commentary by Patrick H. Moore
The recent death of Silicon Valley executive Forrest Hayes from an overdose of heroin, and the subsequent arrest of fetish model and high-priced call girl Alix Tichelman for administering the lethal “shot” on Hayes’ yacht, has naturally aroused interest, and as a way of pointing “an even longer finger” at Tichelman, law enforcement has stated that she was also involved in an earlier heroin overdose death which is now reportedly being re-investigated.
Kathleen Foody and Terry Collins of AP have posted an interesting article about Ms. Tichelman’s peculiar and decadent lifestyle and the earlier OD death in which she was allegedly involved. It turns out that the “victim” of the earlier OD was not a “client/john”, and was probably not a victim, at least not of Ms. Tichelman. The dead man was her boyfriend, a man named Dean Riopelle, the entrepreneurial-minded owner of a popular Atlanta music venue and the lead singer of a hard rock band called the Impotent Sea Snakes.
According to Foody and Collins, police in California say Tichelman had many clients in the wealthy Silicon Valley area, but it wasn’t clear how long she had been involved in prostitution. The police have also stated that after she had injected Hayes with the fatal shot, she had done online searches on how to defend herself legally for having administered the lethal dose.
Based on the timeline that has been pieced together, it is possible that Ms. Tichelman was a relative newcomer to the world of “high-priced hooking”, inasmuch as she and Dean Riopelle had been living together in the Atlanta area only a few months before Riopelle’s death.
According to Riopelle’s sister, Dee Riopelle, her brother and Tichelman had been dating for about two and a half years and had lived together.
Rock Artist and Music Entrepreneur Dean Riopelle
Dean Riopelle’s band, the Impotent Sea Snakes (ISS) in which he sang lead, was known for its wild stage shows and sexually explicit lyrics. In online videos, the band is shown performing at a massive music festival in Germany, with its members dressed in drag. (Few can compete with our friends, the Germans, when it comes to decadence.) Dean Riopelle and ISS, however, had clearly done their best to rise to the challenge. Riopelle, who performed under the stage name “13,” wears a long pink wig, a leopard-print jacket, platform boots and tight pants, and sports diabolical whiskers.
With this kind of pedigree, I could hardly resist checking out ISS’s Germany show at the Wacken Festival in 2005, and I was not disappointed. The band, which is very well-rehearsed and plays smokin’ hard rock, prances, dances, and – according to some definitions — entrances.
The song I clicked on first is called “Kangaroos (Up the Butt)” and contains the following rocking chorus:
I like to f___ kangaroos (up the butt)
I like to f___ kangaroos (up the butt)
I like to — you get the picture…
What a dude! The song has over 64,000 YouTube “listens” but has almost as many “dislikes” as “likes”.
In another video, ISS plays some totally fine hard rock (no lyrics) while a masked man in uniform with an industrial grinder assaults (boy do the sparks fly) and ultimately carries off a half-nude woman, while footage from what is apparently Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” plays in the background. This song has over 140,000 listens and far more “likes” than “dislikes”.
In a comment following the video, a personage with the handle Tradenation writes:
“How come no one ever brings up the fact that Marilyn Manson completely stole his entire act/routine from these guys? I remember seeing them in, like, ’93 or something down in Atlanta at a place called the Masquerade. I thought someone had slipped acid in my beer.”
Speaking of the Masquerade, guess who owned it and had for years: Of course, Dean Riopelle. Foody and Collins describe the Masquerade as “an Atlanta music venue that is a popular destination for rock, punk and metal acts. Housed in a former mill, the venue is composed of three levels: “heaven” upstairs; “purgatory” on the main floor; and “hell” downstairs.”
It turns out that Riopelle “was also known for his love of monkeys, as evidenced by his well-kept property in Milton. Just to the right of Riopelle’s home stand large animal enclosures, which include a barrel strung up by rope and fencing extending to the top.” (There is no evidence that I am aware of that Riopelle ever had sex with his monkeys.
No dummy (except when it came to drugs and alcohol), Riopelle had earned a degree in construction engineering at the University of Florida (although other reports say he only attended UF for two semesters), but according to his sister, had decided that engineering wasn’t for him “when a boss (told him) to cut his hair and wear a bigger tie. He opened his first bar, which he also called the Masquerade, in the historic Ybor City neighborhood of Tampa, Florida.” (We’ll have to hope that ATCB contributor Mike Roche fills us in on the history of Ybor City.) Riopelle moved to Atlanta about 25 years ago and opened the Masquerade there.
According to his sister, over the years, Riopelle also opened several sports bars and a fetish bar.
“He was very, very wise when it came to business sense. Everything Dean touched turned to gold.”
Was Alix Tichelman Trying to Keep Up with Dean Riopelle?
It would appear (and I am only theorizing) that Alix Tichelman viewed Riopelle as an excellent “catch” and may have arranged her own life in a manner designed to interest and attract him. Keep in mind that Riopelle would certainly have had no problem attracting the “fairer sex”, kangaroos notwithstanding, and Alix would certainly have faced competition from her “sisters-in-arms”.
Numerous social media postings, photos and other articles online suggest Tichelman was pursuing a career as a fetish model and a life with Riopelle — one photo posted on her Facebook page shows her displaying a diamond “promise ring” given to her by Riopelle.
In a 2012 interview with a fetish magazine, fIXE, under the pseudonym AK Kennedy, Tichelman describes herself as a model, writer and makeup artist.
