The Case of Chelsea Perkins: When “Savage” Justice Goes Sideways

On the morning of March 6, 2021, Chelsea Perkins walked Matthew Dunmire off a trail in Cuyahoga Valley National Park and shot him once in the back of the head with a 9mm pistol she had carried from Virginia. Dunmire was 31. Hikers found his body three days later in the woods near the Terra Vista Cemetery, inside the park at Valley View, Ohio. Because the park is federal land, the FBI took the case and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Ohio prosecuted it. Perkins pleaded guilty on May 27, 2025, to second-degree murder and to using and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence. On September 9, 2025, U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. sentenced her to 270 months, or 22 and a half years, in federal prison, followed by five years of supervised release.

Most of the detail below comes from the government’s sentencing memorandum, filed September 3, 2025, in United States v. Perkins, No. 1:21-cr-869 (N.D. Ohio). It is the prosecution’s account, written to argue for the top of the agreed range. Where it records what she admitted or what records show, it is stated as fact. Where it argues motive or character, it is attributed.

Who They Were

Perkins was 35 at sentencing. She lived in Arlington, Virginia, with her husband, a member of the U.S. Coast Guard, and their two children. She also produced pornography. After a short stint in the Coast Guard, she became an OnlyFans model under the name Sabrina Savage, Law&Crime reported, citing the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The sentencing memorandum records that Dunmire visited sites where her content appeared under the name “Selena Savage.”

Dunmire, of the Cleveland area, was an aspiring musician and a father. He and Perkins had known each other for years. She had accused him of raping her in 2017. According to the sentencing memorandum, that allegation “was declined for prosecution due to insufficient evidence.” Law&Crime, citing the Plain Dealer, reported that police in Virginia Beach handled the complaint.

The Week Before

The memorandum sets out a run of messages in the days before the killing. In a Facebook exchange in late February 2021, Perkins and a friend discussed Facebook suggesting Dunmire as a friend. Perkins wrote that he would “get his someday.” On March 2, Dunmire received a notification of a Facebook message from her account. On March 3, she accepted his friend request, and the same day she posted: “Dead men tell no tales.” Between March 3 and March 5, his email logged more notifications of messages from her. Investigators later found that the content of those messages was missing from his Facebook records.

On March 4, she arranged a tattoo with an acquaintance in Waterford, Michigan. Her description of the design, quoted in the memorandum: “picture a little rope noose traditional style? With the text ‘tighten up’ next to it.”

The Drive to Cleveland

At about 11:50 a.m. on March 5, Perkins left Arlington in her husband’s car. After work that day, Dunmire met coworkers at a Cleveland bar, the Tiki Underground. He told one of them that a woman was coming to pick him up and wanted to go to a graveyard in the woods to make OnlyFans content. The memorandum notes that her social media showed a running interest in cemeteries as settings for that content.

She picked him up at about 6:07 p.m. They spent the night at an Airbnb she had booked near University Circle. From there she texted the tattoo artist that checkout was at 10 a.m. and that she would “check out a spot” before driving north.

The Killing

At 9:23 a.m. on March 6 they left the rental and drove south. At about 9:42 a.m. they reached the Terra Vista study area of the park. They walked toward the cemetery, then left the path and crossed gullies and hills to a log deeper in the woods. Between about 11:30 and 11:50 a.m., two hikers heard a single gunshot. Perkins had held the pistol to the back of Dunmire’s head and fired once.

On the way out she took a wrong turn and met two hikers, who pointed her back toward the cemetery. In their statements to Valley View police, one said she pulled her hoodie forward over her cheeks on a mild day and spoke in a voice that was “soft and childlike.” The other said she claimed to be from St. Louis, spoke in a “monotone voice with no expression,” and said she was in the park alone.

The Next Hour

The memorandum logs her phone and account activity minute by minute. At 12:10 p.m. she messaged the tattoo artist that she was running behind and “grabbing a meal.” At 12:46 p.m. she removed Dunmire as a Facebook friend. At 12:55 she changed her Facebook password. At 12:57 she deactivated the account. At 12:24 and 12:29 p.m., Dunmire’s phone connected to a cell tower facing away from his body and toward her route out of the area. His phone was never found. At 12:59 p.m. her E-ZPass transponder registered at the North Ridgeville turnpike entrance, and at 2:13 p.m. at the Stony Ridge exit near Toledo. She drove on into Michigan.

The Noose

That afternoon she got the noose tattoo on her forearm. She sent her husband a photo of herself appearing to choke the tattoo artist while showing the new ink, with the message “I had the best day!” At 2:43 a.m. she posted the same picture on Instagram with the caption “What a great weekend!!” At about 8:26 p.m. on March 6, her phone searched Google for “forest scavengers.” E-ZPass records show her driving back east through Ohio and Pennsylvania in the early hours of March 7.

