March 22nd, 2018, after getting a weird feeling regarding his ex-girlfriend, Jason Mengel went to his friend Alex Woodworth’s house to check in on him. Ezra McCandless is the ex in question, and she told Jason she had some personal items to return to Alex, since they were friends as well. Once at Alex’s home, Jason saw the two talking, and a passerby called the police when they saw Jason pacing back and forth in front of the apartment. After the police showed up and talked with everyone, they determined that there was no issue and left along with Jason. It was the last time anyone besides Ezra saw Alex alive.
Don Sipple’s Dairy Farm
Around 4:15 in the afternoon on March 22nd 2018, dairy farmer Don Sipple was getting ready to sit down for dinner when there was a commotion on his porch. He heard pounding on the door and when he went to look, he found 20 year old Ezra McCandless there, begging to be let in, begging for help. Don described Ezra as having dried blood around her mouth. She didn’t have any shoes on and there was mud up to her knees. Her clothes were tattered and torn. She was bruised and battered. Don brought her into his home and gave her a blanket to try to warm her up from the winter conditions outside.
Don’s farm is in the small town of Spring Brook, Wisconsin, which is about 15 miles or so west of Eau Claire. Eau Claire was much larger than Spring Brook, with a population just under 70,000 according to the 2020 census. For Don, having someone come out to his farm was an anomaly, let alone someone begging for help and in the condition that Ezra was in. After Don got her in his house, he said she looked like she was freezing, but really in shock. She told him that she had been assaulted. That’s when Don grabbed his phone and called 911. On the call, Don said, “I have a young lady that just came to my house and somebody attacked her.” When police arrived, Ezra kept saying she was scared. When they asked where she was hurt, she said all over. As they spoke with her, Ezra kept asking them to call Jason Mengel.
The People Involved
Ezra McCandless was born Monica Kay. When she was born, her mother was 14 years old, and her biological father had no part in her life. When Ezra was 4 years old, she was adopted by her step dad, but her mom and stepdad divorced when she was 12. After the divorce, Ezra continued to have a close relationship with her father. It was during high school that Ezra started to try out different names and pronouns and eventually settled on Ezra McCandless. She legally had her name changed from Monica Kay. She chose the last name McCandless after Chris McCandless, whom the book and film “Into The Wild” are both based on. After she graduated from high school, Ezra moved from Stanley, WI to Eau Claire.
In Eau Claire, Ezra first met Jason Mengel towards the end of the summer of 2017. Jason is a medic with the Army Reserve. He said that from the moment he met Ezra, he loved her, despite a wide age gap. At the time, he was 33 and she was 19. He said that she kept him energized and on his toes. He described himself and Ezra as both being spur of the moment, and that she was full of surprises. She was an amatuer artist who many described as someone who liked to draw attention to herself. She used her car as a canvas and painted different images all over it.
They grew closer and closer and often talked about marriage. They referred to one another as husband and wife. They could be found many days at Racy’s Coffee Shop, a popular local coffee shop in Eau Claire. It was at Racy’s that the couple met 23 year old Alex Woodworth. He was a barista at Racy’s and a substitute teacher. Alex had a bachelor of science from The University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire, with a major in philosophy and a minor in biology. Alex had started to apply to graduate schools to get his PHD in philosophy. His ultimate goal was to become a philosophy professor. Jason described Alex as one of the nicest people he’s ever met and a big nerd. Not in a mean way, but in a loving way. He was a deep thinker and took his goal of becoming a professor very seriously. Jason said that Alex would always have a philosophy book with him or be researching a new book to read on the same topic.
Alex was the oldest of 4, and according to his father John, he loved playing the role of big brother. If you look at family photos, it’s easy to see that Alex loved his siblings. He’s the one with his arms draped over them, embracing them as they playfully try to pull away. He was active in their church and was always available to lend a helping hand. John said that Alex was attracted to the “un-lovely,” meaning bugs and spiders and such. He would always seek out the things that people didn’t like or care for and make sure that they were taken care of.
It was Alex’s overwhelming sense of wanting to help that drew him to Ezra and Jason. Ezra was going through some emotional problems, and Jason thought that Alex would be a great person for her to talk to about it. He said that he talked with both of them and suggested that they try to help one another. Jason said that there were things in Alex’s life that he thought that Ezra could help with, and on the flip side, there were things in Ezra’s life that Alex could help with.
It was after they met Alex and became close friends with him that Ezra learned that she was pregnant with Jason’s child. It was in the fall of 2017. On October 6th, 2017, Ezra and Jason drove to Minneapolis to have the pregnancy terminated. When they arrived at the clinic, Ezra told Jason that she wanted him to leave. She didn’t want him to see her go through it or see her in that condition. Jason testified that he spent the day in Minneapolis just “bumming around,” riding the buses and exploring the city until he received a text from Ezra saying she was ready to leave.
After that, she and Jason remained together, but Ezra slowly drifted closer and closer to Alex. This is the point where Jason said he mentioned to each of them that they could talk to one another and help each other out. He said that Ezra was feeling a lot of guilt, trauma, and felt very isolated. He felt like Alex would be a great support person for her. Eventually, that closeness became something more, and the two began to have an affair. Andrea Nodolf, the Dunn County District Attorney who eventually prosecuted Ezra, said that from everything she’s seen in the case, it seems like Jason has a very big heart, which allowed him to be manipulated by Ezra. One of Ezra’s childhood friends, Julia Post, has said that’s kind of who Ezra was. She would manipulate people when she had to or wanted to, but ultimately, she was someone who craved attention from anywhere she could get it.
