Khristina Brucker couldn’t say for certain if Alix Tichelman truly meant what she said. But there was more than a flicker of doubt as she looked on in shock at the scene unfolding in front of her.
‘Don’t you ever get in the way of me and your father,’ Tichelman screamed at the tearful child before her. ‘If you ever get in the way I”ll kill you, you little b***h.’
At the time Khristina viewed the showdown between Tichelman and the 13-year-old daughter of Tichelman’s then lover, Dean Riopelle, as profoundly disturbing.
[....]
Because Tichelman’s relationship with Riopelle ended in his death; a death now being investigated for its similarities to that of the man she now stands accused of murdering.
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Recently uncovered surveillance footage on the boat captured Tichelman cooking up and injecting Hayes with heroin.
Police allege she stood idly by as he clutched his chest and lost consciousness before calmly gathering her belongings and stepping over his body to finish her glass of wine.
Perhaps most sinister of all is not that she left and didn’t look back, but rather that she did – callously surveying the dead or dying man before pulling down a window blind and leaving.
Now, speaking
[...
Khristina Brucker, 20, who lived with Tichelman and club owner Riopelle, 53, in their home in Georgia as nanny to Riopelle’s son, 15, and daughter, 13, has given a new insight into the woman whose challenging gaze burned into cameras trained on her in court
[....]
She has told of the toxic atmosphere of violence and fear that Tichelman brought into the home, of her murderous threats and how the death of Forrest Hayes is not the first time that Tichelman calmly stepped over the wreckage of a life and left.
[....]
‘She is one of the most conniving and two-faced people I have ever met. She put a rift in that family that was almost irreparable. Dean’s daughter, I can tell you for sure has got some serious trauma.’
Tichelman and Riopelle dated for two and a half years and lived together for much of that time. On the surface they were a match that made sense and at the beginning, the relationship was happy.
Riopelle was the lead singer of rock band, Impotent Sea Snakes, known for its wild stage shows and sexually explicit lyrics. On stage and on tour he went by the name ‘13’ and wore wigs, platform boots and tight pants. Back at home he was the owner of Masquerade, an Atlanta music venue that is a popular destination for rock, punk and metal acts.
[...]
seemed an ideal fit for the image Tichelman has projected of herself on social media and in person. She has claimed that she and Riopelle would go to clubs with her wearing a collar and leash – playing out the bondage, dominance, sadism and masochism, or BDSM, fetishes that she professed to ‘love.’
But between May and August 2012 when she left the couple’s
[...]
home because of Tichelman’s behaviour, Christina caught flashes of the troubled and troubling character that lay beneath Tichelman’s thick layers of make-up, her tattoos and her sexually provocative posturing.
And she saw how her boss, Riopelle, appeared increasingly uncomfortable, distrustful and even fearful, of his lover.
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She thought she was the most beautiful girl on the planet and was always jealous of other girls. She was very, very vain.’
Numerous ‘selfies’ show Tichelman – pouting and posing, partially clothed or wreathed in the leathers and chains of bondage.
In her online ‘life’, Tichelman leaves a trail of breadcrumbs - hints of what she refers to as a ‘dark side.’ Demons and past grievances are spliced with boasts of great happiness and strange ethereal writings.
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Tichelman posted the quote, ‘I will be thin and pure like a glass cup. Empty. Pure as light. Music. I move my hands over my body – my shoulders, my collarbone, my rib cage, my hip bones like part of an animal skull, my small thighs. In the mirror my face is pale and my eyes look bruised.
‘My hair is pale and thin and the light comes through. I could be a lot younger than twenty four I could be a child still, untouched.’
[...]
that year she posted a note in which she adopts a tone that is angry and unforgiving.
It reads, ‘Sick of all the lies and all the pain you have given me, Wrapped up in a bow like I thought I was supposed to be,
'But now you’re laying in a box, waiting to suffocate,Saving your last breath as you scratch at your coffin case. I know I’m crazy, but vengeance is mine.’
As with much of Tichelman’s writings the line between what is reality and what is fantasy is obscured.
But whether fantasy or something closer to truth veiled in poetry there is no escaping the disturbing overtones of the lines written by the woman who has the words ‘Hell is Love’ inked below her collarbone.
Tichelman’s behaviour in public was often distasteful to Khristina
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‘We went out a couple of times and she was so vain she wouldn’t talk to people who were kind and nice to her.
‘She’d put on pounds of make-up and put on ridiculous amounts of slutty and promiscuous clothing’,
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‘I’d take her to a bar because we didn’t trust her to drive and Dean didn’t trust her to go out anywhere alone. He would send me with her. He said he wanted me to be friends with her, wanted me to like her.’
But how could Khristina like the woman whom she witnessed threatening Riopelle’s teenage daughter on more than one occasion?
[....]
‘Alix and Dean’s daughter hated each other, and I don’t blame her. I’d be very upset if someone evil took my daddy too. I could tell there was a lot of damage done by Alix.
‘Alix called his daughter a sociopath and would say, “Don’t you ever get in the way of me and your father, if you ever get in the way I’ll kill you, you little b***h.” It was very disturbing.
‘I had an apartment in their basement and the daughter would come down to me and stay with me. She would tell her dad, but Alix had him wrapped around her finger.’
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with her charm offensive are Facebook postings that see Tichelman returning to some calcifying grievance, past bitterness and seemingly unquenchable anger.
What was eating away at her in June 2012? When she posted
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‘I don’t have to forgive, but that doesn’t mean I can’t let it go. Knowing my life is better than theirs, I have an amazing boyfriend who takes care of me, and a sound and clear conscience when I got to sleep at night. Priceless.’
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the woman Khristina dismissed as a ‘gold digger’ seemed to have ‘sealed the deal’ with Riopelle posting a picture of the couple smiling and a ring along with the words, ‘thank you to my beloved Dean! **black and white diamond promise ring** always and forever.’
‘Always and forever’ didn’t turn out to be very much longer for Riopelle. Just over a year after that posting he was unconscious on his bedroom floor as an apparently panicked Tichelman dialled 911.
By then there had been evidence of Tichelman’s not-so-latent violence. Most notably
[...]
when she called the cops and claimed that Riopelle had thrown her to the ground.
Riopelle rebuffed the claims telling police that Tichelman had taken pills and alcohol and repeatedly stage dived and exposed her breasts in his club until he felt compelled to take her home.
[....]
that Tichelman had bitten his finger and threatened to hit herself and claim that he had beaten her, was backed up by a neighbour who heard the disruption. Tichelman was charged with making the false report and bond set at $5000. It was just a murmur of what was to come.
Two weeks later Riopelle collapsed at home. Tichelman
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that he had been drinking and taking painkillers, that she had tried to revive him for five minutes before calling 911 and that she had been in the shower when she heard a crash.
Riopelle died in hospital five days later- cause of death was found to be accidental overdose of heroin, oxycodone and alcohol. Just how ‘accidental’ is now under review.
[...]
A week or two after [he died] she left for California. She didn’t really love him or care for him, she just wanted his money. She was a gold digger but whatever she did she kept a great fit, toned body and she could easily wrap men around her finger'.
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men seem to fall before her feet. Two of them never got back up and a third, it has now emerged, is in jail – serving time for his role in the death of a 32-year-old woman who died in eerily similar circumstances to both Ripoelle and Hayes.
