Michele Avila – Teen gets pushed into brutal DEATH TRAP

Michele “Missy” Avila‘s story unfolded against a backdrop of friendships turned sour, jealousy that transformed into resentment, and ultimately, an unthinkable act of betrayal

In 1985, a group of hikers were making their way down a trail in this big forest in Southern California. When one of them looked through the trees off to their side, they saw a stream running down parallel to the trail they were on. In this stream, the hiker saw something that just didn’t look right.

The hikers left the trail and made their way down to the stream. When they actually saw the thing that stood out to this hiker that was in the stream, they just stopped and stared at it. It would take investigators another three years before they would finally understand what the hikers had just found.

In 1985, 17-year-old Michele Avila, who just went by the nickname Missy, was a high school junior living in the working-class town of Arlida, California, located just north of Los Angeles. Despite Missy being very physically small—under five feet tall and barely weighing 95 pounds—she had a big presence about her and made her very popular at her school.

Not only was she incredibly beautiful, with boys and girls falling over themselves to try to win her affection, but also Missy was just very kind and gentle and didn’t seem to take herself very seriously. But life for Missy was not all perfect.

A year earlier, during her sophomore year, a nasty rumor had been spread around Missy’s high school that Missy had apparently been sleeping with all these boys who were in established relationships with girls in the school. Even though this rumor was a total lie, by the time it reached the girlfriends of these boys, they believed it.

To get their revenge on Michele “Missy” Avila, one day after school, when she had walked outside, a group of girls ganged up on her and beat her really, really badly. In fact, the beating was so severe that when Missy came home, her family immediately pressed charges on the girl that seemed to kind of lead the attack—her name was Sonia Bonn.

Despite Missy and her family immediately filing these charges, the case dragged for months and months. Finally, by October 1st, 1985, a week before Missy was set to testify, Missy came home from school and told her mom that she had plans that afternoon to go hang out with her friends. This was fairly routine for Missy, who had a big circle of friends, so her mother Irene told her that was totally fine but she gotta be home by 6 pm.

Missy agreed, and then just a couple of minutes later, a 17-year-old girl named Laura Doyle, who was very close with Missy, pulled up outside Missy’s house and honked the horn. Missy said goodbye to her mom and her brother, then left the house, ran to Laura’s car, hopped inside, and the two girls drove off.

A few hours later at 6 pm, Michele “Missy” Avila had still not come home yet. However, her mother Irene was not that surprised. Missy was not a troublemaker but liked staying out with her friends. So it wasn’t uncommon for her to stay out past curfew and then come home and ask for forgiveness. Or she would stay out past curfew and then she would call her mother and ask for more time.

Shortly after 6 pm, the phone rang inside Missy’s house. Irene hears the phone ringing and expects it to be her daughter. She picks the phone up and says hello, but it’s not her daughter. It’s another young girl’s voice—Laura’s voice—the girl who had picked Missy up after school to go hang out with friends.

Before Irene could ask Laura why she was calling, Laura awkwardly asked Irene, “Hey, is Missy home?” Irene would say, “Laura, she left with you. Isn’t she with you?” “No, she’s not here. She’s running late. Why? What’s going on?”

After Irene said this, Laura began to panic. She proceeded to tell Irene what happened that afternoon while she was out with her daughter. She said after she picked Missy up, the two of them drove around town, which they did all the time. At some point, they made their way over to Stonehurst Park, where Missy and Laura and a bunch of their friends would often go and hang out.

They drove over to Stonehurst, made their way into the parking lot, and as soon as they were in there, Laura began looking around for other cars she recognized to see if maybe their friends were there. But after looking around, she didn’t recognize any of the cars. So, Laura reflexively began turning the car around to leave the park.

But as she was doing that, Michele “Missy” Avila stopped her and said, “Wait a minute, I know the guys over there. I want to go say hi.” Laura stopped the car, looked in the direction that Missy was pointing, and on the far side of the parking lot were these two guys who appeared to be maybe in their late teens or early 20s. Laura did not recognize either of them, and they were standing outside of this blue car—a blue Camaro.

