From Best Friend to Murder: The Missy Avila Story

0:00 October 1985, 17-year-old Missy Avila goes for a walk in the Angeles National Forest, with two of her closest friends. Three days later, hikers find her body face down in a creek, weighted down by a massive log. What makes this case absolutely unforgettable is what happens next. One of the girls who killed her moved in to Missy's family home, lived there for a time comforted Missy's mom, helped them search for the killer, all while knowing a thing. This is the story of Michelle Avila.

0:56 October 1985, in the San Fernando Valley, Missy Avila was 17 years old, a junior at San Fernando High School. She's tiny, 4'10", 97 pounds. She's got long brown hair that goes all the way down to her waist. She's got two childhood friends, named Karen Severson and Laura Doyle. These girls have known each other since they were 8 years old. That's almost a decade of friendship, sleepovers, secrets, all of it. Where along the way things started to change, high school happened. With high school came all the complicated stuff that can turn friendship into something different. Karen Severson started to resent Missy. The reasons sound almost trivial when you say them out loud, and they were very real to a teenage girl.

1:42 Missy was popular, Missy was pretty, getting attention from boys. As Missy got older, she started spending less and less time with Karen and more time dating, going to parties, doing normal high school stuff. Karen didn't handle this well. She started spreading rumors about Missy. Vicious rumors that Missy was sleeping around with different guys. These were more than whispers in the hallway. These rumors got so bad, at one point, a group of girls physically attacked Missy because they believed Karen's story is about Missy being with their boyfriends. Then there was this guy named Randy. Missy dated him briefly during her junior year, maybe a month, and then broke it off because she said he partied too much.

2:23 Pretty standard breakup stuff. Karen started dating Randy after that. They even, weirdly, moved in together. When Randy tried to get back together with Missy, and she turned him down, Missy told Karen that she should probably break up with this guy. And that made Karen furious. Laura Doyle had her own issues with Missy. In July of 1985, Laura saw Missy with her ex-boyfriend Victor, and she threatened to kill Missy over it. That threat was specific, and it was serious. The aggression kept escalating. That same month, Karen convinced Randy to throw lit firecrackers at Missy to prove his loyalty. In September, Karen confronted Missy in the park, screaming at her and slapping her in the face.

3:06 Karen even went to Missy's house and told her mother Irene that her daughter was a tramp. This is important information to understand, because what happened next had been building for months. The violence was planned and calculated over time. October 1st 1985. Karen and Laura convinced Missy to go for a walk with them in the Angeles National Forest up in the Colby Ranch area. They bring along a third friend, a girl named Eva Tarrumbo. Eva's presence in the story becomes crucial later. At the time, she was there as another friend. The four girls walk maybe 100, 200 yards down a path to the creek. The second they get to that creek, Karen and Laura turn on Missy.

3:49 They start accusing her of sleeping around. Missy starts crying. Laura keeps verbally attacking her. Then the physical assault begins. They tear off her earrings. The force of it rips her ear. Karen pulls out a knife and she starts hacking off Missy's hair. Her long brown hair that went down to her waist. Karen is cutting it off in chunks. It seems as though they're destroying what they're jealous of. This is about taking away something they thought made Missy special. They beat her. They torture her. Karen shoves Missy into the freezing water of the creek and holds her down until she drowns. When Missy stops moving, they find a log, a massive log that weighs about 100 pounds and stretches five feet long.

4:34 They place it directly on top of Missy's body to keep her submerged, to keep her from floating up. Three days later, on October 4th, hikers find her body. The investigation starts. Detectives are trying to figure out who killed this teenage girl. Karen Severson immediately shows up at the Avila house. She's crying. She's devastated. She tells Missy's mom Irene how sorry she is. How much she loved Missy. How she can't believe this happened. She offers to help them find the killer. She visits on Thanksgiving. Karen Severson moves into the Avila family home. So the woman who drowned Missy in a creek, who cut her hair off, who placed a log on top of her body, moves into the house of the girl she murdered.

5:19 She brings her two-year-old daughter with her. She lives there for several years. Karen is eating breakfast with Missy's mom. She's sleeping in their home. She's playing with her own child in the same rooms where Missy grew up. The entire time she's actively working to throw suspicion off herself and Laura. She's participating in the investigation, offering theories about who might have done it, leading to what investigators called a campaign of misdirection. The emotional detachment required to do something like that is staggering. Think about what that means. Karen positioned herself at the absolute center of the grief she created while maintaining this elaborate performance of innocence.

