A woman accused in the death of a 55-year-old Escondido man who paid her to engage in fetish acts and then died during the encounter was ordered Wednesday to stand trial for murder.
It is the only charge Michaela Rylaarsdam, 31, faces arising from the 2023 incident that ended when Michael Dale — who had duct tape on his mouth and a plastic bag over his head — became unresponsive on the floor of the bedroom he rented, according to testimony during Rylaarsdam’s preliminary hearing Wednesday in Vista Superior Court.
She recorded at least some of the encounter, and eight short video clips were presented as evidence. Wednesday’s testimony did not indicate precisely why she recorded it, but in a court filing earlier this year, an Escondido police investigator said it was done to be content for her OnlyFans site.
After hearing roughly a half-day of testimony, Judge Daniel Link found enough evidence exists to order Rylaarsdam to stand trial. But he also noted that the standard at a preliminary hearing is a much lower bar than proof beyond a reasonable doubt as required at trial.
Deputy District Attorney David Jarman, who is prosecuting the case, argued during the hearing that the facts support a second-degree murder charge. Rylaarsdam’s defense attorney, Daniel Cohen, said it was a “tragic accident” and that his client had no intent to kill. “She tried to save him,” Cohen said.
Link acknowledged the case presented “a unique set of facts.” The judge said Rylaarsdam “did not intend, necessarily, to kill him.” He also wondered aloud whether the case was one of second-degree murder or involuntary manslaughter. “When does bondage and fetish turn into implied malice?” he asked.
“I’ll fully admit I don’t know what a jury is going to do with this, if it even gets that far,” Link said.
According to testimony, some of the video from the April 17, 2023, incident showed Dale with his head in the plastic bag. Jarman argued it was there for at least eight minutes shortly before a 911 call for help. The first police officer to arrive on scene found Rylaarsdam performing CPR on Dale, who was wearing sweatpants, shiny black boots and was wrapped in clingy plastic from about the thighs down. His arms were over his head, bound with duct tape.
He was hospitalized and declared brain dead the following day.
Rylaarsdam voluntarily gave police her phone on the night of the incident to allow them to download the contents. She also sat down with a police investigator for an interview the next day. Nearly two years passed before Rylaarsdam was arrested in February and charged with murder. She remains jailed without bail.
Authorities allege that Rylaarsdam secured duct tape over his mouth and a plastic bag over his head, suffocating him. According to testimony, the bag had perhaps six or eight small puncture holes, the size of a ballpoint pen tip.
Testimony indicated Dale found Rylaarsdam, who lives in San Bernardino County, online and initially connected with her a few weeks before the encounter. They communicated by text, and she charged him to continue speaking with her, Escondido police Detective Christopher Zack testified. He said that over the course of roughly three weeks, Dale made several payments to Rylaarsdam, coming in at just over $11,000.
In their communications, he asked her to glue boots to his feet, which authorities allege she did during their encounter. He also requested multiple times that she glue his eyes shut, which she did not do.
The videos were played on a small screen turned away from the public during the hearing. Zack’s descriptions of the videos indicate that Dale had increasing amounts of plastic wrap around him as the videos progressed. He is eventually shown with tape over his mouth.
In the final few minutes of the encounter, Jarman argued, Dale had four layers on his head in some of the videos — black duct tape, a plastic bag, plastic wrap, and pink duct tape.
“We know that when items are placed over the head, over the mouth, it causes a deprivation of oxygen to the brain, and that’s exactly what happened here,” Jarman argued. “And we know that this defendant was subjectively aware of her actions, because she’s filming it.”
Zack said Rylaarsdam told him she put duct tape over Dale’s mouth because he was “getting annoying,” but denied putting a bag over his head. On the video, he can be heard snoring at one point, and there was also evidence to suggest Rylaarsdam thought he was sleeping.
Rylaarsdam’s attorney said it had been “role play. There’s no conscious disregard for human life on her part in this tragic accident.”
Dr. Debra Berry, a forensic pathologist with the county Medical Examiner’s Office, testified Wednesday that Dale died after a lack of oxygen to his brain. Berry said toxicology tests taken while Dale was hospitalized showed a blood-alcohol content of 0.33 percent — more than four times the legal limit to drive in California.
Berry additionally said Dale had less than a therapeutic dose of trazodone in his system, and that a combination of it and alcohol could suppress a person’s respiratory system. Berry said Dale’s health conditions included diabetes and hypertension.
After the hearing, Cohen said that if the case goes to trial, he expects his client to prevail.
“I really do think that we exposed some weaknesses in the prosecution’s case,” he said.
To support second-degree murder, prosecutors must prove the defendant had implied malice — that they intentionally committed an act, and the natural and probable consequences of that act were dangerous to life. The person had to have known it was dangerous and that they acted with conscious disregard for life.
Involuntary manslaughter is explained in California jury instructions as “an unlawful killing resulting from a willful act committed without intent to kill and without conscious disregard of the risk to human life.”
Rylaarsdam is due back in court later this month. No trial date has been set.