Laura was accustomed to Missy just kind of knowing everybody in town because everybody loved Missy and Missy loved everyone. So this type of situation was not totally uncommon. However, Laura was not very excited at the prospect of going and hanging out with these two total strangers to her.

But she could tell Michele “Missy” Avila really wanted to. So she turns to Missy and says, “Okay, you know, go out there, go say hi to them, and I’m gonna park, and I’ll meet you in a second.” Missy hopped out of the car and began walking over to these two guys, waving to them, and they were waving back and smiling at her.

Meanwhile, Laura pulled the car into a parking spot. She was about to get out when she noticed her gas gauge was below empty. She called out to Missy, who was now halfway to these two guys, and she said, “Hey, I’m gonna go fill my car up with gas, and then I’ll come back and meet you.”

Michele “Missy” Avila turned around and said, “Okay, bye.” Laura put her car back in drive, pulled out of the lot, and headed into town to get some gas. A few minutes later, when Laura pulled back into the Stonehurst parking lot, she looked in the direction of where the blue Camaro and the two guys were and where Missy was headed. But they were all gone. Missy was nowhere to be seen.

This was 1985, so Laura could not just call or text Missy to see where she had gone. Instead, Laura sat in the parking lot, looking at the vacant spot where the blue car had been, going over in her mind what she should do. Eventually, she told herself that Missy was a big girl; she could handle herself. She knew those guys; I’m sure everything is just fine. Those guys will drop her off at her house when she needs to go home.

Even though Laura was telling herself this, she would leave the Stonehurst parking lot and spend a while just kind of driving around town, looking for Missy, looking for this blue Camaro and these two guys. After finding none of them, she would head home. Right after 6 pm, Laura picked up the phone and called Missy’s house because she knew Missy’s curfew was 6 pm, and she should be home by now.

But when Missy’s mother Irene picked up the phone, Laura would learn Missy had not come home. Irene and Laura were immediately really worried about Missy. But not to the point where either of them thought they should involve the police. Instead, Laura and Irene spent the next couple of hours calling everybody they could think of who might know where Missy was.

When that yielded no results, Laura and Irene met up that night and began going door-to-door to all of Missy’s friends’ and acquaintances’ houses, asking the occupants if they knew where Missy was. By late that night, no one had given them any information about Missy’s whereabouts. Still feeling very concerned about Missy, Laura and Irene decided the best thing to do was to go back home, go to bed, and hope in the morning Missy turned up or someone contacted them with information about where Missy was.

The following morning, Michele “Missy” Avila had still not turned up, and no one had heard from her. So that morning, Irene went to the police and told them what was going on. Immediately, the police honed in on Laura and began going over every single detail of what that blue Camaro was doing, what those two guys looked like, what Missy said about these two guys, did you get any information about where they might go or who these guys were.

Laura, totally guilt-ridden and emotional about being the last person to see Missy before she apparently vanished, tried to give every bit of information she possibly could about what had happened that day. Unfortunately, she was just too far away from these two guys and their vehicle. She could only give them a sort of basic physical description, which Laura even admitted was not very accurate because it was really far away, and frankly, she wasn’t looking that hard.

After getting all the information they possibly could from both Laura and Irene, the police launched a very extensive search all over Arlita, California, and the surrounding areas. While they were doing that, Irene and other members of Missy’s family, along with Laura and other close friends of Missy’s, began their own search.

After a couple of days, neither the professional search nor the amateur search had turned up any new information about Missy’s whereabouts or the whereabouts of those two guys and their blue Camaro. But then, on October 4th, just three days after Missy went missing, Missy would be found. However, it would take investigators another three years to finally make sense of what actually happened to her.

Based on eyewitness testimony, here is a recreation of what happened to Missy on the day she vanished:

On that day, which was Tuesday, October 1st, 1985, Michele “Missy” Avila came back from school. She told her mother she wanted to go out and hang out with her friends. Her mother told her, “Okay, be home by six,” and then a couple of minutes later, Laura pulled up outside and honked the horn. Missy ran outside, hopped in the car, and they drove off.

The pair would drive around town for a few minutes before making their way to Stonehurst Park. Now, to understand what happens next, you need some context. Missy had two best friends—one of them was 17-year-old Laura Doyle, who she was with, and the other was another 17-year-old girl named Karen Severson.

