The murder trial of former adult film entertainer Devyn Michaels is unfolding in Las Vegas—and it reads like a story that defies belief even by Sin City standards.
According to Las Vegas' CBS affiliate, 8 News Now, Michaels, 47, is accused of killing Johnathan Willette, the father of her two children, on August 7, 2023. Prosecutors allege she struck Willette with a wooden stick before decapitating him inside his Henderson home. His mother later discovered his body, covered in chemicals and smoking. Willette's head has never been found.
According to investigators, Michaels drove from the crime scene to her Las Vegas residence that night with Willette’s cellphone—and allegedly his head—inside her vehicle. Data from her phone and car reportedly place her at Willette’s home between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. before showing movement toward her own address shortly after. Detectives testified that Willette’s phone was later found cracked, bloodied, and discarded in her driveway.
Prosecutors told jurors that Michaels’ motive centered on an unsettling domestic triangle: she had recently married Deviere Willette, Johnathan’s son, making her both wife and stepmother within the same family.
“This is the future that she saw and that she wanted, and the only way to have that future was with John out of the picture,” Deputy District Attorney John Giordani said in his opening statement, according to The New York Post.
The defense offered a different version, claiming Deviere—not Michaels—committed the murder after learning she wanted to reconcile with his father. Defense attorney Robert Draskovich told jurors that the younger Willette “was getting kicked out” and “wasn’t going to let his father take his wife.” Police, however, have not identified Deviere as a suspect.
Adding another twist, court documents and public records confirm that Michaels—who appeared in early-2000s adult films including Ooze, Touch Me, and Freshman First-Times—was once married to Robert Baker, the man convicted of murdering Toronto hairstylist Fabio Sementilli in 2017, according to the Toronto Sun.