By Douglas Quan, The Province
A high-end call girl convicted in the overdose death of a Google executive is facing possible deportation to her native Canada after being detained by U.S. immigration authorities.
Alix Tichelman pleaded guilty two years ago to involuntary manslaughter and administering drugs to Forrest Hayes, 51, who was found dead on his Santa Cruz, Calif., yacht in November 2013 from a heroin overdose.
Video surveillance showed that Hayes had slumped over and lost consciousness after Tichelman injected him. But Tichelman did not call for help and instead wiped away evidence, gathered her belongings and left the scene.
After serving about half her sentence, Tichelman was released last week by the Santa Cruz County Jail only to be picked up by federal immigration officers.
“Ms. Tichelman was taken into custody by deportation officers with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) March 29,” ICE spokesman James Schwab said in a statement Wednesday. “Department of Homeland Security databases indicate Ms. Tichelman has multiple prior criminal convictions, including convictions for involuntary manslaughter and a felony drug charge. She will remain in DHS/ICE custody pending removal proceedings.”
The Santa Cruz Sentinel newspaper reported court documents showed Tichelman had dual citizenship in the U.S. and Canada. But local TV station KSBW cited a source who said Tichelman was living in the U.S. on a green card.
The station also reported that Tichelman was scheduled to appear before a federal immigration judge in San Francisco on Wednesday, but neither Schwab nor a spokeswoman for the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review was able to provide any updates about her case, citing privacy reasons.
An immigration expert told KSBW that Tichelman’s chances of staying in the U.S. did not look good given the seriousness of her crime and the notoriety surrounding it.
The tawdry case received widespread media attention. Headlines described Tichelman variously as the “Harbor Hooker” and the “Call Girl Killer.”
An in-depth piece by the CBS news program 48 Hours titled “Kiss of Death and the Google Exec” described how Hayes, the father of five, had met Tichelman on a dating website called SeekingArrangement.com.
CEO Brandon Wade described the website to 48 Hours as a “Sugar Daddy dating website” that matched wealthy men with women they could “pamper and spoil.”
Hayes had hired Tichelman multiple times, it was reported. Their last encounter took place on Hayes’ yacht, called Escape, in the Santa Cruz harbour.
“She was so callous that, in gathering her things, she was literally stepping over the body and at one point … to grab a glass of wine and finish the glass of wine,” Santa Cruz police spokesman Steve Clark said in a TV interview in 2015.
Hayes was described in his online obituary as a loving father and husband who “more than anything else … enjoyed spending time with his family at home and on his boat.”
Several months after Hayes’ death, an undercover detective set up a profile on the same dating website to set up a rendezvous with Tichelman. That’s when she was arrested.
Tichelman describes herself on one of her social media accounts as a “makeup artist/model/stylist/hustler/writer/baddestbitch/exotic dancer.”
Media reports indicate she grew up in the U.S., but spent part of her early childhood attending a private school in Surrey, B.C.
Her parents live in the state of Georgia, but their Facebook profiles show links to the Vancouver area.
They could not be reached for comment Wednesday. The lawyers who represented Tichelman in her criminal proceedings did not respond to messages.