These three girls had met when they were in grade school, lived basically on the same street, and spent virtually every second of every day together. However, a month earlier in September, the trio had a falling out because another rumor about Missy sleeping with boys who had girlfriends began circulating around the school. Except this time, the girlfriends in the rumor were Laura and Karen.

Of course, Laura and Karen were well aware of the fact that a year earlier, Michele “Missy” Avila had been accused of something similar and it had all been a big lie

And so, going into this new rumor, Laura and Karen knew that the likelihood of it being real was very slim. But because this rumor directly involved them and their boyfriends, they felt a little concerned. Laura and Karen went to Missy and they said, “Hey, we don’t think it’s true, but is it true? Did you sleep with our boyfriends?” Missy immediately replied, “Are you kidding me? No, I didn’t sleep with your boyfriends. Did you see what happened last year? It’s the same thing, it’s a lie, it’s just a rumor. I can’t believe you would think I would do that to you.”

Pretty quickly, this discussion escalated to a full-blown fight between the girls, or more specifically, it turned into a full-blown fight between Karen and Missy. Laura was worked up about it, but pretty quickly, she was able to calm down. Karen, however, didn’t calm down because apparently, Karen had seen Missy at some point flirting with her boyfriend. So when this rumor began to circulate, Karen felt like, “You know what, it could be true. She might have had sex with my boyfriend.”

Eventually, the three girls just stopped fighting, not because they had reached some sort of compromise, but rather because Michele “Missy” Avila just tried to turn around and walk away. And when she did, Karen wound up and slapped her across the face. As soon as that happened, all three girls knew a line had been crossed, and now their decade-long friendship was potentially ruined. Over the next couple of weeks, Missy and Laura were able to come together and patch things up, but Missy and Karen continued to avoid each other.

However, the distance between them really wore on both of them. Finally, on the morning of October 1st, Karen would reach out to Missy and she would apologize. Missy was really touched by this, and before long, Missy, Karen, and Laura had made plans for that afternoon to meet up at Stonehurst Park to have a good day together, just like old times.

So that afternoon, Laura picks up Michele “Missy” Avila from her house, and the two of them drive around for a bit before heading over to Stonehurst Park, where they’re planning to meet Karen. But when Laura pulls the car into the parking lot, they look around, and Karen is not there. The blue Camaro and those two guys standing around it on the far side of the parking lot? They weren’t there either because Laura had made up the blue Camaro and those two guys. It was all just a big cover-up for what happens next.

So, Laura and Missy, they pull into the parking lot at Stonehurst, park in a spot, and proceed to wait for Karen. Karen would show up just a couple of minutes later, but when she showed up, all hell broke loose. Karen came flying into the parking lot and came to a screeching stop right up alongside Laura’s car. Karen had parked her car so close to Laura’s car that Laura literally couldn’t open her door without striking Karen’s car.

And in Karen’s car, in the passenger seat closest to Laura’s car, was a terrified-looking 17-year-old named Eva Chirumbolo, who was friends with all three of the girls. That day, Karen had apparently asked Eva to come over for dinner, but after picking Eva up without giving her any explanation, she had flown over to Stonehurst and then came to this screeching stop right next to Laura’s car.

So Eva is sitting in the passenger seat looking at Karen and looking over at Laura and Missy, having no idea what’s going on. Karen begins yelling at Eva to roll her window down, and so Eva rolls her window down. Laura and Missy are looking over in absolute astonishment, and once the window is down on Eva’s side, Karen begins screaming across Eva out the window at the car that Laura and Missy are in.

So Laura and Michele “Missy” Avila exchange totally confused looks, and then Laura rolls her window down, and suddenly Laura and Missy can hear what Karen is yelling. Karen is hurling the most vile and horrible insults at Laura, not at Missy. It takes Laura a second to realize what Karen is yelling about, but once she realizes that Karen is just ruthlessly insulting her, Laura turns and begins hurling insults back at Karen.

