Virginia woman who killed man she accused of rape is sentenced
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An Alexandria, Virginia woman who travelled more than 300 miles to kill a man she claimed had raped her four years earlier has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and to using and discharging a firearm during a violent crime on federal property.
She has been sentenced to 22.5 years in prison.
Chelsea Perkins, an ex-Coast Guard veteran, and 35-year-old married mother of two, who went on to work in the adult film industry.
In the spring of 2021, she contacted Matthew Dunmire, 31, an aspiring musician and father whom she already knew.
She planned to meet him in Cleveland, some reports say under the pretence of filming an adult video together for her Onlyfans.
Dunmire had grown up in Virginia, before moving to Cleveland, and four years earlier, Perkins had accused him of rape.
She had reported him for rape to Virginia Beach police in 2017, however, police said there was not enough evidence to file charges against him.
Dunmire talked about his plans to meet Perkins with his co-workers.
On May 5, 2021, Perkins got into her husband’s Smart car and drove over 300 miles from Virginia to Cleveland, where she met up with Dunmire and stayed with him that night at an Airbnb, which she had rented with her own credit card.
The victim’s boss watched him get into the vehicle, and the pair drove to the Airbnb.
While there, Perkin’s messaged her tattoo artist on Facebook messenger, saying she was going to drop by for a tattoo on her drive back home.
The next morning, on May 6, she drove them to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, in Valley View, Ohio, where they hiked together. They started the hike walking through a cemetery, ending up off the trail in the forest.
After walking for a while, they reached a more secluded area of the Terra Vista Natural Study Area, and with no one around, Perkins produced a firearm and shot the victim once in the back of the head.
She then left his body at the scene of the crime, which was later discovered by hikers some days after the killing.
After fleeing the scene, Perkins then drove to Michigan, where she got a tattoo of a noose on her forearm.
Although Perkins made an effort to distance herself from the crime, she left behind DNA both on the victim, and in the surrounding crime scene.
Surveillance camera's had recorded her movements in the area, and licence plate readers identified the vehicle as belonging to her husband, linking her to the victim and crime.
As a consequence, her home was searched, and three 9mm pistols, a purse containing a gun matching that of the bullet that killed the victim, and the suspects identification, was recovered.
At the time, Perkins denied knowing anything about the victim’s murder.
A deleted notes app was also recovered from the suspect’s cell phone, containing what investigators believed to be a fake suicide note that was supposed to look as if it was penned by the victim.
Unable to deal with the grief of losing her son, the victim’s mother, Tommie Lynn Dunmire, 54, attempted to find the killer herself.
She launched her own investigation as she was frustrated with how long it was taking the police to track down her son’s killer.
She misidentified a 30-year-old woman, who was not connected to the crime in any way, as her son's killer.
On November 5, 2021, while dressed in a delivery driver's uniform, with fake licence plates on her vehicle, she tracked the woman down and shot her.
Dunmire had knocked on the door of the victim's Northeast Washington home, claiming to be a UPS driver, saying she had a package addressed to the victim. In reality, the box she was holding contained a revolver that was poking through a hole she had cut in the back .
She shot the victim twice in the abdomen before fleeing the scene.
Lynn Dunmire was confronted by police not long after the shooting and died by suicide.
Tommie Lynn Dunmire’s long-term partner, John Nelson McQuillen, 65, of Norfolk, Virginia, had driven her on the day of the shooting and was later sentenced to 3.5 years in prison after pleading guilty to being an accessory to the crime.
He has since been released.
Nine months later, with the help of the FBI, Perkins was arrested on December 9, 2021.
Perkins admitted to the murder earlier this month as part of a plea offer, one week before she was set to go to trial.
U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver said of the case: “This is one of the most difficult cases I’ve ever had. It’s hard. There’s no real compensation for loss of life.”
Perkin’s apologised to the victim's families, saying that she took full responsibility for what she had done, adding that she had been struggling with PTSD from previous sexual assaults.
She detailed a lifetime of abuse, including growing up in a household where her father beat her mother and sister, being sexually assaulted multiple times as a child, as well as in high school and later in life.
She said: “I wish I would have handled things differently, and two lives wouldn’t have ended the way they did.”
Perkins’ sister said of her character in court: "My sister is not a violent person, she has a very big heart. My heart is heavy today for my family and for the family of Matthew. This never should have happened."
Perkins has been sentenced to 22.5 years in prison.