Murder, drugs, call girls and court rooms – the most recent headline-making scandal at sea has all the calling cards of disrepute.
Google executive Forrest Timothy Hayes was found dead on his yacht, Escape, in November 2013 in Santa Cruz Harbor in California. Thanks to surveillance cameras installed on board, what happened to Hayes wasn’t left a mystery.
On the night in question, Forrest Timothy Hayes had hired a call girl named Alix Tichelman – as he had several times previously. According to authorities, Tichelman injected the Google exec with heroin, then left Forrest Timothy Hayes alone without seeking help when he passed out from an apparent drug overdose.
Video footage captured on the yacht showed Alix Tichelman casually gathering her things, finishing a glass of wine and stepping over the motionless Hayes before lowering the blinds and leaving the yacht.
Tichelman was arrested eight months later, and on May 19, 2015, she pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and administering drugs. A Santa Cruz County Superior Court judge has sentenced her to six years in prison.
Alix Tichelman’s defence attorney, Larry Biggman, says, “It was an accidental overdose between two consenting adults”, and expects to have her sentence reduced to only three years, with a year credited for time served.