Mendocino County judge orders trial for man suspected of killing Willits dance teacher

There is enough evidence against a registered sex offender charged with raping and murdering a popular young Willits woman last year to proceed to trial, a Mendocino County judge ruled Wednesday.

Terrell James Marshall, 45, of Vacaville, is accused of sexually assaulting and strangling to death Kayla Grace Chesser, 25, a dance instructor who planned to open her own studio. The two had never met prior to the fatal Halloween encounter, according to court testimony in the preliminary hearing Wednesday.

Some 40 friends, family and supporters of Chesser, many wearing buttons and T-shirts emblazoned with her photo, attended the proceeding.

They hugged and kissed after the ruling by Judge John Behnke, which followed several hours of sometimes gut-wrenching testimony.

“We just want justice,” Chesser’s mother, Marri Krch, said during a break in the proceedings.

The hearing revealed publicly for the first time the circumstances that authorities said led to Chesser’s death.

Chesser, dressed as a cat, attended two Halloween parties that night and early the next morning, according to court testimony provided by Mendocino County sheriff’s investigators and based on witness statements. The first was at the Willits home of her friend Shawna White. The second was at the nearby Brooktrails Lodge.

The friends were drinking shots of vodka and using cocaine, according to testimony by sheriff’s Detective Andrew Whiteaker.

At the Brooktrails Lodge, Chesser became too intoxicated to remain at the party.

“She was so wasted, she was falling on herself,” said Marshall’s attorney, Justin Peterson, reading Wednesday from an interview with White.

Friends drove her back to White’s house, where she apparently was left alone at some point, according to testimony.

While most of the friends continued to party, moving on from the Brooktrails Lodge to another person’s house at about 2 a.m., Marshall - White’s cousin - apparently arrived at White’s modular home, Whiteaker testified.

When White and a few other friends arrived at the house at about 4:30 a.m., she was surprised to see Marshall, Whiteaker said.

White told investigators Marshall had not been to her home in 15 years and that she was not expecting him to be there. Marshall told her he was invited to the house by one of her male friends, whom he’d met earlier at a bar. He said he went to the house because he didn’t want his wife to know he’d been drinking, after a long period of staying sober, Whiteaker said.

After speaking with Marshall briefly, White became suspicious and checked the spare bedroom, where she saw Chesser, unconscious and naked from the waist down, according to court testimony. She did not immediately realize Chesser had been critically injured or killed, Whiteaker said.

Two men in the group, suspecting Marshall had done something to Chesser, told him to leave, Whiteaker said. As he left, he reportedly told them: “She was game. She was game,” Whiteaker said.

White, however, believed Chesser was too drunk to consent to sex, according to testimony.

Soon after the confrontation, the friends realized the situation was worse than they’d thought, and called 911. Efforts to revive Chesser were unsuccessful.

According to the pathologist who conducted an autopsy, the cause of Chesser’s death was manual strangulation. Dr. Jacqueline Benjamin testified she also found evidence Chesser had some type of blunt force trauma to her head, which may have contributed to her death. There also was bruising and cuts consistent with forcible rape, she said during the preliminary hearing.

After he left White’s house, Marshall drove his pickup north and east, toward Covelo. While on Highway 162, he accelerated - traveling at an estimated 70- to 100 mph - and drove off the narrow, winding highway and down a steep embankment into the Eel River, according to testimony by CHP Officer John Jessup.

Witnesses phoned 911, and Marshall was hospitalized for injuries sustained in the crash. He was arrested almost three weeks later, following his release from the hospital.

Marshall is charged with murder, rape, sodomy and special allegations that he committed the murder in conjunction with rape, and that he is a sex offender with a prior conviction.

He was convicted in 2000 of sexual penetration with a foreign object by force or fear in Santa Clara County. Officials from the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s and District Attorney’s offices have declined to provide specifics of the case. Records indicate Marshall also had a list of arrests in connection with less-serious offenses that include drunken driving, being under the influence of a controlled substance, failing to wear a seatbelt and assault.

Marshall is set to be back in court Sept. 15 to be re-arraigned on charges in the current case. They carry a potential death sentence, but the District Attorney’s Office has not decided whether to bring a capital case. Death penalty cases are a rarity in Mendocino County.

In interviews outside the courtroom Wednesday, Krch, Chesser’s mother, and others described Chesser as being a person full of life and light and someone who wanted to help people.

“She saw hope in everything,” said Dena Watson-Krasts, Chesser’s longtime Pilates teacher at Mendocino College.

You can reach Staff Writer Glenda Anderson at 462-6473 or glenda.anderson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MendoReporter