could consider whether or not to grant her bond while she awaited trial. A key witness who testified was an FBI agent named Greg Craig, who'd been the person in charge of the Fed's investigation. He testified about a lot of the stuff I've already mentioned: how investigators identified Chelsea as a suspect, the locations she and Matthew traveled together, their cellphone-record data, and all the forensic evidence. But he also talked about what he'd learned regarding how Matthew and Chelsea's lives had connected years before the crime. According to a court transcript, Agent Craig said that social media records revealed the pair knew one another from when Matthew had previously lived in Virginia. In fact, in March 2017,

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  Chelsea, who had not met her husband yet, had filed a complaint against Matthew with the Coast Guard Inspection Service, claiming that he'd sexually assaulted her. Virginia Beach Police had also received a similar report from Chelsea at that time. But the agency claimed it couldn't move forward with charges against Matthew because the case wasn't strong enough. So Matthew was never formally arrested or charged in relation to Chelsea's sexual assault allegation. A and E reported that this alleged incident occurred while Matthew and Chelsea were in a relationship. But what isn't clear from the FBI's affidavit and the court records is what the extent of their relationship was at that time. An online blog I found stated that they'd attended high school together from 2005 to

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  2009. So if that's true, then that explains how they knew one another. But fast forward to early September 2021, months after Matthew's murder, and several months before Chelsea was arrested. And that's when the FBI found an Instagram account Chelsea managed with the username "I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead." Messages between that account and another Instagram user just a few weeks before the crime discussed Matthew being a messed up person. In some messages, Chelsea wrote things like, quote, "I don't know how people still F with him." And, "He will get his someday." End quote.

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  Email records from Matthew's Gmail account showed that starting on March 2, 2021, Chelsea had sent him a friend request and exchanged messages with him via Facebook. But unfortunately, when investigators got into Matthew's Messenger records, the content of the actual conversations between him and Chelsea were gone. Same goes for when investigators looked through her social media accounts. Which indicated that someone deleted their conversations using their respective devices. Evidence that supported Chelsea might have been trying to cover her tracks in this way was the fact that according to court records and testimony, she deliberately removed Matthew from her Facebook friend list on March 6, the day he was killed.

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  And then completely deactivated her account around the time she began her drive to Michigan to get a new tattoo. Now, something that probably would have helped authorities get to the bottom of why Matthew's messages were gone would have been to find his phone. But despite multiple searches for that device, which included assistance from dogs specially trained to find electronics, investigators never found his cellphone. The FBI also never found any text messages or phone calls between his and Chelsea's cell numbers, which caused investigators to suspect that most, if not all, of their communications had been over the internet, and not actually between their respective phone numbers. Something else interesting was that the Facebook account Chelsea had used to communicate

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  with Matthew between March 2nd and 4th, just days before his murder, was under the username Chelsea Savage, not Chelsea Perkins. However, authorities eventually learned that Chelsea Savage and another alias she went by, Sabrina Savage, were stage names she used for making online adult entertainment content. But it wasn't just the message exchange history between Chelsea and Matthew that authorities knew was pivotal to proving motive and premeditation. There was a Facebook post Chelsea had made on March 3rd which simply stated, "Dead men tell no tale." Which, I'm sure, was something that got investigators' hackles up even more.

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  Considering the fact that it was undisputed Chelsea had met up with Matthew after making that post. A man she'd previously accused of sexual assault. And then just days later, he turned up murdered. At the detention hearing in February 2022, the government had argued that Chelsea should remain in custody pending trial. Prosecutors said that because she only had loose familial ties to Ohio, it would be difficult to ensure she showed up for subsequent hearings. They also pointed out that she had a criminal record, including an assault incident from 2017. One of the attorneys for the government said in part, "She traveled from her residence in Virginia to the Cleveland area with a loaded gun that

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  she keeps on her, walking deep into the woods with the victim of this case, and is the only one that walks out alone." He later continued, "She walked out alone, left the area, and went to Detroit to get a tattoo of a noose on her arm. The facts of this case, the violence involved here, are egregious, a violent offense, and there appears to be efforts by Ms. Perkins to conceal things."

