Hikers find man’s body after he spends night with woman at OH Airbnb, feds say
A Virginia woman faces 20 to 25 years in prison after officials said she killed a man in a national park in Ohio.
Chelsea Perkins, 35, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and using or carrying and discharging a firearm during, and in relation to, a crime of violence on federal property, according to a May 27 news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Ohio.
McClatchy News reached out to Perkins’ attorney for comment but did not immediately hear back.
In 2017, Perkins accused a man of raping her, but he was not prosecuted, WOIO and other outlets reported. Four years later, she is accused of killing him, authorities said.
According to court records, on March 5, 2021, Perkins traveled to Hudson to meet the 31-year-old man who was out at a bar with co-workers.
The man left the bar with Perkins and the two went to an Airbnb in Cleveland, a criminalh complaint said.
The next morning, the man texted his girlfriend saying he just woke up and was going to donate plasma, and asked that she not be upset and he did not “sleep with her,” court records said. He went on to say, “Well I pissed this chick off anyway so I hope (you’re) happy,” according to the complaint.
The man’s phone GPS data showed that he arrived at the Terra Vista National Study Area in Cuyahoga Valley National Park at around 9:45 a.m., the complaint said.
A couple at the park that day later told investigators that between 11:30 and 11:50 a.m. they heard a gunshot, court records said. Another couple told detectives they came across a woman matching Perkins’ description, who was looking for a cemetery and seemed “confused and expressed no emotion,” the complaint said.
On March 9, the man’s body was found near the Terra Vista National Study Area by a group of hikers, officials said. He had been shot in the back of the head.
Investigators used eyewitness accounts, GPS and phone data, and surveillance footage to show Perkins was with the man the night of March 5 and was at the park the next day, court documents said. The Airbnb was also rented out in her name, the complaint said.
When investigators went to Perkins’ Virginia home that March, they found the car that she was seen using when she picked the man up and a gun inside a woman’s purse that had her DNA on it, according to court records.
The man’s body also had DNA on it and under his fingernails matching Perkins, authorities said.
However, Perkins wasn’t arrested for another nine months, Cleveland.com reported.
The man’s mother tried to investigate on her own and in November 2021, she dressed up as a UPS driver and shot a woman in Washington, D.C., who she thought killed her son, according to the news outlet. She then died by suicide, according to authorities and media reports.
Perkins is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 9.
Hudson is about a 30-mile drive southeast from Cleveland.