Mum stabbed retired nurse to dying to fund daughter’s cheerleading journey
Prosecutors said the 47-year-old mother of two had been trying to steal two thousand dollars to send her daughter to a cheerleading competition in Florida
A California mum who murdered a retired nurse in a violent robbery attempt so she could pay for her daughter’s cheerleading trip has been convicted over seven years after the killing.
On Thursday, 47-year-old Cherie Townsend was found guilty of first-degree murder for fatally stabbing 66-year-old Susan Leeds 17 times in the neck and upper body.
Leeds was reportedly attacked as she sat inside her Mercedes-Benz SUV in the parking garage of the Peninsula shopping mall on May 3, 2018. Prosecutors said Townsend had been trying to steal two thousand dollars to send her daughter to a cheerleading competition in Florida.
They argued that she went to the shopping centre looking for what they described as an “easy target” to rob when she encountered Leeds.
Townsend, a mother of two, was initially identified as a suspect by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and arrested later that month. She was released six days later after prosecutors said there was insufficient evidence to charge her at the time.
She maintained her innocence and admitted only that she had been at the mall on the day of the murder. In October 2018, Townsend filed a lawsuit against the Sheriff’s Department, alleging false imprisonment, defamation, racial discrimination and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The lawsuit was later dismissed following her re-arrest in August 2023. During the trial, Elizabeth Landgraf, Townsend’s public defender, insisted there was no direct evidence linking her client to the killing.
She told the court that there were no DNA samples, fingerprints, eyewitnesses or surveillance footage conclusively tying Townsend to the crime.
However, criminologist Ilene Louie of the LA Sheriff’s Department testified that DNA traces found on a mobile phone discovered under Leeds’s SUV matched Townsend’s profile, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Investigators had initially assumed the phone belonged to the victim, but when they turned it on, they found a photograph of Townsend. Prosecutors also presented evidence showing that Townsend had been scrambling for money to cover her daughter’s trip.
It was reported that she had considered setting up a GoFundMe page before deciding against it because she feared it would embarrass her daughter. The mum had also texted her son’s former football coach asking about getting a fake ID and had searched online to see whether Walmart verified identification for credit card purchases.
Leeds, a retired Kaiser nurse, had dedicated her life to helping patients with Type 1 diabetes. Her stepson, Fred Leeds, spoke of the devastation caused by her murder.
“So many lives were impacted by this murder,” he 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.”
He added that his father, Susan’s husband of 25 years, died in 2022 without seeing justice done. “The last words from him to me were, ‘My Susie didn’t deserve this,’” he said.
Townsend will be sentenced on January 23 and faces a sentence of 26 years to life in prison.
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