The Body and the Cover Story

At about 11 a.m. on Tuesday, March 9, hikers found Dunmire near the Terra Vista Cemetery. He was identified by the ID card in his pocket. The cause of death was a single gunshot wound to the back of the head. A plastic water bottle lay beside him. The government said her DNA was later found on the bottle, under his fingernails and on his body.

That same day, after news of his death spread on social media, Perkins wrote a note on her phone in Dunmire’s voice. It read, in part: “I’m sorry I beat you, and I raped a couple of chicks years ago. I’m a shitty person and paid for my sins with blood. I’ve decided to leave this cruel world.” She deleted it; investigators recovered it from the phone. On March 10, a friend texted that Matt had died. She replied: “Whaaaaat?” On March 12 she wrote on Instagram that she needed to buy cleaner “to prep my car for a trade in.”

On March 30, 2021, federal agents searched her home. She told them she knew nothing beyond what a friend had said, that he had killed himself, and suggested they talk to his “crazy ex-girlfriend.” Cleveland19 reported that the search turned up three 9mm pistols, one in a purse with her photo ID, and that this gun later tested positive for her DNA. The investigation was run by the FBI Cleveland Division, the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, the National Park Service Investigative Branch, the Valley View Police Department and the Cuyahoga Valley National Park Police Department. The U.S. Attorney’s Office said investigators connected her to the killing through GPS data, DNA, social media, phone records and ballistics.

Arrest and Charges

The government filed a criminal complaint charging her with murder on December 8, 2021. She was arrested the next day in Pensacola, Florida. On December 16, 2021, a federal grand jury indicted her on three counts: first-degree murder, second-degree murder, and using or carrying and discharging a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence. She was arraigned on January 24, 2022, and ordered detained on February 28, 2022. In recorded jail calls from the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office, she told family that the government had no case and that she was being “framed,” and in one call asked someone to “lock up” her Twitter account.

The Parents

In November 2021, before Perkins was charged, the case took a turn the sentencing memorandum alludes to only as “the near death of another innocent person.” Law&Crime, citing federal authorities, reported that Dunmire’s mother, Tommie Lynn Dunmire, and his father, John Nelson McQuillen, drove to Washington, D.C., intending to kill Perkins. Tommie Lynn Dunmire, dressed as a UPS driver, knocked on an apartment door and shot the woman who answered twice in the abdomen. The woman was not Perkins and had no connection to the case. She survived. Tommie Lynn Dunmire shot and killed herself as officers closed in. McQuillen pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact to assault with intent to kill and received three years in prison.

The Plea

On May 27, 2025, more than three years after her arrest, Perkins pleaded guilty to Count 2, second-degree murder, and Count 3, the firearm count. The first-degree murder count was not part of the plea. The agreement was a binding one under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11(c)(1)(C): if the judge accepted it, he had to sentence her between 240 and 300 months. The firearm count alone carries a mandatory 120 months, served consecutively. The probation office’s guideline calculation came to 288 to 330 months.

The government asked for the top of the range, 300 months. Its memorandum argued that she killed Dunmire “motivated by anger, revenge, and resentment” over the 2017 allegation, and cited a forensic psychological evaluation by Dr. Scott Bender in which, it said, she described “resentment and indignation toward Dunmire, primarily because he would not admit he raped her.” The defense argued that she acted out of post-traumatic stress from past sexual assaults. The mental health sections of the memorandum are blacked out in the public filing.

Sentencing

At the hearing in Cleveland on September 9, 2025, Perkins apologized to Dunmire’s family. “I take full responsibility for what I’ve done,” she said, according to Cleveland19. Her sister told the court: “My sister is not a violent person.” Dunmire’s father said: “my son was a good person too and now his children have no father.” His uncle, Dan Dunmire, a former Marine, said he had “never met anyone as evil or vile.” A prosecutor called the killing “a coldly, calculated intention to cause his death.”

Judge Oliver said he agreed with the government that the motive was revenge, but that her lifetime of trauma had to be weighed. He called it one of the most difficult cases he had had. He imposed 270 months, the middle of the agreed range, plus five years of supervised release, left restitution for a later date, and agreed to recommend a federal prison in West Virginia near her family. Cleveland19 reported that, counting time served, she will be in her early 50s at release.

Legal Status

Chelsea Perkins was convicted, on her guilty plea, of second-degree murder within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States and of using and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence. She is serving 270 months in federal custody, to be followed by five years of supervised release. No appeal has been reported.

Correction

Earlier versions of this file placed the killing in Geauga County. It happened in Cuyahoga Valley National Park, at Valley View, and was a federal case from the start.

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