So the whole time, Laura and Karen are just screaming at each other. Missy and Eva are just sitting in their respective passenger seats, having no clue what’s going on. Just as quickly as Karen had arrived and begun screaming at Laura, Karen put her car back in drive and sped right out of the parking lot.

Laura, at this point, is totally incensed and enraged at Karen for some of the things she had said. So Laura fired up her car, threw it in drive, and before Missy could tell her otherwise, Laura had sped out of the parking lot after Karen. For the next 45 minutes, Karen and Laura drove like absolute maniacs north of the city, up into the mountains.

While they’re driving, Karen is swerving side to side, speeding along these desolate roads. Laura would speed up and get right on her bumper like she was experiencing this extreme case of road rage. For the first few minutes, both Missy and Eva were desperately trying to get their drivers to calm down and just pull over. “Whatever you’re fighting about, it’s not worth crashing and dying over.”

But little did Michele “Missy” Avila or Eva know there was something much much bigger going on between Laura and Karen. And so their requests to stop the cars fell on deaf ears. Finally, after this 45 minute white-knuckle insane drive along these mountain roads came to an end when the road they were on kind of funneled them into this dirt parking lot in the middle of this huge forest. And as soon as they reached this parking lot, Karen came to a stop and Laura narrowly avoided smashing into her and came to a stop right next to her.

And as soon as the two cars were stopped, both drivers hopped out and were immediately in each other’s faces, shoving each other, screaming at each other, just continuing this awful fight. Eva just stayed in the passenger seat and did nothing. She was just hoping that whatever was going on would eventually end and they could leave. But Missy, she’s looking out there at her two best friends who seem like they’re about to kill each other.

And so Missy decides she’s gonna get out and try to separate them. And so she begins to open her car door and the second she does, both Karen and Laura, who were maybe five or six feet away from her car door, they both immediately stopped fighting. It was like a switch had been thrown and whatever was going on had come to a complete and total stop.

And at the same time they have suddenly stopped fighting, both girls simultaneously turn and look at Missy. And before Missy could say or do anything, Karen and Laura ran over and positioned themselves right outside of Missy’s door so Missy could no longer shut the door. And Missy could not get out of the car. She was totally trapped. And as soon as Karen was in position right outside of the car, Karen kind of got down and got right in Missy’s face and with a very menacing and hissing voice, she looks at Missy and says, “You know this whole thing was a joke. Me and Laura, we weren’t actually fighting. We’re not mad at each other, but we are mad at someone. We’re mad at you.”

And then Karen and Laura would reach down and pull Missy out of the car. And they would slam her back up against the side of Laura’s car. And then Laura and Karen pressed up against her and began screaming at Missy that she had slept with their boyfriends and they knew it. And this whole time Missy is trying to tell them, “No, I didn’t. I did not sleep with your boyfriends. I don’t know what’s going on.” But at some point Karen and Laura were screaming so loudly and they were right on top of her that Missy just kind of began to shut down and she went quiet and kind of tucked herself into a ball.

And as soon as this happened, Karen and Laura, they grabbed Michele “Missy” Avila and they began pushing her away from the car towards a trail that led into the forest. And Missy, she’s 4 foot 10, 95 pounds. She’s tiny. And Karen was five foot two over 200 pounds and Laura was five foot six inches tall and weighed 135 pounds. And so Missy knew she could not put up a fight. She had no chance against these two.

And so Michele “Missy” Avila just kind of began shuffling her feet, walking towards this trail. And periodically, Karen and Laura would walk up and push her to walk towards this trail. And as this is happening, Eva, who had been sitting in the car the whole time, she finally got out and kind of walked up behind the group but didn’t participate. She just walked along behind them.

And so after a couple of minutes, Karen and Laura had managed to push Missy all the way to the actual start of the trail, this narrow trail that left the parking lot. And at that point, Laura walked around Missy so she was in front of her and Karen stayed behind Missy. And the two girls ordered Missy to keep following them into the woods. And Missy did not put up a fight. She just put her head down and continued walking along the trail behind Laura with Karen behind her periodically pushing her. And then several steps behind Karen was Eva who just continued to do nothing.

