Ex-Mr. Bungle member found guilty of murdering girlfriend

週五（10 月11 日），實驗搖滾樂隊Mr. Bungle 的一名創始成員因殺害女友而被判犯有一級謀殺罪，此前加州檢察官發現了受害人為女友而戰時在手機上錄製的音頻document.

After a day of deliberations, a Santa Cruz jury found Theobald “Theo” Lengyel guilty of first-degree murder in his death on the evening of December 4, 2023. Killed his girlfriend, Alice “Alyx” Kamakaokalani Herrmann, in their Capitola home. Lengyel faces life in prison and will be sentenced in November.

Lengyel, 55, was arrested in January after investigators found Herman’s body in the woods at Tilden Regional Park in Berkeley. Herman was reported missing last month after she failed to attend a family gathering in Hawaii.

Herman’s boyfriend strangled her to death on Oct. 1, and prosecutors played an audio recording on Herman’s phone pleading for her life, KRON-TV reported.

It’s unclear whether Herman, 61, intentionally recorded the audio or if the app inadvertently recorded it.

District Attorney’s Office Inspector Steven Ryan testified that investigators did not discover the chilling audio file until September 22, 2024, one month after Lengyel’s murder trial began.

The recording begins with Lengiel playing the piano and then getting angry at Herman because she didn’t want to go out and play pool. Herman repeatedly said she didn’t want to go because she had to work at Berkeley the next day.

Minutes into their argument, Lengyel can be heard threatening his girlfriend, saying: “I can smash your brain in.”

According to prosecutors, the verbal argument escalated into a physical altercation. Herman can then be heard gasping for air and pleading for her life.

Lengyel left Mr. Bungle in 1996 after playing saxophone, clarinet and keyboards on several records, including the band’s 1991 self-titled debut and Frisbee 1995.

Mr. Bungle was formed in 1985 by high school friends in Humboldt County, Northern California, with guitarist Trey Spruance, bassist Trevor Dunn and vocalist Mike Patton, who later performed with Faith No More. Mr. Bungle experimented with funk, heavy metal, electronic, jazz and other musical styles and became popular during the alternative rock boom of the 1990s.

In a 2005 Q&A, Dunn stated that Lengill left the band due to bad relations, SF Gate the report said.