A California mom who killed a retired nurse in an attempted robbery to steal money to send her daughter to cheerleading camp has been convicted nearly a decade after the heinous murder.
Cherie Townsend was convicted of first-degree murder on Thursday for fatally stabbing 66-year-old Susan Leeds 17 times in the neck and upper body as she sat inside her Mercedes-Benz SUV in the Peninsula shopping mall parking garage in broad daylight on May 3, 2018, KTLA reported.
Prosecutors said Townsend, 47, was attempting to steal $2,000 to send her daughter to a cheerleading competition in Florida and had gone to the upscale shopping promenade looking for an “easy target” to rob at the time of the murder.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department had initially identified the mom-of-two as a suspect and arrested her later that month, but she was released six days later when prosecutors said there wasn’t enough evidence to charge her.
Townsend — who admitted to being at the mall, but maintained her innocence — filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department in October 2018, claiming false imprisonment, defamation, racial discrimination, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The suit was later dismissed after she was arrested again in August 2023 for the murder.
During the trial, Townsend’s public defender, Elizabeth Landgraf, argued that there was no direct evidence tying her to the killing, such as DNA, fingerprints, witnesses, or surveillance footage.
However, LA Sheriff’s Department criminologist Ilene Louie testified that traces of DNA on a cellphone found under Leeds’ SUV matched Townsend’s, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Investigators initially believed the phone under the car belonged to the victim, but after powering it on, they found a picture of Townsend.
Prosecutors presented evidence indicating Townsend was desperate for funds to cover her daughter’s trip to Florida.
The mom-of-two had allegedly considered a GoFundMe but rejected the idea, fearing it would embarrass her daughter, the Daily Breezereported.
Townsend also had texted her son’s former football coach about getting a fake ID and Googled whether Walmart verified IDs for credit card transactions.
Leeds, a retired Kaiser nurse, had devoted her career to caring for patients with Type 1 diabetes.
“So many lives were impacted by this murder,” Fred Leeds, the victim’s stepson, told KTLA.
“She lived a great life…a kind human being that would have done anything for anyone, and to be so brutally murdered, there’s just no explanation for it.”
Her stepson also shared that his father — Susan’s husband of 25 years — died in 2022 and never saw justice served.
“The last words from him to me were, ‘My Susie didn’t deserve this,’” he recalled.
Townsend is set to be sentenced on Jan. 23. She faces 26 years to life in prison.
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