TRIAL COMING—Bryn Spejcher, at left, is accused of murder in the May 2018 death of Chad O’Melia, below. O’Melia, 26, was killed in the Casa de Oaks condominium he shared with two roommates. He was working at a Camarillo accounting firm at the time of his death. Acorn file photo
The coroner who performed the autopsy on Thousand Oaks homicide victim Chad O’Melia testified Tuesday that the 26-year-old was stabbed 108 times by multiple knives, with wounds from his head to his knee.
Assistant Chief Medical Examiner Othon Mena shared his findings May 7 at the preliminary hearing for Bryn Spejcher, a former audiologist accused of murder in O’Melia’s death. At the end of the hearing, Judge Ferdinand Inumerable ordered Spejcher, who is free on $510,000 bail, to stand trial.
Tuesday’s hearing came three weeks short of the anniversary of O’Melia’s death. The Santa Clarita native was found dead May 28, 2018, in the condo off Thousand Oaks Boulevard he shared with two roommates.
Spejcher, 28, who is hard of hearing, listened with the help of a talk-to-text computer program.
The prosecution called eight witnesses, including Sgt. Steven Jenkins, who spoke with Spejcher multiple times and observed an interview with her at Los Robles Regional Medical Center following her arrest three days after the incident. Spejcher was in the hospital recovering from a combination of injuries, some self-inflicted, when she spoke with a Ventura County Sheriff’s Office detective May 31, the day of her arrest.
Acorn file photo
Jenkins testified Tuesday that Spejcher told police she’d gone to visit O’Melia, whom she’d met about a month earlier and had started a romantic relationship with, between 10 and 10:30 p.m. May 27 after spending the day with friends in Santa Barbara, where she had consumed a small amount of alcohol.
At some point during the visit, Jenkins testified, O’Melia went outside to smoke marijuana and Spejcher said she’d like to try it as well.
After she smoked and didn’t feel any effect of the drug, O’Melia reloaded the clear glass bong and filled the chamber with thick smoke, Spejcher told law enforcement.
She told the detective they both took a second hit.
Chad O’Melia Courtesy photo
Her physical reaction to the second hit was not good, according to Jenkins’ testimony.
“She felt like it was a puff of smoke in her lungs that wouldn’t exhale. She felt like she couldn’t breath,” the officer said.
She also told police she felt like she was going to vomit and had blurry vision, Jenkins said.
To help her, O’Melia brought her bottles of water and was by her side talking to her, he reported.
At one point, she shared concerns with O’Melia that she believed her ailments were lethal, Jenkins testified.
“She asked Mr. O’Melia to stay with her and stay awake because she believed she was dying,” he said.
Spejcher told the interviewing officer she became angry because she was high but O’Melia was not. She went on to describe what she called a vision in which she believed she was dead and it was O’Melia’s fault because he gave her the marijuana, Jenkins said.
At some point, she began stabbing O’Melia, Jenkins testified. The officer said Spejcher also remembered stabbing her Siberian husky, Arya.
She told the interviewing officer she believed her vision to be real and she had to hurt O’Melia to bring herself back to life, he said.
“She described voices telling her to ‘Keep fighting, keep doing what you’re doing,’” Jenkins said. “She described how the more violent she was, then she felt like she was coming back to life.”
That transitioned to the voices telling her to hurt herself instead, Jenkins testified.
Spejcher had to spend four days at Los Robles hospital to recover from her injuries, including self-inflicted stab wounds to her neck and a broken arm she suffered at the hands of responding officers, who alleged that she refused to drop the knife. She went into surgery immediately upon arriving at the hospital.
Blood tests on Spejcher revealed the presence of marijuana only, said Scott Colley, a forensic scientist with the sheriff ’s crime lab. An examination of the burned plant material remaining in the bong and the five grams of marijuana collected from O’Melia’s apartment revealed no drugs beyond THC, the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, another sheriff’s department forensic scientist testified.
Pool of blood
Earlier in Tuesday’s proceedings, Sgt. Russell King told the court about arriving at the Maegan Place condominium and finding Spejcher kneeling with her back to him. It wasn’t until he moved forward that he saw O’Melia lying on his back with a large amount of blood on and around him, King testified.
“(I) saw her, with her right hand, raise a large knife,” he said, describing the blade to be about 8 inches long, serrated, with a round tip.
King said he believed he was going to have to shoot Spejcher to stop her from stabbing O’Melia, but she changed course.
“I saw the defendant plunge the knife into her own neck,” he said.
When asked under cross examination by public defense attorney Damon Jenkins (no relation to the sergeant) whether Spejcher had any reaction to the knife in her neck, King said no.
Attorney Jenkins also posed a number of questions to Sgt. Jenkins regarding the reading of Spejcher’s rights—before she was questioned—not to speak to officers and to have an attorney present.
The attorney asked about how long after surgery her rights were read to her and whether she had symptoms of being under the influence of medication. The sergeant answered that he didn’t know the time since the surgery but said Spejcher didn’t show any symptoms of being under the influence of drugs when he interviewed her.
The public defender also asked the officer if Spejcher ever indicated she wanted to halt the interviews and get an attorney. The detective said Spejcher kept talking even after her mother told her from outside the room to stop. He said the detective interviewing her made it clear to Spejcher that she could stop talking at any time and he would leave.
A request by the defense attorney to have police interviews with Spejcher kept from the proceedings was denied.
Mena testified that O’Melia died due to multiple sharp-force injuries. The wounds were a combination of stab wounds and less-deep incisions made by at least two types of sharp objects, likely knives—and one likely a serrated knife, he said, based on the characteristics of the wounds.
Mena said he believed the majority of O’Melia’s wounds were caused when he tried to block the attack. On cross examination, he said he does not take into account when ruling a death a homicide whether the person doing the killing is acting in self-defense.
Some of the stabbings caused injury to his trachea, the internal jugular vein, common carotid artery, lungs, heart and liver, the medical examiner said, while members of O’Melia’s family sitting in the gallery cried.
Spejcher is due back in court Mon., June 10. The Chicago-area native has no criminal record. She moved to Thousand Oaks in 2017 to work for UCLA Health. Her audiology license was revoked after her arrest.
A graduate of Chico State University, O’Melia was working for a Camarillo accounting firm at the time of his death. He was studying to become a CPA, the firm has said.