After the girls had walked for a little while on this trail and were out of sight of the parking lot, Laura came to an abrupt stop. And she turned around to face Missy. And by this point, Missy was genuinely terrified. She was crying, she had her head down, and she was just hoping that her captors were going to let her go. But once they stopped and Missy looked up at Laura, Laura wound up and decked Missy right in the face. And as soon as she hit Missy, Karen immediately jumped in. And before long, Missy was on the ground getting punched and kicked and stomped on by Laura and Karen. And again, Eva just stood there watching, doing nothing.

Eventually, Laura and Karen would stop beating Missy. And at that point, Laura would pull out a knife and she would reach down and she would grab Missy’s hair and she began hacking it off. Missy was not a vain person, but she loved her hair. It had to be perfect anywhere she went. It was her prized possession. And Laura and Karen knew it. And so Laura, she begins hacking off the hair with her knife and Karen, who wanted to get involved but didn’t have a knife, just began grabbing Missy’s hair and ripping it out with her fists.

Finally, after much of Missy’s hair had been hacked off of her head, Laura and Karen stopped and just stood up and looked down at Missy, who was now in the fetal position just crying to herself. But Laura and Karen were not done. At this point, they got out restraints and they tied Missy’s hands behind her back and they gagged her mouth.

And again Eva did nothing. Once Missy was completely restrained, Laura got up and began walking towards a nearby stream that was about 10 feet away from them down a hill. And so Laura gets down to the stream, she wades in about halfway where the water comes up about eight inches on her leg, and then she turns around and she looks up the hill at Missy, Karen, and Eva who’s off to the side. And Laura, while staring directly at Missy, she reaches down and begins running her fingers through the water and says to Missy, “Why don’t you come down and get in the water with me?”

When Michele “Missy” Avila didn’t move, Karen, who was standing next to her, hauled her up and then pushed her down the hill. Missy doesn’t have the ability to brace her fall because her hands are bound, and so she slams down on her face and she rolls down to the edge of the water, and there she stops. And before Missy can get up, Karen and Laura had descended on her. They’d grabbed her by the shoulders and they began dragging her out into the water.

And so Eva, who’s watching this happen again, does nothing and just turns around and begins running down the trail back towards the cars. When she gets to the cars, she discovers they are both locked, so she can’t go anywhere. And she was too far away from anywhere to walk, and so her only choice was just to go back down the trail to where her friends were.

And so Eva goes back to this trail, and she begins walking in the direction of the stream. And as she’s walking before she can see any of the girls, she hears a terrifying blood scream coming from somewhere deep in the forest. And Eva was so terrified that she stopped where she was, she turned around, and she ran back to the cars.

Eva would sit down on the ground between the two cars, and she would begin to rock back and forth. After nearly an hour of doing that, Karen and Laura suddenly emerged from the trailhead, soaking wet and laughing. Missy was not with them. After Ava had turned around and run away from the stream to go back to the cars the first time, Laura and Karen had grabbed Missy, dragged her into the water, and laid her on her stomach in the eight inches of water.

 

So Michele “Missy” Avila is trying desperately to keep her head out of the water, but Laura comes around and grabs her legs and presses them into the water. And then Karen comes around and grabs the back of Missy’s head and forces her head down into the water. Missy would start fighting for her life, trying to wriggle her way out of the water. And at some point, she would manage to get out from under their grasp.

And as soon as her head cleared the water, she took in a big breath and then let out that piercing horrifying scream that Eva heard as she was walking back down the trail, which scared her and caused her to run away again. And after Missy let out that primal scream, Karen readjusted her grip and pressed her head back into the water.

Missy would continue to squirm and fight against Karen and Laura, and periodically she’d get her head up out of the water just enough to get a little gulp of air. And then she’d choke down a bunch of water and have her head pushed down into the water again until finally Missy’s strength just started to ebb.

And when Karen and Laura sensed that Missy was on the verge of death and she was very weak, they seized the opportunity. They leapt off of her just long enough to run over to the side of the stream where there was this big heavy log, which investigators would later determine weighed over a hundred pounds. So it weighed more than Missy.

