The bruises settled into a rhythm she knew too well. Every time I saw her those last months, there was something new. A shadow under her sleeve. A flinch when I reached for her.
She never said the words, but I knew. Chad had done this. Ashley was the kind of person who smiled with her whole body. Seventeen when she met him at a roller rink, a few years older, fresh out of a short army stint and discharged early for reasons no one ever explained.
They were friends first, then something more, and by 2005 she gave birth to their daughter, G. Chad’s mother called becoming a dad his shining moment, but the shine didn’t last. Ashley bounced between Chad and other women, and he didn’t take it well. In 2005 he was arrested for family violence against her.
When her family saw her, she was covered in bruises. The last time he turned violent, she was holding G in her arms. That was the moment she walked away. She filed a protection order, terrified of what he might do, and enlisted in the army to escape him.
She trained as a petroleum supply specialist, but asthma forced her out with a medical discharge six years later. Six years away from her daughter. When she came home to Akron, Ohio, she found Chad had full custody, and he wasn’t willing to share it. Meanwhile, Chad had moved on too.
He met Erica Lyon on MySpace in 2006. They married in 2010 and had two children together. When Ashley tried to reclaim her place in G’s life, Chad wouldn’t bend. But in 2011, a letter arrived from county children’s services.
Federal authorities were investigating whether G was safe with Chad. For Ashley, it wasn’t a surprise. She’d lived his violence. In October 2011, a magistrate awarded her custody.
Oddly, no one told Chad. He drove to G’s school to pick her up and found no daughter waiting. Ashley came with police officers because G didn’t recognize her own mother. Chad’s mother, Cindy, posted legal documents online accusing Ashley of abandoning G for six years and stealing her under false pretenses.
The documents painted Ashley as unstable, living with her girlfriend Britney, Britney’s mother, and Britney’s brother, a tier-two registered offender with a history of targeting young girls. A magistrate ordered that no one could apply temporary tattoos to G in provocative places, that G must never be exposed to nudity, and that she keep a cell phone at all times in a central location, with Chad notified where it was. Ashley fought to rebuild. She worked as a home aide, caring for an elderly man almost a year.
His widow remembered her kindness. She enrolled at Stark State College to become a physical therapist and worked two jobs while studying—janitor at Malone University, delivery driver for Domino’s. Chad and Erica regained visitation, but they wanted all four children under one roof. When Chad faced Ashley, he was hostile, like he wanted her to disappear again.
Over the months he made repeated calls to child welfare, but every visit found no neglect. Neighbor Candace Andre noticed Chad camping in the parking lot, trying to learn the apartment layout. She always told Ashley, “If I see something suspicious, I’ll let you know. ”
Chad grew impatient, drained by legal costs.
His mother recalled one of his last conversations with her. He was going to turn custody over—he didn’t know what else to do. On the night of June 20, 2012, Ashley worked her usual late shift at Domino’s. At 11:42 p.
m. , a female voice ordered a half pepperoni, half mushroom pizza to 647 West Turkeyfoot Lake Road. The address was a closed business with an empty parking lot. Unusual, but not uncommon.
Ashley left with the pizza at 11:59. When she didn’t come back, her coworkers grew worried. By 12:45 a. m.
, they filed a missing person report. Officers found drag marks across the pavement, traces of her blood, taser parts, and scattered cash. No Ashley. No car.
Britney told investigators about the custody battle. The police already had a suspect. Around 4:30 a. m.
, they found Chad’s Lincoln Navigator parked on his grandparents’ property. Erica and the four children were hiding behind a barn. Chad was found nearby in the woods, dressed in camouflage, as if expecting them. Later that morning, a passerby spotted Ashley’s car abandoned in a cornfield.
Her body was in the back seat, arms, legs, and neck bound with industrial-size zip ties. Erica said Chad came home around 1 a. m. , ordered her to pack up the kids, drove to his grandparents’, and left.
Both insisted they knew nothing. The police had no legal grounds to hold them. But a search of Chad’s house turned up a backpack with incriminating items, several stained with blood. He was charged with first-degree murder, making him eligible for the death penalty.
His attorney said the case couldn’t go to trial. Their number one goal was avoiding execution. Chad accepted a deal: life without parole. In February 2013, he pleaded guilty to ten charges, including aggravated murder, kidnapping, and robbery.
He said his children drove the decision. If he lost parental rights, his parents and grandparents would have no claim, and the kids could end up in foster care. But investigators still had unanswered questions. Who made the call that lured Ashley?
Detective Michael Hitchens suspected Erica, and believed Chad was protecting her. The Domino’s order came from a burner phone purchased at a local Walmart days before the murder, activated the day Ashley was killed. Surveillance footage showed Chad at the Walmart with Erica and the children. Then Detective Hitchens found an Erica Facebook post featuring a picture of OJ Simpson with the caption “99 problems but a [n-word] ain’t one.
