Three years passed
Three years passed.
From late 1985 to mid-1988, the Michelle Avila case sat silent in the police archive like thousands of other cold cases across California.
No new leads, no suspects, no anonymous calls, no sudden confessions, just silence.
The heavy kind of silence that the victim’s family must live with every day while the rest of the world forgets their daughter ever existed.
Irene Avila did not forget.
She could not forget.
She woke up every morning in the house where Missy had grown up, walked past her daughter’s room, saw the things Missy had left behind, and lived with the question no one could answer.
“Who killed my daughter and why?” And during all that time, at least in the early period, Karen Severson was still there, still in the house, still playing the loyal friend, still shedding tears at the right moments, still saying the right things.
>> >> The justice system had given up.
Police had moved on to other cases.
But there was one person who did not give up.
Not because she was brave or had a plan, >> >> but because she could no longer live with the secret.
Eva Chirumbolo, the fourth girl in the car that day, >> >> the one who had gone with Karen, Laura, and Missy into the Angeles National Forest on October 1, 1985.
The one who had watched three girls walk into the deep woods by the stream, but only saw two come out.
For 3 years Eva lived with that knowledge.
She knew what had happened to Missy.
She knew who had killed Missy, and she stayed silent.
>> >> Why did Eva stay silent for 3 years? The answer is not as simple as people think.
Eva was a teenager then, the same age as Karen and Laura.
She lived in the same social circle, same neighborhood, same school.
Her fear was not abstract.
She was afraid of Karen Severson and Laura Doyle.
She was afraid that if she spoke, the same thing would happen to her.
She had witnessed with her own eyes two of her friends kill another friend.
She knew they were capable of it.
And she knew that if she opened her mouth, she would become a threat that needed to be handled.
Besides fear, there was guilt.
Eva had been there.
She had sat in the car.
She had gone with them to the forest.
And even though she did not directly kill Missy, even though she said she did not go deeper into the woods with them, >> >> her presence was still part of the story.
She was afraid that if she spoke, she would also be charged.
She was afraid of prison.
>> >> She was afraid her family would know she had been there when Missy died.
And she was afraid of the look in Irene Avila’s eyes.
If Irene knew that Eva had known the truth the whole time and said nothing.
But secrets have weight, and that weight grew every day.
Every time Eva saw news about the case.
Every time she heard someone mention Missy’s name.
Every time she closed her eyes and saw the stream bank again.
3 years was long enough for the fear to start becoming smaller than the weight of conscience.
And on July 26, 1988, Eva Chirumbolo walked into a police station and told the truth.
She told the police the entire story.
She described the 45-minute drive into the mountains.
She described the four girls in the car.
She said that when they reached the stream bank, Karen and Laura had confronted Missy, screaming at her about boyfriends.
She described how Laura grabbed Missy’s wrists and pulled her into the water.
How Karen pushed Missy toward Laura.
Eva said she did not go deep into the woods, that she did not witness the exact moment Missy died, but she knew.
She knew because she had seen three girls walk into the forest and only two come out.
She knew because the faces of Karen and Laura, when they returned to the car, were not the faces of people who had just gone for a walk in the woods.
And she knew because three days later, when Missy’s body was found, Karen and Laura were not surprised, not shocked, not panicked.
They just started acting.
Eva Chirumbolo’s statement changed everything.
In one day, the three-year cold case suddenly came alive.
Police now had a witness, names, a story, a direction.
And that direction pointed straight at the two girls no one had suspected for three years.
In July 1988, Karen Severson and Laura Doyle were arrested.
Both were charged with first-degree murder, the most serious charge that can be applied to intentional, premeditated killing.
News of the arrests spread through Arleta and the San Fernando Valley like a shockwave.
People who had known Missy, Karen, and Laura could not believe it.
Neighbors who had seen Karen going in and out of the Avila house every day could not believe it.
And Irena Villa, who had let her daughter’s killer live under her roof for nearly three years, had to face the most brutal truth a mother can imagine.
The person she trusted most, the person she thought shared her pain, the person who had hugged her and cried hundreds of nights, was the one who had caused all that pain.
Irene later said she had asked why she did not see it.
She was the mother, why didn’t she see it? But the truth was no one saw it.
Karen Severson had carried out a deception so perfect that even the police, trained to detect liars, never looked her way.
Eva Chirumbulo was not charged.
Prosecutors determined she was a witness, not an accomplice.
