It was a July night when Elyse Pahler, 15, slipped into his room in the city of Central Costa de Arroyo Grande, planning to enter some mischief. A school boy had obtained her friend's number and invited her to smoke marijuana in the forest near her family's house.
The boy was Jacob Delashmutt, also 15 years old, and brought two friends. Delashmutt and his schoolmates Royce Casey, 16, and Joseph Fiorella, 14, shared a passion for Death Metal, and formed their own band called Hatred.
One of his favorite groups was Slayer, an act of popular metal that presented a song with lyrics about worshiping Satan and sacrificing a blonde and blue -eyed virgin.
Pahler adjusted to that description as he walked to join the three metal heads that night in 1995. Three decades later, Delashmutt described what happened next to a state -proof of probation.
Delashmutt, now 45 years old, said that once they had smoked marijuana, he and the other two children attacked Pahler when he was distracted by the sound of a passed car. He wrapped his belt around his neck, strangling her while Fiorella stabbed her and Casey held her. Then, each one turned to stab with a 12 -inch knife, according to their testimony, first in the neck and then on the back and shoulders.
Casey told state probation officials this year that Pahler begged for his mother and Jesus before trampling the back of his neck. They had planned to violate their remains, Delashmutt testified on the probation board, but instead hid his body in the forest and fled the scene. It was not found up to eight months later, when Casey confessed to his pastor.
Royce Casey, Jacob Delashmutt and Joseph Fiorella are represented as teenagers after their arrest in March 1996. They were convicted of murdering Elyse Pahler, a teenage partner, in a satanic ritual. Casey and Delashmutt were released recently, 30 years after the murder in Arroyo Grande, California.
(District Court of the United States for the Central District of California)
Today, two of the murderers, including the admitted leader, are walking free after receiving probation. But the youngest in the group, Fiorella, remains behind bars despite the claims that he is intellectually disabled and that his case was mishandling.
The launches of Casey and Delashmutt this year have arrived in the midst of an increase in cases of high profile murder of the 1990s that enter the probation process. Erik and Lyle Menéndez, the Beverly Hills brothers convicted of killing their parents in 1989 as adolescents, were denied probation this month after a resontent effort of months.
Pahler's murder occurred while the Menéndez brothers were in trial, and the spooky murder of a young and white cause caused a similar level of media frenzy. Prosecutors alleged that adolescents obsessed with the metal of death had planned to commit murder as part of a “satanic ritual.”
Pahler's family has fought against leaving any of the men out during the last decade, with his father, David, often bringing a photo of his daughter to show the probation board.
David Pahler told the Board at a 2023 audience that he believed that Casey still lacked remorse, reading a transcription of the Casey newspaper taken when he was arrested in which the adolescent wrote about believing that Satan had “taken my soul and replaced it with a new one to carry out his work on earth.”
“If you give up your soul to Satan, how do you recover it? How do you recover it? I don't have an answer for that,” Pahler said, according to a transcription of the audience.
Casey and Delashmutt did not oppose first degree murder in 1997, each received 25 years of life imprisonment. Fiorella, also accused of being armed with a mortal weapon, obtained 26 years of life. Since they became eligible for probation, their paths through the system have led to very divergent results.
The Board twice denied Casey, then approved in 2021 and 2023, only for Governor Gavin Newsom to reversed the decision. Newsom argued that Casey needed to do more work to make sure he did healthy relationships outside the prison and learn the “internal processes” that led him to kill Pahler.
Delashmutt was also denied twice by the probation Board in 2017 and 2022 and once for the reversal of the governor in 2023. The rejections often refer to their tendency to avoid responsibility for their coacked for their role in the murder.
Although Delashmutt was the one who called Pahler and invited her to the forest, at the time of his arrest he blamed the other two for orchestrating the murder and recruiting him to carry it out.
This year, however, Delashmutt told the Board of probation that it was the “leader” of the group.