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  Chelsea's public defense attorney argued, though, that she was not a danger to the public and had relatives in Ohio, as well as her husband in Florida, who were all willing to make sure she would abide by conditions of a bond if she was granted one. According to a court transcript, she had two kids, ages seven and nine at the time, who were still living with her husband in Pensacola. Her attorneys assured the court that her family would make sure she'd make court appearances and wouldn't have access to the firearms in their home. I couldn't find anything that explains what exactly happened with this argument or if Chelsea ever got a bond. But what I do know is that the case slowed significantly after 2022, because trial dates kept getting pushed and the coronavirus pandemic slowed a lot of courts down. But in this case,

• 26:28Speaker 00

  that issue wasn't solely to blame for why things got dragged out. You see, something totally unrelated to COVID-19 protocols played a factor. And at the center of it were two people you'd least expect: Matthew's parents.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  The real cost of a break-in isn't your valuables. It's the feeling that your home stopped being safe. SimpliSafe keeps danger away from your family with three layers of protection. One, smart AI cameras and live US-based agents help stop intruders before they break in. Two, we sound the alarm at points of entry. Three, our agents request emergency response. Plans starting around $1 a day. Right now, get 60% off your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com/truecrime. Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com/licenses for alarm license information.

• 27:20Speaker 00

  One day last year, detectives knocked on the door of a multimillion-dollar mansion in Los Angeles County. Inside, they found a strange scene: a dining area converted into classrooms with children and toddlers seated at rows of desks.

• 27:37Speaker 00

  The couple that lived there had 21 kids.

• 27:40Speaker 03

  It's a house that looks like a castle, but it's under investigation for being a possible factory, a baby factory.

• 27:47Speaker 00

  Where had these children come from? Almost all of them were born through surrogates. But those surrogates had been deceived.

• 27:55Speaker 04

  Me and my coworker, we named her the surrogate pimp.

• 27:58Speaker 05

  That's the one time that we called the cops because she was screaming. And then he pulled out a gun.

• 28:03Speaker 06

  I started crying. I was like, what the heck did I just get myself into?

• 28:08Speaker 00

  I'm Eva Kaufman. "The Journey" is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. Find it now in the In the Dark feed, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 28:25Speaker 00

  So we have to jump back a little bit in the timeline of this story because there were quite a few things that happened before Chelsea got arrested that had an impact on this case. In early November 2021, which was about eight months after Matthew's murder, but just a few weeks before authorities would put handcuffs on Chelsea. Matthew's mom and dad, Tommy Dunmire and John McQuillan, had reached a point of frustration with the case that prompted them to do something drastic. In the months after her son's murder, Tommy had started investigating on her own from where she and John lived in Norfolk, Virginia. She'd become obsessed with solving the crime, presumably because she either didn't know what was going on behind the scenes with law enforcement's investigation,

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  or she was understandably just unhappy with how slow things were moving. Whatever the reason was, as a result of the couple's private efforts to avenge Matthew, Tommy and John decided to visit who they believed had killed their son and force her to pay for what they believed she'd done. On November 5, 2021, they got into their car and drove to an apartment in the northeast part of Washington, DC, where they believed she lived. They had a plan and a loaded firearm. According to the coverage on this case in a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C., around 9:30 at night, Tommy dressed in a brown vest and brown ball cap and pretended to be a UPS delivery driver.

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  While carrying a cardboard box that had a silver revolver hidden inside of it, she went up to a unit that she believed Matthew's killer was living in. She knocked on the door, and when a woman in her 30s answered, Tommy shot her twice and then fled with her partner John, who was acting as a getaway driver. After that, the couple changed the license plate on their car, but a short time later, D.C. Metro Police stopped them. Sadly, during that interaction with law enforcement, Tommy chose to die by suicide. John was taken into custody for his role in the shooting, and miraculously, the woman they'd attacked survived. The whole thing was a bizarre and tragic case of mistaken identity.

• 30:36Speaker 00

  Tommy and John had shot someone who was totally unconnected to Matthew's murder. Meanwhile, his real killer, Chelsea Perkins, was hundreds of miles away in Pensacola, Florida. In March 2022, a few months after the shooting, John was formally charged with the crime, and a month later pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact to assault with intent to kill. He was eventually sentenced to three and a half years in federal prison with three years supervised release. According to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, he was released from custody in late March of 2025. While John had been serving his time behind bars, Chelsea's case kept slogging its way through the criminal justice system.

