A Wisconsin woman who claimed self-defense after fatally stabbing her ex-lover 16 times will serve at least 50 years in prison.
Ezra McCandless, 22, killed Alex Woodworth, 24, in March 2018. The stabbing took place in McCandless’ car, which had become stuck in an isolated muddy road in the town of Spring Brook just outside of Eau Claire, reports the Associated Press.
McCandless carved the word “boy” into her arm and initially tried to blame the victim for the injury, reports CBS News’ 48 Hours.
McCandless said that in high school she had questioned her gender, and she claimed Woodworth had picked up on it, telling a detective that Woodworth “used to call me, like, ‘boy’ a lot and stuff like that … and I was just kinda like, ‘I don’t really identify that way anymore,'” according to the outlet.
On Friday Dunn County Judge James Peterson sentenced McCandless to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 50 years following her November conviction for first-degree intentional homicide, reports local TV station WEAU.
Trial testimony revealed that Woodworth and McCandless had met at a Eau Claire coffee shop where Woodworth worked as a barista while aspiring to become a professor of philosophy. McCandless then had a boyfriend, Jason Mengel, and all three became friends.
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McCandless was then “going through emotional things,” Mengel told CBS News, and Woodworth was “a really good friend. … I kind of pushed them together at one time, because I knew they both had similar viewpoints … he had some things in his life that I figured she could help him with, and I thought that he could help her with things in her life.”
But McCandless and Woodworth developed a romantic relationship that Mengel discovered. McCandless broke up with both men, but later tried to rekindle her relationship with Mengel, he said.
McCandless had moved out of Eau Claire when, on March 22, 2018, she showed up and surprised Mengel at the coffee shop, saying that she was back in town to show Woodworth some of her writings.
A suspicious Mengel then tracked McCandless to Woodworth’s house and confronted the pair, he told 48 Hours .
The three subsequently went separate ways. But three hours later, a bloody McCandless showed up outside the door of a dairy farmhouse, saying she’d been the victim of an assault in her car that she tried to blame on Woodworth.
Friends said McCandless was an attention-seeker, and Dunn County District Attorney Andrea Nodolf told 48 Hours that McCandless “was gonna do whatever it took to get back with Jason Mengel.”
McCandless pointed blame at what she described as a “prejudicial media” in a statement she issued after her conviction and before her sentence.
“If you breathe, it will be used against you. If you cry too hard or too much, ‘She is a fake,'” read her statement, reports 48 Hours . “If you don’t cry enough ‘She is Heartless.’ If you smile, ‘She is not taking this seriously.’ If you keep your face calm ‘She is unfeeling.’ DAILY: Smile, but not too much. It’s okay to cry, but not too much. Don’t react! But make sure that you show who you are!”
She argued that she’d been unfairly depicted as a “sex fiend and a liar,” and pledged to appeal the guilty verdict.
“The battle for justice has only begun,” she wrote.
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