“I know that I am the most responsible for this crime. I had all the opportunities to stop it, and I did not do it. I was involved in the planning from the beginning and made this crime happen. Elyse Pahler was safe at home that night when he received a phone call of mine,” said Delashmutt.
The teenagers were influenced by Death Metal music, specifically by Slayer, to channel their anger towards the world towards physical violence, Casey told the Board of Probation.
“That music, especially Slayer, had to do with suicide, murder, sacrifice. Then, I began to learn a specific way of expressing those things,” he said.
Pahler's family unsuccessfully demanded Slayer and his record company for his lyrics in 2001, claiming that they incited their murder, but lost on the grounds of the first amendment.
Casey was released from Valley state prison in early August to transition housing in Los Angeles County, his lawyer told Times. “Our legal system is not based on emotion,” said his lawyer and defender of the Charles Carbone prison.
Despite what was “one of the most notorious crimes committed in San Luis Obispo County,” said Carbone, there has been a “enormous consensus” in recent years among prison psychologists, the Board of Probation and the Governor that Casey should go home.
Delashmutt, who was released at the end of July, did not believe he had a future when he was a teenager, said probation lawyer Patrick Sparks.
“His experience was about many bad decisions,” he said. “He began to change his life, and gave him hope for the future again.”
Both apologized.
“I want to recognize all the pain and trauma I have caused,” said Delashmutt. “It is impossible for me to understand the magnitude of the crime, the impact it has had on the Pahler family.”
Casey said he remembered how David Pahler often brought a photo of his daughter to the audience.
“Something that I remember listening over time when Elyse's father has come, is that she has a face. And I try to remember every day, any decision she is making or whatever, that the continuous impact of what I did is present is all the time.”
Fiorella, unlike the other two men, has not yet openly participated in a probation hearing, according to the auditory transcripts of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation of California. He resigned from assistance to a 2019 hearing and, according to transcripts, was advised by his lawyer, Dennis Cusick, not to speak or answer questions at his most recent audience in 2023.
Cusick refused to comment on whether his client would attend or participate in a next scheduled probation hearing for next year.
Judicial presentations show that Fiorella has long sought to revoke his conviction, arguing that a defense lawyer appointed by the court could not give his due diligence before accepting the guilt agreement.
A complaint filed in the Central District of California in November 2023 argues that Fiorella's first litigating lawyer, David Hurst, resigned from a physical conditioning audience after receiving the report from a neuropsychologist that Fiorella was disabled in development and had an IQ score of 68, which indicates a mild intellectual disability.
Hurst said in a 2020 statement that “he felt that we would lose the fitness audience and that it would be a waste of time,” despite knowing about the report and other circumstances of Fiorella's life, the complaint said.
Hurst was a sick terminal at the time of his deposition, the complaint indicates, and died by the end of the year before a probative hearing.
Fiorella obtained a score just above a level of eighth grade in a basic education test, according to a transcription of his 023 probation audience.
Cusick argued before the probation board that Fiorella is still disabled in development and “is not the type of person who assumes a leadership role in anything.” Habeas Corpus complaint repeatedly characterized a teenager Fiorella as a shy and quiet girl who was mocked by the companions for being “slow.” He also challenged the idea that he orchestrated the murder, instead of blaming Delashmutt.
Fiorella complaint has gone through several levels of state and federal courts, and most agree that the challenge to his conviction was years after the statute of limitations. The courts also said it was questionable if the forgiven physical conditioning hearing, as his litigating lawyer suggested, would have resulted in some action.
The complaint was dismissed and then appealed in March to the Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit. That case is waiting for an opening report in November.
The Federal Public Defender of Fiorella, Raj Shah, did not respond to the requests for comments.
In his 2023 hearing, a representative of the Office of the District Prosecutor of the County of San Luis Obispo, Lisa Dunn, opposed the release of Fiorella, arguing that he had not done the necessary work to demonstrate that he was ready for probation.
“Mr. Fiorella, frankly, is a dangerous individual,” Dunn said. “It has been dangerous since I was 15 years old, and there is no evidence to support a finding that it is now less dangerous.”