She had been present on the trip but did not participate in the killing.
The decision not to charge Eva was strategic.
She was the only witness who could recount what happened that day.
Without Eva, the case would still be a cold case.
Without her testimony, there would be no trial.
Without a trial, there would be no justice for Missy.
And the price of obtaining that testimony was immunity for the person who had stayed silent for 3 years.
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The trial date was set for September 18, 1989, more than 4 years after Missy’s death, and more than a year after Karen Severson and Laura Doyle were arrested.
Both entered the Los Angeles County Superior Court and pleaded not guilty.
Not guilty to first degree murder.
Not guilty to anything.
They looked straight at the justice system and said they were innocent, that they did not kill Mikaela Avila, that the whole story was wrong.
These were two girls who had held their best friend’s face underwater until she stopped breathing, who had placed a 100-lb log on her body, then gone home and called the victim’s mother asking to speak to the person they had just killed.
And now they stood in court and said they had done nothing.
The trial began, and the prosecution’s most important witness was Eva Chirumbulo.
Eva entered the courtroom and recounted the entire story she had kept inside for 3 years.
She described the afternoon of October 1, 1985.
She told about the 45-minute drive into the mountains.
She described the atmosphere in the car, normal at first, then changing as they approached the Colby Ranch area.
She said that when they reached the stream bank, Karen and Laura turned to confront Missy, accusing her of sleeping with their boyfriends.
She described Missy crying, trying to explain, trying to beg.
She described Laura grabbing Missy’s wrists and pulling her toward the water.
Karen pushing Missy toward Laura.
Eva testified that she did not go deeper into the woods, that she did not witness the final moment.
But she saw three girls walk in and only two come out.
And she knew when she looked at Karen and Laura’s faces as they returned to the car that Missy was no longer alive.
Eva’s testimony was not the only evidence.
Prosecutors also presented testimony from Victor Amaya, Laura’s ex-boyfriend, who confirmed that Laura had directly threatened to kill Missy in July 1985, 3 months before the murder.
That threat was not a fleeting, impulsive remark.
It was evidence that the intent to kill had existed months before the act was carried out.
Prosecutors also presented physical evidence from the scene, autopsy results confirming the cause of death as forced drowning, and details of the post-murder behavior, Laura’s phone call to Irene, the fabricated story about three guys in a green Camaro, and especially Karen moving into the victim’s family home.
Prosecutors argued this was first-degree murder, an act that was premeditated, intentional, carried out systematically from luring the victim to a remote location to covering up afterward.
The prosecution’s position was clear.
This was a deliberate torture and execution of Missy, and needed to be treated as such.
The jury deliberated.
They discussed for about one day.
And on January 31, 1990, both Karen Severson and Laura Doyle, then both 22 years old, were found guilty.
But not of first-degree murder, of second-degree murder.
That verdict felt like a punch in the gut to the Avila family.
Guilty, but not to the full extent.
Why did the jury not convict of first-degree murder? Jury members later explained that they were not convinced the murder was premeditated.
They believed Karen and Laura had killed Missy.
That was no longer in doubt.
But they thought it was a crime of passion, not a prearranged assassination.
The jury looked at two 17-year-old girls at the time of the crime and saw the impulsiveness of adolescence, rather than the cold calculation of a planned killer.
That was how they saw it.
The prosecutors did not agree, and many people following the case did not agree.
They pointed out that Karen and Laura had driven 45 minutes into remote mountains, taken the victim to a location with no witnesses, carried out the murder, concealed the body under a log, then executed a false alibi script immediately afterward.
That entire chain of behavior did not look like an impulsive act.
It looked like a plan.
But the jury had decided, and in the American justice system, a jury’s decision is final.
The sentence was pronounced in March 1990.
Karen Severson and Laura Doyle each received 15 years to life.
15 years was the minimum before becoming eligible for parole.
>> >> Life was the maximum if the parole board decided they did not deserve freedom.
The prison doors closed behind the two girls who had killed their best friend.
>> >> And for the Avila family, that was justice.
Not perfect, not complete, but at least justice.
At least the world had said that what Karen and Laura did to Missy was wrong, was a crime, was deserving of punishment.
But the story did not end there.
In 1997, both became eligible for parole for the first time.
In the parole hearings, for the first time, Karen Severson partially admitted the truth.
She admitted that she had arranged the plan to take Missy into the forest that day.
But she said the original purpose was only to torture Missy, not to kill her.
