Ohio — A U.S. Coast Guard veteran turned OnlyFans model is facing a decades-long prison sentence for luring and killing a man she claimed raped her in the woods of an Ohio national park.
Chelsea Perkins pleaded guilty on Tuesday to second-degree murder in the 2021 death of 31-year-old Matthew Dunmire at Cuyahoga Valley National Park near Cleveland, according to court records.
According to a probable cause arrest affidavit, Dunmire’s body was discovered by hikers in the park’s Terra Vista Natural Study Area on March 9, 2021, around 11 a.m. He had a single gunshot wound in the back of his head and an Aquafina water bottle beside him.
FBI agents later discovered Dunmire had gone to a bar with friends and coworkers four days before his body was discovered.
Dunmire informed them that he was going to meet a woman who was in town for the weekend. The woman arrived in a white car, and his boss watched him enter and leave.
License plate readers revealed that the car belonged to Perkins’ husband. Investigators later discovered that the pair drove to an Airbnb that the defendant had booked with her credit card.
According to investigators, after spending the night with Dunmire, Perkins informed her tattoo artist in metro Detroit via Facebook that she was in Cleveland and would “make a stop first” before driving to Michigan.
On the morning of March 6, 2021, they drove to the national park. Hikers reported hearing a gunshot between 11:30 and 11:50 a.m.
Another pair of hikers reported encountering a woman, later identified as Perkins, who was walking and appeared to be lost. They thought it was odd that she was wearing knee-high boots rather than hiking gear.
Perkins then drove to a tattoo shop in Michigan. Agents identified Perkins as a suspect and discovered the same car parked outside her husband’s home in Virginia a few weeks later.
According to police, the suspect’s DNA was found on both the Aquafina bottle and Dunmire’s body.
Perkins, who served in the Coast Guard briefly, went on to become an OnlyFans model under the name Sabrina Savage, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
According to the newspaper, police in Virginia Beach determined that there was insufficient evidence to pursue Perkins’ rape allegation against Dunmire.
The case took an unexpected turn in November 2021, when Dunmire’s parents, upset that Perkins had not yet been arrested, took matters into their own hands.
According to federal authorities, Dunmire’s mother, Tommie Lynn Dunmire, and father, John Nelson McQuillen, drove to Washington, D.C., with the intention of killing Perkins.
Tommie Lynn Dunmire, dressed as a UPS driver, knocked on an apartment door. When a woman replied, she shot her twice in the abdomen.
What’s the problem? The woman who answered the door was not Perkins; the older Dunmire had just shot a woman with no connection to her son’s murder.
Tommie Lynn Dunmire and McQuillen changed the license plates on their car, but cops tracked them down. As officers closed in, she shot herself to death.
The woman she shot survived her injuries, and federal agents apprehended McQuillen, who later pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact to assault with intent to murder. He got a three-year prison sentence.
Matthew Dunmire’s obituary described him as a “free spirit who loved music, playing his guitar, and being with his friends.”
Perkins faces 20 to 25 years in prison when she is sentenced on September 9.
