Former Mr. Bungle Saxophonist Charged With Murder in Girlfriend’s Death
A founding member of the experimental 1990s rock band Mr. Bungle, Theobald Lengyel, was arrested on Tuesday and charged with murder, after the police in Capitola, Calif., found human remains that they believed were his girlfriend’s in a wooded area of a regional park.
Mr. Lengyel’s girlfriend, Alice Kamakaokalani Herrmann, 61, who was known as Alyx, was last seen in Santa Cruz, Calif., on Dec. 3, according to the El Cerrito Police Department. After not hearing from her for more than a week, her family reported her missing on Dec. 12, the police said.
Ms. Kamakaokalani had lived in Capitola, a small seaside town in Santa Cruz County. The police said in a statement that during their investigation they found her car, a red Toyota Highlander SUV, at Mr. Lengyel’s house in El Cerrito, about an hour and 40 minutes by car from Capitola. Investigators found remains, which are still being identified, in Tilden Regional Park in Berkeley, the police said.
“As the investigation progressed, it became clear that foul play was involved,” the Capitola Police Department said in a statement, “leading to the identification of Theobald Lengyel as a suspect.”
Mr. Lengyel, 54, who has also released music under the name Mylo Stone, has not cooperated with the investigation, according to the El Cerrito Police Department, which said they believed Mr. Lengyel had left town and drove to Portland, Ore., after Ms. Kamakaokalani’s disappearance.
Mr. Lengyel, who played the alto saxophone, was one of the founding members of Mr. Bungle, which formed in the mid-1980s in Northern California as a metal band before embarking on a more experimental, absurdist path. The band released its first album, also named “Mr. Bungle,” in 1991.
The album, which included a mixture of progressive rock, punk and funk, featured song titles like “Squeeze Me Macaroni” and “The Girls of Porn.” Allmusic.com described it as “a difficult, not very accessible record,” but noted that “the band wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Mr. Lengyel left the band in the late 1990s, before the release of the album “California.” The band reunited and performed in Los Angeles in 2020, without Mr. Lengyel.