6:00 Every single day. Breakfast time, lunch, dinner, bedtime stories with her own kid in the house of the girl that she killed. For years, Irene Avila had no idea. The woman comforting her, the woman helping her search for answers was the one who killed her daughter. In 1988, Eva, the extra friend who was there that day at the creek, finally comes forward. She goes to the police and tells them the truth. Karen Severson and Laura Doyle murdered Missy Avila. In 1990, both women are convicted of second-degree murder. They each get 15 years to life. Karen serves 21 and a half years. She's released in December 2011.

6:42 Laura serves 22 years and gets out in December 2012. So after more than two decades in prison, after destroying the Avila family, after living with the consequences of what they did, Karen gets out and chooses a path that's going to reopen every wound. She starts shopping around a memoir. She got a movie deal in the works. She publishes two books under the pin name "K. Crane." The first one comes out in June 2013. The second one drops September 30, 2014. That date matters because September 30 is right around the anniversary of Missy's murder. The Avila family sees this as deliberate, another assault on their daughter's memory.

7:24 According to the Avila's, these books are full of lies. The famedory information about their family. Karen is trying to control the narrative, trying to rewrite what happened, trying to make herself into something she's absolutely not. In March 2015, the Avila family files a civic lawsuit. They're going after Karen, her publishers, everybody involved. They want her to stop profiting off of Missy's death. They're suing for wrongful death, emotional distress, defamation, liable, slander, all of it. They want burial expenses reimbursed. They want punitive damages. They want their daughter's memory protected from this woman. The family does something bigger, though. They go to Sacramento.

8:05 They push for legislation. In October 2015, California passes something called "Missy's Law." Missy's law requires that any publisher putting out a book written by a convicted felon has to notify the victim's family. It closes a loophole in the existing son of Sam Laws. This can't be blindsided anymore by their loved ones killer suddenly releasing a book or getting a movie deal without them knowing about it first. They get notification. They get a chance to take action. So this becomes Missy Avila's legacy, a law that protects other families from experiencing what the Avila's went through after. The psychological profile of someone like Karen Severison is genuinely fascinating in the worst possible way.

8:48 She didn't kill out of jealousy alone. She created this elaborate, years-long performance. She fooled investigators. She fooled a grieving mother. She lived inside that grief while simultaneously causing it. That level of compartmentalization, that ability to separate what you've done from how you present yourself, that goes way beyond normal criminal behavior. Missy Avila was 17 years old. She was 4'10", 97 pounds. She never had a chance against two girls who were significantly larger than her, who had been planning this for months, who hated her enough to kill her, to cut off her hair, to drown her, to hide her body under a log.

9:30 Then one of those girls came to her funeral. Hugged her mother, moved into her house, slept there every night for years. The violence ended that day at the creek. The betrayal, though, the manipulation, the performance of grief while causing it, that continued for years afterward. Justice eventually came through Eva's testimony that broke the case open. Karen and Laura went to prison. Missy's law now protects other families. None of that brings Missy back. None of that erases what Irene went through, living with her daughter's killer and never even knowing it. The aftermath of a true crime case can be as devastating as the crime itself. Everything that comes after all the ways the trauma continues, all the ways the family has to keep fighting.

10:16 That's what defines cases like this one. Thanks for listening to 10 Minute Murder. Bingeable True Crime Stories. I'm Joe, I'm the host, and here's an email, Subjects. Do you do this too? Joe, whenever I finish one of your episodes, I catch myself going to your website or going to your social media to look at the photos of the people involved in the case that you talked about. Do you do this too? Or am I just weird? Derek in St. Cloud, Minnesota. Derek, you're not weird. I do the exact same thing, which is exactly why I put the photos out there.

10:56 Some people don't really care, but for me, I don't know what it is about me. I just like to see the faces and the places involved in the stories. Not the crime scene stuff that's bloody and gory. I don't ever want to see that. I think that's what helps contribute to my nightmares. But as far as just like the people involved and the city itself, I like seeing that kind of thing. It helps me put all the pieces together in my mind. So yeah, that's why I put them on the website, and that's why I put them on the social media pages of 10 Minute Murder. Thanks for the email, Derek. Hey, if you're a brand new listener to the podcast, welcome. Make sure you hit subscribe, and you can go to the website, 10minutemerder.com. You'll find the murder blog. You'll find a place where you can sign up for the newsletter that I send out every Monday.

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