The prostitute who injected a Google executive with a fatal dose of heroin before leaving him to die has revealed her regrets five years after he died.
Alix Tichelman, 31, was jailed for six years over the death of Forrest Hayes, a father-of-five found dead on a yacht in California in 2013, but was released last year after serving just two before being deported to Canada.
Speaking from her new home, Tichelman said she thinks about Hayes every day and is wracked with guilt for not calling 911 as he fell unconscious.
Alix Tichelman, 31, served two years of a six year sentence for injecting Google executive Forrest Hayes with a fatal dose of heroin on a yacht in California in 2013
Tichelman, who now lives in Canada after being deported, says she regrets abandoning Hayes as he died and thinks about him ‘every day’
In an interview with The Sun, she said: ‘I just wish I had done something different, then his kids would still have a father.
‘I take responsibility for what I did. I should have stayed, I should have called 911.’
Tichelman revealed she met Hayes through website Seeking Arrangement which matches up ‘sugar daddies’ with male or female ‘sugar babies’.
She claims the pair met just once before the night in question when they had dinner.
Hayes then invited her on board the yacht in November 2013 and asked her to bring a stash of drugs with her.
She said he was not interested in a sexual relationship, contradicting police claims that she met Hayes several times for drug-fueled sex, but instead wanted her to inject him with heroin.
Tichelman said he gave her a Valium pill before they climbed aboard the boat and that she dosed herself with heroin first, before giving a dose to him.
‘He wasn’t very experienced with heroin but he seemed very at ease and excited about it,’ she said.
Almost immediately after injecting him, Tichelman said he began to ‘drop off’ but she initially didn’t think anything was wrong, having passed out herself several times while using heroin.
The former prostitute rejects police claims she calmly and coldly abandoned Hayes to his fate, saying she flew into a blind panic and didn’t know what she was doing
But after she was unable to rouse him she claims she flew into a panic, before collecting her things and leaving.
Police said she ‘calmly and coldly’ collected her things and left, stepping over Hayes’ body to finish a glass of wine before dropping the blinds to hide his body from view.
She disputes that claim, saying she flew into a blind panic and agonized over calling 911 while driving back to Sacramento.
Knowing that Hayes was a family man she decided against alerting the authorities and tried to make it look as if he was alone on the yacht.
Tichelman admits that Hayes’ five children might still have a father if she had decided to call 911 after he ‘dropped off’
Because he gave an alias of ‘Tim’ during their meetings she had no way of knowing that he had died until police arrested her eight months later in a sting operation.
She was initially arrested for first degree murder but the charge was later downgraded to involuntary manslaughter, for which she was given six years.
Tichelman, who had a privileged upbringing in Atlanta, Georgia, and then California, was freed from prison on March 29 last year.
As soon as she stepped outside the prison gates, ICE agents took her into their custody.
Tichelman completed drug rehab programs during her time in jail because she was addicted to heroin.
She grew up in a wealthy, upper-class family but rejected her privileged upbringing.
Tichelman became addicted to heroin and turned to high-class prostitution to support herself.
According to her Facebook profile, Tichelman went to high school in Atlanta, Georgia, majored in journalism at Georgia State University, and worked as a dancer, makeup artist, and model.
Her ex-boyfriend, 53-year-old monkey trainer Dean Riopelle, died from a heroin overdose in Georgia two months before Hayes’ death. His death was ruled as accidental.
After Tichelman was charged in California, police in Milton, Georgia, took another look at the 2013 overdose death of Riopelle. He was the owner of a popular Atlanta music venue, the Masquerade
After Tichelman was charged in California, police in Milton, Georgia, took another look at the 2013 overdose death of Riopelle. He was the owner of a popular Atlanta music venue, the Masquerade.
Authorities said a panicked Tichelman had called Milton police, saying Riopelle had overdosed on drugs and wasn’t responding. Tichelman was not charged.
An autopsy report listed Riopelle’s death as an accidental overdose of heroin, oxycodone and alcohol.
WSB-TV reported that Tichelman had been arrested two weeks prior to Riopelle’s death for biting him, and friends called their relationship volatile and abusive.
Captain Shawn McCarty with the Milton Police Department said: ‘It’s still conjecture, looking at the similarities of the two situations, but obviously we’re going to go back and look at it and make sure that everything determined to be correct, almost a year ago, is still factual and still accurate.
‘Both subjects in these cases died of heroin overdoses so there’s just several factors we want to look at to make sure that we didn’t miss anything.’