She wanted to teach Missy a lesson.
She wanted Missy to be scared, wanted Missy to cry, wanted Missy to know how it felt to be attacked.
But she had no intention of killing.
That was Karen’s version of the story.
The version she told the parole board in the hope that they would believe her, that they would see the difference between someone who wanted to torture and someone who wanted to kill.
The parole board was not convinced.
The parole application was denied.
Laura Doyle was more honest, although it took many more years.
In a 2002 parole hearing, Laura finally admitted that she had lured Missy to her death.
She admitted her direct role in the murder.
But she also made clear that Karen Severson was the mastermind, the catalytic figure, the one who had pushed everything forward.
Karen denied that.
She still maintained the version that she only wanted to torture, not kill.
The two killers blamed each other before the parole board, each trying to minimize her own role by increasing the others.
But the truth lay at that stream bank.
Both were there.
Both participated.
Both held Missy under the water.
And Missy still died.
Karen Severson was released from prison on December 9, 2011, after serving 21 and a half years.
Laura Doyle was released in December 2012, after serving 22 years.
Both walked out of prison as middle-aged women, nearly 20 years older than Missy had been when she died.
Missy Avila died at 17.
She never graduated high school, never went to college, never married, never had children.
>> >> Never knew what the rest of her life would have been.
And the two people who took all of that away from her, after more than two decades in prison, were given the chance to start over.
Irene Avila did not hide her feelings when she heard the news of the releases.
She said bluntly, “I don’t understand why people who commit murder get released”.
That is a question millions of victims’ families across America have asked, and there is no answer that lessens the pain.
If the story ended with the releases, it would already be painful enough.
But Karen Severson did not allow the Avila family peace.
In 2014, nearly 3 years after getting out of prison, Karen began promoting a memoir she had written about the murder.
A book in which she described in detail the death of Missy Avila, her best friend, the person she had held face-down underwater until she stopped breathing.
>> >> Karen Severson, the one who had lived in the victim’s family home for 3 years pretending to grieve, now wanted to make money by telling that story to the public.
In promotional interviews for the book, Karen said that jealousy and arguments about boyfriends had led to Missy’s death.
She said, “I pushed her.
I was tired.
I was frustrated”.
She said the murder was not premeditated and that Missy did not deserve to die.
She said she had left the scene, that the Avila family no longer had a daughter, no longer had a sister, and that she no longer had a friend, as if she were also a victim.
As if losing a friend that she herself had killed with her own hands was a pain equivalent to the pain of a mother who had lost her only daughter.
>> >> Karen said she was donating part of the book sales and her telemarketing wages to an anti-bullying campaign named after Missy.
When asked if she was donating all of the money, Karen replied, “I didn’t say all of it.
I have to live, too, and jobs are hard to find”.
The killer wanted to keep part of the profit from recounting how she killed her best friend, and she thought that was reasonable.
News of the memoir hit the Avila family like a storm.
Shavon Avila, Missy’s sister-in-law, was the first to speak out.
She told the media it felt like the family was fighting for Missy’s life all over again.
>> >> Not fighting the killer the first time, not fighting through the trial, but fighting the idea that the killer of their daughter, sister, niece could turn the crime into a source of income.
Irene Avila, who by then had aged many decades since the last night she saw Missy walk out the door, spoke words that carried 29 years of suffering.
She said, “My daughter is dead in the ground and Karen is going to profit from writing a book about it.
There has to be a law to stop that.
Tell Karen to go to hell.
I am her worst nightmare”.
That was not momentary anger.
That was 29 years of compressed suffering exploding through the words of a mother who had lost everything and now had to watch her daughter’s killer turn that pain into a commodity.
The story was broadcast by Eyewitness News and the public reaction exceeded all expectations.
Hundreds, then thousands of viewers flooded social media expressing outrage.
The book distributor, under pressure from public opinion, set the price of the book to zero ensuring Karen Severson would not make a single cent from it.
But, the Avila family did not stop there.
They wanted to change the system, not just stop one book.
In March 2015, the Avila family filed a civil lawsuit against Karen Severson, the publisher, and everyone involved in making money from Missy’s death.
Shavon Avila stood in court and said directly, “Today we are suing a brutal killer who has profited from her crime.
This is not about us making money from the lawsuit, but so the public knows that criminals are being paid in California”.
The Avila family also began advocating for a new law.
