Pals Mourned Missy Avila’s Dying, Then Have been Accused of Murdering Her

After her 17-year-old daughter was discovered drowned in a shallow physique of water, her waist-length auburn hair hacked off and a 100-lb. log over her physique, Irene Avila took consolation within the firm of her daughter’s greatest pal, sharing of their mutual grief.

The pal, Karen Severson, moved into Irene’s dwelling, vowing to seek out the killer that had left Michele Avila alone in California’s Angeles Nationwide Forest in October 1985.

“She turned like a daughter to me,” Irene advised PEOPLE in a 1989 interview.

Usually, the 2 stayed up speaking in regards to the lovely, common woman who everybody referred to as “Missy,” whose physique was discovered by hikers two days after she hopped right into a automobile with one other pal, Laura Doyle.

Doyle had later claimed that she had dropped Missy off with three boys driving a blue Camaro. 

For the subsequent three years, the one leads have been false ones, and the case went chilly. 

Then, one other pal, Eva Chirumbolo, got here ahead, based on the factual background of the case summarized by a choose in response to a writ of habeas corpus beforehand filed within the case. 

Chirumbolo advised investigators that she had been with the opposite women once they headed to the nationwide forest.

Because it turned out, Doyle had not too long ago had a break-up along with her boyfriend — and she or he blamed Missy for it. The concept that Missy was guilty, based on PEOPLE’s earlier reporting, had come from Severson.

Strolling within the forest, Doyle and Severson referred to as Missy promiscuous, per the submitting, and Doyle grabbed her by the hair and chopped off a part of it. The 2 – who have been taller and larger than Avila, who weighed simply 97 lbs. – then compelled her right into a shallow creek, tied her palms behind her again, gagged her and compelled her head underneath the water till her physique stilled. 

Then, they left her, trapped underneath a log heavier than her personal weight.

In July 1988, Doyle and Severson have been arrested in connection to Missy’s homicide, and have been every later convicted of second-degree homicide and sentenced to fifteen years to life.

After years of mourning the lack of her daughter along with her daughter’s personal assassin, Irene started to see these first grief-stricken months in another way.

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Severson had been obsessive about Missy’s case, visiting her grave a number of instances per week and adorning her bed room partitions with footage and newspaper clippings about her pal. Usually, she took beer to the creek the place Missy had been discovered, consuming on the crime scene.

She even mentioned Missy was haunting her: She noticed her useless pal sitting on the couch and she or he even blamed her when her van would not begin after a visit to the gravesite. “Missy, let me go!” she screamed, per the encounter described in PEOPLE’s earlier protection of the case.

Though Doyle had saved extra distance from Irene, she had additionally often dropped by to go to the grave, per the submitting, which provides that she additionally “furnished false leads” to investigators.

The California Board of Parole Hearings later famous, per the submitting, that it was “particularly disturbing” that each ladies had stayed in such shut contact with Missy’s household, at the same time as they “carried on a charade” about not realizing what had occurred to her.

Each ladies have since been launched. Severson was paroled in December 2011, and, after 22 years behind bars, Doyle was paroled in July 2020.

Severson went on to publish a memoir in regards to the homicide, resulting in the 2015 signing of Missy’s Regulation, which ensures that convicts in California couldn’t revenue off of their crimes.

In a 1989 jailhouse interview with PEOPLE, by which she claimed she was harmless, Severson talked about a boy she had been focused on, claiming Missy had “moved in on my territory,” and saying, “I simply could not take it anymore.”

However Missy’s household advised PEOPLE on the time that it was extra sophisticated than that. “She was Missy’s greatest pal,” Irene mentioned “however she was jealous of Missy’s household, Missy’s seems to be, Missy’s recognition and even Missy’s relationship with me.”

Missy’s brother Mark added: “Karen needed to be Missy.”