Desperate to replace money that she had allegedly stolen from three friends by lying to them and saying she had bought plane tickets for their daughters to travel with her to Florida, a 47-year-old woman went to the Promenade on the Peninsula in Rolling Hills Estates to find a vulnerable victim, which ended up being a 66-year-old retired nurse, prosecutors said during closing arguments of her trial Wednesday, Dec. 3.
Cherie Lynnettee Townsend is charged with murder in the May 3, 2018 stabbing death of Susan Leeds of Rancho Palos Verdes, who was found bloodied and with 17 stab wounds, including having her throat slashed, in her SUV inside the parking structure.
Jurors were handed the case at the end of the day and were to return to Torrance Superior Court Thursday morning to begin deliberating the charge against Townsend following a weeks-long trial.
Townsend’s public defender, Elizabeth Landgraf, argued Wednesday that there was no direct evidence – DNA, fingerprints, witnesses or video – linking Townsend to the crime and that the circumstantial evidence prosecutors had collected did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Townsend was the one who killed Leeds. She asked the panel to find her client not guilty.
Authorities have noted Townsend’s cell phone was found under Leeds’ vehicle, but Landgraf said there are possible explanations for it ending up there that did not involve a crime.
Prosecutors accuse Townsend of driving to the mall that day, sitting in the parking structure for nearly three hours and attacking Leeds as she returned to her SUV after shopping at The Gap and picking up food from a Rubio’s restaurant.
They argue she then sped out of the parking structure in her gold Chevrolet Malibu, cut off another driver exiting the garage and ran a red light in her escape. Automated License Plate Readers captured her car multiple times on Crenshaw and Hawthorne boulevards going to and from the mall.
Leeds was found by a passerby about 12:22 p.m., prosecutors said. Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies and firefighters arrived a short time later.
Prosecutors said Townsend was desperate for money on the date she and her daughter were scheduled to fly to Orlando for a cheer competition. In the weeks prior to the flight, she had told three friends that she would get their plane tickets to Orlando as a birthday gift for her daughter.
“Not only did they give her money for the tickets, she said she had already bought them,” Deputy District Attorney Paul Thompson said. “How is she going to come up with the money that she keeps telling everyone that she has?”
Landgraf said of all the DNA samples investigators collected at the scene, five of the samples included a small amount of male DNA, but investigators never sent those male DNA samples in for testing to attempt to identify that person.
Leeds’ cellphone was not recovered after the killing,
The phone had pinged off cell towers in a direction that was similar to the path Townsend took in leaving the mall, according to evidence presented at trial.
Landgraf argued that there were three other vehicles seen on the automated license plate reader photos and that Leeds’ phone could have been in any of those cars, but investigators never identified or spoke with the drivers.
However, Thompson said among other factors, there was no evidence any of those cars were ever in the parking structure nor any reason to believe the drivers would have the motive to kill someone.
Evidence also showed Townsend went back toward the mall after realizing she had lost her phone, but she told detectives in an interview she did not go into the parking structure because she heard sirens.
Prosecutors again pointed to Google searches on Townsend’s phone about obtaining a fake ID and whether ID would be checked for credit card purchases and searches about the mall and the Equinox gym at the mall, as well as messages to other cheer moms about something “huge” happening the day she was scheduled to fly out to Orlando and her not being able to get on the plane as circumstantial evidence of a possible motive and consciousness of guilt.
But Landgraf said prosecutors could not prove, nor did investigators learn, the exact time of the murder or who committed it. The one video camera that pointed to the scene of the murder was too grainy to identify anyone.
“I don’t know who killed (Leeds),” Landgraf said. “I wish I did.”
Landgraf again said that no blood evidence was ever found on Townsend or in her car, which was searched twice and was found filthy and with clutter when detectives took it for evidence. Leeds’ bank and credit cards were found in Leeds’ SUV, as well as a checkbook.
But Thompson said Townsend had the car for two weeks before detectives arrested her on May 17, 2018, which was plenty of time to have it cleaned. Townsend was released six days later as the District Attorney’s Office asked for more investigation.
She was arrested again in August 2023 and her statements to detectives during that interview as to why she was at the mall that day were different than what she told detectives after her 2018 arrest.
Thompson pointed out that Townsend told detectives she didn’t go into the mall during the 2018 interview because she had a transmission relay problem with her car, but said that the video shows she was able to drive it out of the structure just fine following the murder.
In 2023, she told detectives she did not have car problems and that she actually went into the mall, but there was no video or receipts to corroborate that statement.