California once had a version of the Son of Sam law, a law preventing criminals from profiting from recounting their crimes, named after the serial killer David Berkowitz in New York.
But the California Supreme Court had struck down that version in 2002, ruling that it violated the First Amendment right to free speech.
Shavon Avila worked with the organization Crime Victims United to draft a new law that could withstand constitutional challenges.
She named that law Missy’s Law.
In October 2015, Governor Jerry Brown signed Missy’s Law into law.
Shavon said the family had cried with joy and opened champagne to celebrate.
30 years after Missy’s death, her name was finally attached to something other than tragedy.
Because of the First Amendment, the law could not prohibit criminals from telling their stories, but it required companies partnering with criminals to publish or produce works to notify the victims’ families about the project.
It ensured that victims’ families would never be blindsided by their loved one’s killer making money from the crime.
That was not perfect justice, but it was the closest thing to justice the legal system could provide.
Nina Salerno Ashford from Crime Victims United said she admired the Avila family because they were willing to set their pain aside to push for change, that that sacrifice would make a difference for so many other victims across California.
The Mikaela Avila case also became the subject of many media works.
In 1991, journalist Karen Kingsbury published Missy’s Murder, Passion, Betrayal, and Murder in Southern California, based on her coverage of the case.
The book became the primary reference for the case and was highly regarded for the way the author illustrated the pain the victim’s family endured.
The case was adapted into a television movie called A Killer Among Friends, with actress Patty Duke playing Irene Avila.
The film aired nationally and brought the story to millions of viewers.
In 2013, the case appeared on the Investigation Discovery program Unusual Suspects in an episode titled Deadly Forest.
And in December 2014, Karen Severson sat in front of the camera on The Dr. Phil Show and gave an interview about the murder.
Every time the case appeared in the media, the Avila family had to relive the entire pain.
Every time a new book, a new program, a new podcast mentioned Missy’s name, the wound opened again.
But the family also understood that every time the story was retold was another time Missy’s name was remembered, not as an anonymous victim in a police file, but as a real girl, a real person, a real life taken by jealousy and betrayal.
Irene Avila became an unofficial symbol of the fight for victims’ rights in California.
Not because she wanted that, but because life forced her to become that person.
She lost her only daughter.
She was deceived by her daughter’s killer for 3 years.
She had to endure the killer being released.
And she had to fight to stop the killer from making money off her daughter’s death.
Each of those stages would be enough to destroy most people.
Irene Avila survived them all.
The meaning of the Michelle Avila case goes far beyond a murder among teenage girls.
It is a lesson about jealousy when left unchecked, about how the most ordinary emotions of adolescence can deform into deadly violence when no one recognizes the warning signs.
It is a lesson about trust, about how the most dangerous person is not the stranger in the shadows, but the person standing right beside you, smiling at you, hugging you, saying they love you.
And it is a lesson about the limits of justice, about how 15 years to life for two killers of a 17-year-old girl ultimately became only 21 and a half years and 22 years before the prison doors opened.
On October 1, 1985, Missy Avila walked out of her home in Arleta, California, waved goodbye to her mother, and got into the car with her best friend.
She weighed 95 lb.
She was under 5 ft tall.
She was 17 years old.
And she believed the people in that car were her friends.
Three days later, her body was found face down in a remote stream in the Angeles National Forest, pinned under a 100-lb log.
Her hair had been cut.
Her hands were tied behind her back.
Her killer was not a stranger.
Her killers were two girls who had known her since she was 8 years old, who had shared secrets with her, who had slept over at her house, who had been loved by her mother like daughters.
And one of those two killers, after killing Missy, moved into the very house where Missy had grown up, >> >> hugged Missy’s mother, and cried every night, and pretended to grieve for 3 years.
The case went cold for 3 years.
One witness broke the silence.
Two killers were convicted, and one family never stopped fighting.
Missy Avila is buried at San Fernando Mission Cemetery in Mission Hills, California.
Her grave lies quietly in the cemetery, only a few miles from the house where she grew up.
She never had the chance to grow up, but her name is now attached to a law protecting victims’ families across California.
Missy’s Law, that is her legacy.
Not the legacy she chose, but the legacy her family built from the ashes of tragedy.
You can kill a person, but you cannot kill the memory of them.
Not when there are people who refuse to let that memory be buried.
This is Cold Case Reopened.
We tell the stories of forgotten victims >> >> and the people who refuse to let them be forgotten forever.
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