” She felt no remorse. Even more surprising, Erica was pregnant again—by Chad’s best friend, Mike Stefano. She’d started seeing him shortly after Chad went to jail. At first she claimed she got drunk and picked up some guy.
Later they learned she’d been with Mike for some time, wanting to stay married to Chad and keep Mike on the side. Chad refused. He’d kept his mouth shut in prison to protect her, and she’d betrayed him with his best friend. Then Chad received a handwritten letter from G, now describing how Erica treated her.
G called Erica her stepmom and mom. Erica was physically and mentally abusive. She’d locked G in a cage when she caught her crying over Chad, pinned her to the wall, screamed in her face, put a knee on her stomach and another on her throat, and covered her mouth. G thought Erica might kill her.
Erica made her eat dog feces mixed into blueberry yogurt, because she was jealous of G’s relationship with her father. Chad’s friend Mary Brinkman testified that Erica even defecated on Ashley’s grave, saying it was “for all the [pain] she put us through. ”
The years of violence against G, combined with Erica’s affair with his best friend in his own home, finally broke Chad. In 2017, he wrote to Detective Hitchens that he was ready to talk.
He implicated Erica as the mastermind. She chose the location, drove beside him on the way home, and possibly secured the zip ties. But his word alone wasn’t enough. Cindy helped change that.
On a cold spring night in 2014, she invited Erica over to her remodeled barn. Erica thought she could smooth things over. Instead, Cindy hid a recorder among objects on the table. For ninety minutes they made small talk.
Then Erica slipped. She admitted making the phone call and setting up the meeting, saying Chad told her, “This is your part and this is what you’re going to do. ” The conversation was recorded as evidence, released to police in 2018 after Erica married Chad’s best friend and blocked his children from seeing him or their grandmother in prison. Erica lived in paranoia.
“Every time I hear a siren,” she admitted, “I think they’re coming for me. ” On November 11, 2019, they did. She faced twelve counts, including murder, kidnapping, tampering with evidence, and gross abuse of a corpse. Her trial began in 2020, during the pandemic.
Chad testified via Zoom, confirming the fake pizza order. G, just fifteen, gave a statement. She described Erica’s mental and physical abuse, the dog feces, the threats that she would do worse if G told her dad. She still loved her father and wished he could come home.
The medical examiner testified that Ashley had been brutally beaten, strangled with a zip tie so tight it cut off blood flow to her brain, and possibly tased. She was restrained after death to make moving her body easier. The neck restraint was applied while she was alive; the leg restraints after she was dead, a finding rare in the examiner’s 3,500 autopsies. The leg restraints were for dragging the body.
Erica’s defense argued that Chad’s Zoom testimony violated her right to confront witnesses in person. In July 2022, the Ninth Circuit agreed, vacating her conviction and ordering a retrial. It began in January 2024, with Chad testifying in person. The court showed graphic photos of Ashley’s bruised, bound body.
Kimberly, Ashley’s mother, passed out in the courtroom. In her victim impact statement, Kimberly cursed Erica, hoping karma would take everything from her, that she’d land on voicemail, that her pens would run dry, that she’d get life without parole. “You took everything from me the day you took my only child. ” She ended with, “I miss you, Ashley.
I did this for you. ”
G also spoke, not wanting to be filmed. Despite being only fifteen, she confronted her former stepmother with devastating clarity. “I have to grow up with no mother.
I can’t celebrate Mother’s Day. I can’t call my mom when I have something exciting to tell her. Erica, you killed my mother. Yet you have shown absolutely no remorse.
You are untrustworthy. You’re a liar. You’re sickening. But worst of all, you’re a killer.
You had a plan and you followed through with it. You and Ashley were both supposed to be my mom. Now I have neither. When I was just a little girl, I had loved you.
Through all the bruises, the lies, the jealousy, I still had love to give. I loved my mom, Ashley. But you did everything you could to make your plan follow through. And it worked.
As you sit in prison, I hope you think about all the people you have hurt and all the remorse you have yet to show. This world is safer with you locked up. I can’t forgive you for what you’ve done, and I have no reason to. ”
Her half-brother and half-sister now had to grow up without a mother because of Erica’s choices.
G emphasized, “We were all supposed to be a family. ”
On January 31, the second jury found Erica guilty on all counts. The courtroom, packed with both families, erupted in cheers when Judge Jennifer Toll announced the sentence. “You took the life of a young working woman who was trying to support her only child.
You took the life of a young Army veteran who served our country and put others before herself. You lured this young Army veteran mother into a dark parking lot late at night while in a car with four young children—and this is the most egregious part—that included the victim’s own daughter. ” Erica was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole until after thirty full years. Ashley was laid to rest in Akron, following a chapel service that honored her warmth, kindness, and joy.
Her obituary called her “our angel. ” On a memorial page, her mother Kimberly wrote, “To my darling, my angel Ashley, my daughter, my life. God sent me an angel. I know you’re watching me and your daughter.
We miss you so much. I don’t know how I go on not having you here with me. I love you, my girl. Can’t wait to see you, your mommy.
“
