The use of manipulation by a person to get what they want is not a novel concept. However, very rarely have we encountered an individual who was, quite frankly, this awful at it.
(Note – At the time of this writing, the individual involved was using She/Her pronouns. As such, I will do the same.)
Ezra J. McCandless was born under a different name (which will not be used here) on October 6th, 1998 in Stanley, Wisconsin. Her mother was 14-year-old Roselenna Gunelson. Her birth father was never in her life.
When she was four years old, McCandless was adopted by her mother’s partner, Joshane Karlen. Joshane and Roselenna divorced when McCandless was 12 years old, but she remained close with her father.
As she approached high school, McCandless explored her gender identity, her pronouns, and her name. She settled on Ezra McCandless, named after Chris McCandless from the book and film Into The Wild, and identified fairly freely as gender fluid, using both male and female pronouns at different times in her life.
After high school, McCandless enrolled in college, but soon dropped out. She then moved to the city of Eau Calire, Wisconsin. During this time, McCandless’s friends described her as attention seeking, and it didn’t matter the kind of attention she got – she wanted it all. McCandless used her art as a way to gain this attention, portraying herself as a mysterious, philosophical, deep person who used her own car as a canvas.
As the summer of 2017 was ending, McCandless met 34-year-old Jason Mengel. He was a National Guard medic, and deeply attracted to the 19-year-old McCandless. He stated that she made him feel ‘energized’.
The two fell into a fast, hard, and intense romance. They even spoke of marriage. The two officially moved in together in August of 2017.
For whatever reason, no one seemed to make note, or even make a comment, about the age gap between the two.
During this time, McCandless also befriended 23-year-old Alex Woodworth, a barista at a popular coffee house, Racy D’Lenes Coffee Lounge, affectionately known as Racy’s.
Jason encouraged the friendship – Alex and McCandless were close in age, and seemed to have a lot in common. Jason wanted McCandless to be more social, and make more friends. He wanted her to have a support network that she could count on – a support network that included more people than only Jason himself.
It wasn’t long before McCandless and Alex began to explore their closeness. They were often seen as being close, and chummy. It wasn’t long before the regulars ar Racy’s suspected that Alex and McCandless were involved in an intimate relationship. Their suspicions were correct. What was most surprising to the regulars, though, was that Alex was attracted to McCandless at all.
Where Alex was demure, kind, gentle, and thoughtful, McCandless was brash, and self-involved. Alex was the kind of person who loved helping others. He was especially fond of helping McCandless in anything she needed. He enjoyed her company, and found her charming. Alex was known for his love of philosophy, and the love he had for his three younger siblings.
Soon, Alex was also known for his admiration of Ezra McCandless. An admiration that McCandless reciprocated – especially when her boyfriend Jason was gone for weeks at a time on duty. If Jason couldn’t give her attention, she would find it somewhere else.
In early February of 2018, McCandless reported Jason’s friend John Hanson to police. She alleged that John had sexually assaulted her while she was passed out. Detectives investigated the assault carefully, treating McCandless with care. Until the true events of what had occurred came to light.
As investigators proceeded with their investigation, they questioned Alex Woodworth, as he was close with McCandless. Alex cooperated fully. He told them that McCandless had told him that the encounter with John had been consensual, but that she regretted it, and was scared Jason would leave her if he ever found out. As a result, the investigation was closed, and the matter was dropped.
A few weeks later, while Jason was away on duty, McCandless moved out of his home, and back in with her mother in Stanley, Wisconsin. This blindsided him. McCandless insisted that they meet at hotels when they wanted to spend time together, which he went along with. He was none the wiser as to her accusations against his friend, or her relationship with Alex. But his ignorance wouldn’t last long.
During one such hotel tryst, Jason happened to see messages on McCandless’s phone. He was devastated. Ezra McCandless, the love of his life, was having an affair with Alex Woodworth, a man he considered a very good friend. He was suddenly wrecked by the realization that he had brought them together.
Through reading McCandless’s messages to Alex, Jason also learned of her relationship with his friend, John, and her accusations against him. Jason confronted both men, very publicly, at Racy’s. Surely this couldn’t be true. Ezra McCandless couldn’t do these things. Could she?
When Jason realized the full scope of what McCandless’s actions, he broke off the relationship. But the two remained in contact via text message. McCandless made sure of that. She would go to any lengths to keep her man, and Jason Mengel, in her mind, was undoubtedly hers.
On February 24th, 2018, McCandless texted Alex to tell him she no longer wanted him to speak to her. She continued to call and text Jason, trying to prove her love and devotion to him. She even sent him journals. These journals expressed how betraying him affected her. How she was feeling about it. She tried to deliver the journals by hand. Jason refused.
Ezra McCandless was losing her man. And that just would not stand.
On March 22nd, 2018, Ezra McCandless saw Jason at Racy’s in Eau Claire. Jason noted that she seemed agitated. She was asking after Alex, but it was his day off. In a huff, and acting oddly, according to Jason, she left the coffee shop and proceeded to head towards Alex’s house. Jason was worried. Something wasn’t right. On his bike, he cycled to Alex’s house after McCandless.
He soon saw her 2003 Chevy Impala outside Alex’s house. The keys were still in the ignition, and the car was still running. Jason paced back and forth outside the house for a time, unsure about what to do. A passerby found it highly suspicious, and phone the police.
After pacing for 45 minutes, Jason went inside the house. He didn’t bother to knock. He found Alex and McCandless in the midst of a heated conversation. Jason insisted that they all head outside, and speak in a public, open area. As they walked outside, a police cruiser arrived at the house.
