A California mom who desperately needed $2,000 to send her then-14-year-old daughter to cheerleading camp in Florida was convicted of fatally stabbing a retired RN to steal her purse.
On Thursday, Dec. 4, a Torrance Superior Court jury convicted Cherie Lynnette Townsend, 47, of first-degree murder for the 2018 stabbing death of Susan Leeds in a mall parking garage in Rolling Hills Estates, California.
Townsend desperately needed $2,000 to send her daughter to cheer camp, prosecutors said. She considered launching a GoFundMe page to raise the funds, but she didn’t want to embarrass her daughter.
Townsend sat in her car for 2 hours in a parking garage at the Promenade on the Peninsula Mall on May 3, 2018. Prosecutors say she was waiting for “an easy target.”
Around 12:15 p.m., Leeds, 66, returned to her white 2016 Mercedes-Benz SUV after shopping at The Gap. Townsend exited her gold Chevrolet sedan, walked around another car and approached Leeds from behind.
As Leeds got into the driver’s seat of her SUV, Townsend stabbed her 17 times in the chest and neck. The brutal attack went unnoticed by other shoppers and cars passing by.
Townsend grabbed Leeds’ black purse, got back into her car and drove out of the parking garage, cutting off an SUV as she exited.
She ran a red light and made a turn, driving westbound on Indian Peak Road before turning northbound onto Hawthorne Boulevard.
Leeds’ cell phone, which was in her purse, pinged off towers going in the same direction.
Sheriff’s deputies arrived at the parking garage around 12:26 p.m. They found Leeds in her SUV covered in blood. Her throat was slashed and she struggled to breath. She died a few minutes later.
While searching for evidence, detectives found a cell phone underneath Leeds’ SUV.
License plate readers show Townsend’s car returned to the mall but she didn’t go into the parking garage.
Prosecutors would later say Townsend returned to the scene after realizing she dropped her cell phone.
Townsend went to a Verizon store in Carson to turn off the cell phone.
She was arrested 2 weeks later and her car was seized as evidence. During a police interrogation, Townsend said didn’t know how her cell phone got under Leeds’ SUV.
She was released from jail six days later because prosecutors didn’t have enough evidence to charge her with murder.
Townsend filed a federal lawsuit alleging false imprisonment, defamation, negligence, and civil rights violations.
“I was arrested for a murder I didn’t commit,” she told NBC4 News in an exclusive interview that aired in September 2018. “It’s important for my story to get out because I was wrongly accused.”
A mom from LA says she was wrongfully accused of murder. Cherie Townsend was arrested for the stabbing of a retired nurse in Rolling Hills Estates in May. Townsend says she’s innocent – and wants to clear her name. Tonight @nbcla at 11. pic.twitter.com/Fhef9K2Cv9
— Eric Leonard (@LeonardFiles) September 28, 2018
At a press conference a year later, Townsend demanded a public apology from the L.A. Sheriff’s Office.
“I want justice, I want an apology, and I want my name restored publicly,” she said.
“I want my name restored.”—Cherie Townsend tells reporters at a presser in #DTLA. pic.twitter.com/K9fJR7mzKE
— Jasmyne Cannick (@Jasmyne) May 22, 2019
In 2023, the sheriff’s department’s fugitive unit re-arrested Townsend and charged her with 1st-degree murder. Her lawsuit was dismissed shortly after.
Detectives found trace evidence of Townsend’s DNA on the cell phone that was dropped at the crime scene.
Blood evidence found in and around the SUV belonged to the victim.
Detectives never recovered the murder weapon.
At trial, prosecutors presented cell phone records that showed Townsend made Internet searches for topics including computer hacking, duplicate credit cards, money laundering, fake ID generators, and how to steal money from an ATM or coin-operated washing machine.
She asked her son’s coach how to obtain fake ID and whether Walmart asked for ID to make a credit card purchase.
A witness, Kelly Hopper, identified Townsend as the woman she saw near a gold four-door sedan in the parking lot shortly after 11:30 a.m. that day.
Hopper testified that Townsend stared at her. “I got this feeling she was going to hurt me, something bad was going to happen.”
Detectives noted inconsistencies in Townsend’s interrogations in 2018 and 2023.
In 2018, she said she went to the mall to shop for her daughter, but she didn’t enter the mall because she had car trouble.
In 2023, Townsend explained she went to the mall to shop for her son’s prom. When asked if she had car trouble, she said no.
At the murder trial, Townsend’s daughter’s cheer team manager testified that Townsend started bouncing checks, and she put her on a cash or cashier’s check basis only.
Another mother testified the cheer program could cost as much as $25,000.
In a note found on her cell phone days before the murder, Townsend wrote, “In this moment, I am completely broken” because she didn’t have $2,000 for her daughter to “compete in the biggest event of her life.”
Hours after the murder, Townsend messaged another cheer mom on Facebook that “something huge happened today, I cannot get into it right now, but I could not get on that plane tonight.”
Townsend’s defense attorney Elizabeth Landgraf argued for acquittal. She said, “Ms. Townsend did not kill Susan Leeds … I don’t know who killed her. … it was certainly not Cherie Townsend.”
Regarding Townsend’s cell phone found at the scene, Landgraf told the court, “I don’t know how it wound up there.”
Townsend faces 26 years to life at her sentencing hearing on January 23, 2026.