She also said she was interested in bondage, dominance, sadism and masochism, or BDSM. She said she and Riopelle would go to clubs, with her wearing a collar and leash.
Photos that accompany her interview show her in sexually suggestive poses wearing a variety of skimpy outfits, including a studded leather jacket with thigh-high fishnet stockings.
It All Comes Crashing Down for Alix
It is perhaps a moot point that it’s hard to maintain a lifestyle epitomized by this degree of decadence, and by September of last year, things were turning increasingly rancid for our happy, loving couple.
On Sept. 6, an intoxicated Tichelman called police and reported that Riopelle threw her to the ground. Riopelle told the officers that she had taken pills and had been drinking, and had made the mistake (in Riopelle’s eyes) of stage diving and exposing her breasts at the Masquerade. Our noted moralist, Riopelle, said he took Alix home because he did not approve of her behavior. Keep in mind that this is a man who has fronted ISS shows in which masked men in uniform go after half-naked women with industrial electrical grinders. But whoever said one needs to be consistent?
Riopelle clearly won this round. He told police that she bit him on the finger (oh my god, how dare she?) and threatened to hit herself and blame it on Riopelle. A neighbor confirmed hearing Tichelman making the threat; she was charged with battery and arrested, while successful business man and Atlanta entrepreneur Riopelle was released.
Bad Goes to Worse
They say that “the time comes” for all men (and women) and less than two weeks later, a panicked Tichelman called 911, saying her boyfriend had overdosed on something and wouldn’t respond. She told a dispatcher that his eyes were open but that he was unconscious. In the 911 tapes released on Thursday, she can be heard saying, “Hello, Dean? Dean, are you awake?”
According to the police report, Tichelman tried for five minutes to revive him before calling 911. She reported that she had been in the shower when she heard a crash and came out to find her boyfriend unconscious. She said she didn’t know what drugs he had taken, but that he had been on a “bender the last few days” and had been taking painkillers and alcohol.
Riopelle died in the hospital one week later. The autopsy report listed his death as an accidental overdose of heroin, oxycodone and alcohol.
It is always a mistake to mix alcohol and opiates.
Noted entrepreneur and rock artist, Dean Riopelle, was a big boy, who after 25 years of juggling business success and decadence, chose to get “a little too loaded” and paid for it with his life.
Tichelman was never charged in Riopelle’s death, but at this point the Milton, Georgia police say they’re going to re-examine Riopelle’s death:
“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,” Milton police Capt. Shawn McCarty said.
Riopelle, however, didn’t just die of a heroin overdose; rather; he died of what was apparently a lethal drug and alcohol combination. Nevertheless, the witch hunt is on and friends of Riopelle’s are voicing there suspicions that Alix is responsible for Riopelle’s death and that “good old Dean” would never “go down that road” (the heroin road). But whatever. Let’s all gang up on the femme fatale!
According to a recent article WSB-TV2 article:
Investigators said Tichelman, who is originally from Georgia, called police two months earlier to report that she found her then-boyfriend, Dean Riopelle, unconscious on the floor of his home.
The Fulton County Medical Examiner confirms Riopelle died from an overdose of heroin, oxycodone and alcohol.
Channel 2 Action News learned Thursday that Tichelman told Santa Cruz police she gave Riopelle heroin before he died.
According to a police report, Tichelman said she tried to revive Riopelle for about five minutes before she called 911. She told police that he had been having a rough time but did not believe he overdosed intentionally.
To whatever degree Tichelman may or may not be reasonably viewed as being responsible for Riopelle’s death, and my sense is that she really is not responsible, there is no doubt that she walked out on Forrest Hayes after after injecting him with heroin and left him in the cabin of his yacht to die. It should be remembered, however, that Hayes WANTED her to inject him with heroin, never anticipating that something would go wrong that would cost him his life.
Based on the surveillance video, after Hayes passes out, Tichelman leaves the cabin of the boat, looks back inside, then pulls down a window blind, closes a door and leaves.
“Never does she call 911 or call out to others in nearby boats for help. She never tries to administer any aid to him,” says Santa Cruz Deputy Police Chief Steve Clark. “She is more concerned about getting herself out and concealing evidence than helping Mr. Hayes.”
Clark has stated that investigators learned that Tichelman later did online searches “on how to defend herself after giving a lethal dose of heroin” and that she planned to leave California late last month, possibly for Georgia, or that she maybe even planned to leave the country.
* * * * *
The fact that Alix Tichelman was apparently not a “working girl” prior to Riopelle’s death suggests to me that she more or less fell apart after her boyfriend’s untimely, but not entirely unexpected death.
Rather than cleaning up her own act and getting grief counseling or some form of professional help, which she no doubt needed, she “kept on running” and moved to Silicon Valley where she started “servicing the big boys”, who undoubtedly needed little encouragement. It is also noted that Alix herself is a CEO’s daughter.
Where does this leave her legally speaking? Here, we need Rick Stack’s input. My sense is that she will ultimately be convicted of some form of manslaughter, perhaps via a plea deal, and will probably not receive a particularly long sentence. But you never know, not with the witch hunt kicking into high gear. Under the new California realignment law, which only sends violent criminals and sex offenders to state prison, she may serve her time in county jail, unless her offense is considered to be a “crime of violence.”
Click here to view our previous Alix Tichelman post:
High-Priced Silicon Valley Call Girl Allegedly Gave Google Exec a Fatal Heroin Overdose