Jason told police that he was there because he was concerned. He said that McCandless had not been ‘acting like herself’, and he wanted to check on her. Police dashcam footage showed a police officer speaking to Alex outside of his house, standing next to McCandless’s car. McCandless herself cannot be seen in the video, as she was sitting in the driver’s seat of her car.
At 1:05 PM on March 22nd, 2018, police left the scene, satisfied that Jason had it under control. Jason, after a brief conversation with McCandless, also left the scene. McCandless had assured him that she was fine, and simply wanted to end things with Alex once and for all.
This was the last time that Alex Woodworth was seen alive.
At 4:15 PM the same day, Don Sipple opened the door to his dairy farmhouse in Spring Brook, Wisconsin, to find Ezra McCandless standing on his doorstep, bruised, barefoot, and covered in mud and blood.
McCandless asked to come in and use the phone to call a doctor. She told Don that she’d been attacked. McCandless was taken to hospital. While there, she told paramedics and hospital staff that she had no recollection about what had happened. She asked after Jason repeatedly.
As police spoke with her, she kept claiming that she couldn’t remember what happened. She couldn’t remember why she had the word ‘boy’ carved into her arm.
Then it started coming back to her in bits and pieces.
And her story was simply unbelievable. And would take many forms over the course of the investigation.
That night, police were still looking for Alex. He wasn’t at home, and his family was growing more and more concerned about him. This just simply wasn’t like him.
The following day, police made their way to Don Sipple’s farm. They followed footprints that undoubtedly belonged to McCandless, and found her car. They also found Alex Woodworth half hanging out of the backseat. He had 16 stab wounds to his head, neck, torso, and groin.
On April 6th, 2018, Ezra McCandless was arrested and charged with the first-degree murder of Alex Woodworth.
The trial began on October 15th, 2019. Here, Ezra McCandless’s stories – and their absurdity – came to light.
McCandless had stated, those first few days in the hospital when her memory ‘came back to her’, that she had gone to Alex’s house to break things off with him, in order to rekindle her relationship with Jason Mengel.
After the police and Jason left that day in March, Alex ordered her into the passenger seat of her car, and they drove off. They found their way to the road leading toDon Sipple’s farm, where the car got stuck, which annoyed Alex.
Next, McCandless claimed that Alex ordered her into the backseat of the car, where he proceeded to attack her. She claimed that she fought back as he began cutting at her clothes with a knife. She claimed that she had cut her hands trying to get the knife away from him.
McCandless went on to claim that Alex had carved the word ‘boy’ into her arm. McCandless had identified as male when she’d first met Alex, using he/him pronouns. She later identified as female, and began using she/her pronouns. She claimed that Alex had carved the word into her arm to mock her, and her identity.
However, the word had been carved in such a way that it faced her. For Alex to have carved it, he would have had to do it upside down. As police questioned her further, she admitted to carving the word into her own arm herself. For no discernible reason. (At least, no reason other than to blame the victim for what she’d done to him, and attempt to get away with it.) Her attempts at manipulating that situation to her favour had failed epically.
On the stand, McCandless changed her story a bit. She stated that, rather than grapple for the knife with Alex, she kneed him in the groin and grabbed the knife, cutting her hands that way, and “stabbing him anywhere and everywhere I could”.
This story didn’t track, either. At the hospital, staff who inspected her injuries found the cuts to her hands to be shallow, and few and far between. They were indicative of having been self-inflicted, rather than the result of a struggle, as they showed hesitancy in their depth and placement.
Police also found it hard to believe that Alex would spontaneously attack McCandless with a knife. A knife that was identified to have come from the home of Joshane Karlen.
By McCandless’s account, the attack took place in the backseat of the car. However, all of the blood found outside of the car told a different story. It also appeared as though she tried to drag Alex into the backseat of the car, and gave up halfway through.
McCandless then stated that, as she didn’t have her phone at the time, she took Alex’s, with the intent to call the police. She fell, and the phone broke.
When the phone was found by police, it appeared as though it had been hit hard. It was hard for them to believe that it had broken in a fall, when it was found in soft mud.
The prosecution claimed that McCandless had decided to murder Alex for getting in the way of her relationship with Jason Mengel. She wanted both men to be hers, but Jason was her priority.
As Jason testified against her in court, she peered at him hopefully, wearing a green sweater he had once bought her. Jason left the stand deeply unsettled.
The prosecution rested their case, poking at all of the holes in McCandless’s stories, and establishing that everything McCandless had done, and every lie she had told, had been an attempt at manipulating everyone around her with one goal in mind – to get Jason Mengel back. She was just really, really bad at it.
The defense scoffed. Clearly, McCandless had to do what she’d had to do in order to save her own life. It was an act of self-defence.
On November 1st, 2019, Ezra McCandless’s lies came to an end. She was found guilty of the first-degree murder of Alex Woodworth. She seemed shocked. She’d been certain that she’d be walking free.
On February 7th, 2020, Ezra McCandless was sentenced to life in prison, with the eligibility of parole after 50 years. Her mother pleaded for leniency. The judge wasn’t swayed. Throughout the sentencing, and most of the trial, McCandless showed no remorse for what she’d done. Even during her statement, she made note of how the entire procedure had affected her, sparing a bare moment to apologize to the Woodworth family.
Friends and family of Alex Woodworth believe that Ezra McCandless received exactly what she deserved.
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Sources:
Ezra McCandless Murder Case: Why was the word ‘boy’ carved into the arm of an accused killer? – Produced by Jonathan Leach and Paul LaRosa – CBS News
Wis. Woman Stabbed Ex-Lover to Death, Then Carved ‘Boy’ Into Her Arm, Concocted Self-Defense Story – Jeff Truesdell – People.com
Redhanded podcast – Episode 197 – Ezra McCandless: Killer Girlfriend
Ezra McCandless Wikipedia page