And Karen and Laura, they’d pick this log up, they’d walk back into the stream, and they dropped the log directly on the back of Missy’s head, forcing it down into the water permanently. A few minutes after drowning Missy in the stream, Karen and Laura walked out of the trail. They got into their cars, Eva climbed into Laura’s car, and the girls just left the parking lot and drove back home, leaving Missy in the woods.

Three days later, a group of hikers were in that forest near where Missy had been killed and they spotted her body in the stream. When police arrived, they found cigarette butts, a beer bottle, and men’s overalls lying out near where Missy was found. These items were there entirely coincidentally; they had nothing to do with what happened to Missy, but they somehow made the lie about Missy being with those two guys in their Camaro before she vanished seem more believable.

Mostly because when Laura described these two guys to the police, she kind of made it seem like they were bad boys or troublemakers, like the type of guys who would go off into the woods and smoke and drink for fun. And so the police just continued to chase down this two guys and a blue Camaro lead until the murder case went cold.

But three years after Michele “Missy” Avila was murdered, Eva, who had been threatened by Karen and Laura never to say a word about what she knew, finally came forward to police and told them that Karen and Laura had killed Missy.

When Karen, Laura, and Missy became teenagers, Missy really blossomed into this beautiful young woman who everybody seemed to adore. Meanwhile, Laura and Karen had the opposite experience; they felt awkward in their bodies and felt like no one really liked them. And so, in time, they became very jealous of Missy, and that jealousy turned into resentment, and that resentment turned into hatred.

So, in 1984, it was Karen and Laura who started that rumor about Missy sleeping with all these boys who had girlfriends. And that lie would get Missy attacked and beat up really badly. But that wasn’t enough for Karen and Laura; they felt like Missy deserved worse. And so the following year, in September of 1985, Laura and Karen decided to kill Missy.

Their plan began with spreading another rumor about Missy, about how she was sleeping around with boys with girlfriends, except this time the girlfriends in this rumor would be Laura and Karen. They did this knowing this rumor would start a fight between the three of them. And they knew that Missy just would not be able to be mad at her friends; she would want to make up with them.

And so, Karen and Laura, they start this rumor; it does cause a big blowout fight between the three of them. But then after this fight, Laura very intentionally makes up with Missy and kind of says, “Hey, you know, let’s make things right again.” And so she pretends to be friends with Missy. And then a couple of weeks later, on the morning of October 1st, Karen would contact Missy. She would tell her how sorry she was, and she asked her, “Hey, do you want to get together today, all three of us, just like old times?”

And Michele “Missy” Avila fell right into their trap because she was so excited at the prospect of getting to spend time with her two best friends who she really did love. And so she quickly agreed to meet up with them. And so Laura and Missy, they arrive in the parking lot of Stonehurst Park, and then Karen comes flying in. And there’s this huge fight and there’s this 45-minute drive up into the mountains where they reach this parking lot, and Karen and Laura are fighting with each other, and Missy has no idea what’s going on.

And then all of the sudden, the fighting stops because the fighting wasn’t real; it was all rehearsed. Laura and Karen had done that in order to throw Missy off guard and to get her up into this forest up in the mountains where they could kill her. It’s unclear why Laura and Karen brought Eva along, but most likely she was brought along as a decoy as well.

After Missy’s body was found and the police were on this mad hunt to find these two guys and the blue Camaro, Karen actually moved into Missy’s family’s home. She told them she just wanted to offer support during this really difficult time, but in reality, she just wanted to keep close tabs on the investigation.

And any chance she got, she wanted to make sure she threw police and Missy’s family off of her and Laura’s trail. And so for months, Karen slept in Missy’s bed, she ate at the same dinner table where Missy would eat with Missy’s family, and Karen would spend hours out in the car with Missy’s mother, Irene, and other members of Missy’s family, driving around looking for clues about where Missy could have gone or who really was responsible for Missy’s death.

When the truth finally came out three years later that Karen and Laura had been the ones who killed Michele “Missy” Avila, Missy’s family could not believe that their daughter’s killer was literally living with them the whole time.

Ultimately, Laura and Karen would be found guilty of killing Missy, and they would each be sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. Karen Severson was paroled in December of 2011, and Laura Doyle was paroled a year later in December of 2012.