• 31:19Speaker 00

  In March 2024, federal prosecutors approached her and her attorneys with a plea deal that promised between 27 and 31 years in prison, instead of a potential sentence of life in prison if she chose to take her chances at trial. Chelsea rejected that offer, but eventually changed her mind more than a year later in late May 2025. According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office, Chelsea admitted to traveling to Ohio and luring Matthew to the national park to kill him. In exchange for pleading guilty to second-degree murder and using a firearm in a crime of violence on federal property, the government recommended she be sentenced to 20 to 25 years in federal prison.

• 32:01Speaker 00

  A few months later, on September 9th, 2025, a judge gave her a total of 22 and a half years behind bars, with a couple of years shaved off for time she'd already served. She was also ordered to pay nearly $2,000 in restitution to a funeral home in Virginia, and more than $595,000 to Matthew's family and estate. In the aftermath of everything, Matthew's uncle, Dan Dunmeier, told Cleveland 19 News, quote, "Yeah, it was a shock, as you can imagine, especially as the details started to come out. I mean, if you have ever met him, I mean, you couldn't even think this kid could harm a flea, nonetheless, you know, harm anyone else. It was like a movie. It was so surreal, you know, losing Matthew and then his mother.

• 32:46Speaker 00

  What, six months later? I mean, it's been rough. It's been a rough couple of years." End quote. The tab reported that at her sentencing, Chelsea apologized for what she'd done to Matthew and his family. In court, her attorney explained that she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of previous sexual assaults and from serving in the U.S. Coast Guard. Her attorney said she'd reported all of those alleged incidents to authority figures over the years, but nothing ever happened and no one was ever held criminally responsible. When it came to what occurred with Matthew, the defense claimed Chelsea had reached a breaking point and been driven to commit murder due to the trauma from her past, which, she alleged, was a prior assault by Matthew.

• 33:31Speaker 00

  However, in the following months, she and her defense attorneys also filed motions in court to avoid paying Matthew's family the court-ordered restitution. A comment that prosecutors had previously made stating essentially that they thought Chelsea lacked remorse seemed to be reflected in her unwillingness to pay the restitution. As it stands today, she remains incarcerated at a women's federal prison. Her scheduled release date, as of this recording, is February 2041. As a part of my reporting, I wrote to her in prison and asked for an interview regarding her claims about Matthew assaulting her in 2017 and her side of the story as a whole. But to date, I haven't gotten a response back. Since she pleaded guilty, a group of her friends and supporters have remained

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  active online, asking for people to join them and supporting her financially. At one point, as of last year, there was an active GoFundMe campaign with a goal of $5,500, which stated donations would go toward her prison commissary account. However, I recently checked on that fundraiser, and the link is no longer active. There was another one, though, that has popped up on a different website, and that was active as of this recording.

• 34:43Speaker 00

  A particularly disturbing detail I read in this case had to do with something investigators found on Chelsea's phone when they did a data retrieval for its activity. There was a remnant of something that was once there, but had been deleted. They saw that at one point, a few days after Matthew's murder, she drafted a note on her cellphone that was written as if it had come from Matthew. It stated, quote, "If you are reading this, it is too late. I'm sorry I beat you and I raped a couple of chicks years ago. I am a [BLEEP] person and paid for my sins with blood. I've decided to leave this cruel world. Sorry I didn't warn you first." End quote.

• 35:26Speaker 00

  Directly beneath that note, the same exact words had been typed out, so basically a copy and pay situation. That note was something authorities suspected Chelsea planned to plant somewhere to convince people Matthew had taken his own life. But for some reason, she bailed on that plan and deleted it instead. Seemingly unbeknownst to her, her phone's history kept track of it in the metadata, which I think is a takeaway in this case. It's the little details, the invisible actions that are digitally archived, which can sometimes serve as evidence in and of themselves. And evidence like that, unlike Dead Man, always tells a tale.

• 36:13Speaker 00

  Park Predators is an AudioChuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, @parkpredators.

• 36:31Speaker 00

  I think Chuck would approve.

• 36:38Speaker 00

  In the dark, even the most familiar trail can feel like it leads somewhere else. Every rustle becomes a warning, every shadow a doorway. In Full Body Chills, those doorways open into worlds pulled straight from your nightmares. This spooky season classic returns with chilling new tales, immersive sound, and no promise that you'll find your way back. So step off the familiar path if you dare. Listen to new episodes of Full Body Chills every week, wherever you get your podcasts.