Not A Love Triangle, Maybe A Love Square?
In February of 2018, Jason had to leave Eau Claire for two weeks for military training and before he left, he approached one of his friends, John Hansen, and asked him if he could keep an eye on Ezra. Not in a weird or creepy way, but just to check in on her a couple of times and make sure she was doing okay. Jason had known John for a few years and they had shared interest; they both liked to play Dungeons and Dragons and had both spent time in the military.
While he was away though, Jason received a call from Ezra, and she told him that she was moving out of their apartment and back with her family in Stanley, WI. When Jason returned home, he and Ezra kept in contact, and would meet up occasionally. Back in Stanley, Ezra’s family life wasn’t the best, and on a few occasions, Jason would get a hotel for her to stay at so she could get away from it. When he did that, he would go visit and stay with her.
At one of these visits, Jason saw messages on Ezra’s phone between her and John. For a while, Jason had suspected that Ezra was cheating on him. He had a feeling that she and Alex had an affair, and after seeing the messages he felt she did with John as well. Ezra told Jason that John assaulted her, and tried to blame him, but the messages gave a different vibe.
- Ezra: Are you going to pound this anytime soon?
- Ezra: Sorry I’m rude
- John: Not this week, I have Warren
- John: It’s alright to be blunt just gotta be alright with it coming back your way.
Jason confronted both Alex and John at Racy’s about their relationships with Ezra and the alleged assault. It’s said to have been a very loud and public argument between the three men. Jason told Alex, “You’re my friend. You know, I love you. How could you do this?” Alex apologetically admitted to everything. Jason and Ezra’s relationship ended, but Ezra blamed Alex for this. Some sources claim that Jason ended the relationship and some say that Ezra ended it with both Alex and Jason
In late Feb, she sent Alex a text message telling him to never talk to her again, and Alex respected her wishes and never contacted her after that. Ezra and Jason would still talk and text, and Jason said that Ezra tried desperately to win him back. Jason said that she was manipulative and took advantage of all three of the men in the situation. Ezra sent Jason journals talking about how she was sorry for betraying him and that she loved him, etc. She would try to deliver them by hand, but he told her that if she wanted to send them, she should send them by any other means than in person.
Ezra brought allegations against John, claiming that he sexually assaulted her. She went to the police and spoke with a detective. The detective talked with Ezra for a bit and got her side of the story. She claimed that she and John were drinking and “got a little tipsy.” That’s when she blacked out and believed she was assaulted. The detective looked through Ezra’s phone records and found text messages which indicated that she was lying. He also spoke with Alex, who didn’t corroborate Ezra’s story. Alex said that Ezra had confided in him that she did have consensual sex with John, but regretted it. The sexual assault charges that were being brought against John were ultimately dropped.
March 22, 2018
March 22, 2018 was like any other day in Eau Claire. Jason had been going throughout his morning and stopped into Racy’s for some coffee. While he was there though, he looked up and there she was. Ezra had returned to Eau Claire and was going to be moving back. She was telling people that she was turning over a new leaf essentially and was getting back to her old self. She told Jason she was taking back her life and becoming Ezra again. In truth, she had been talking about driving back to Eau Claire, and her dad told her it wasn’t a good idea. He tried to talk her out of it, going as far as to hide her keys. She found them and now she was there, in front of Jason. There’s security footage and people there said she seemed to be acting out of character. One server told the police later that she wasn’t her usual self; her clothes were disheveled, and she was visibly agitated. They also noted that she wasn’t wearing any makeup, which was not normal for Ezra.
The night before, Ezra and Jason had been texting back and forth, sending over 600 messages to one another. She told Jason that she was going to see Alex to return some of his stuff to him and share some of her writings with him. After they talked for a bit, Ezra left, but Jason said when she left she had “fire in her eyes.” He had a bad feeling about the whole situation. Jason decided that he couldn’t ignore the feeling and jumped on his bike and rode to Alex’s. Once there, he quickly spotted Ezra’s 2003 Chevy Impala; the car was still running, music was still playing, and the driver’s side door was wide open. He didn’t know what to do. He said that for almost 45 minutes, he paced back and forth before finally walking into the front door without knocking.
Jason described the environment as tense. He said that they were inside talking, but it was an intense conversation. “You could taste the tension in the air.” He said when he looked at Ezra and Alex, it was obviously them, but their faces looked different. He said they looked like they were wearing masks of themselves, just emotionless. It was easy for him to see that something was going on, but they pretended that everything was okay. That’s when Jason suggested that they leave Alex’s house and go talk in a public place, hoping that in a public place, neither of them would do anything crazy to the other. As they walked out, a police cruiser pulled up.
A concerned passerby saw Jason pacing back and forth earlier and decided to call the police to have him checked out. Dash cam footage from the police car shows officers talking to Alex by Ezra’s car. She’s sitting in the driver seat, but can’t be seen. Another officer is off camera talking to Jason and Jason told him “She gave me a vibe today man. I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right. Something feels wrong.”
The officers continued to speak with everyone, and Ezra and Alex assured them that everything was okay. The officer said “I’d rather come here and check and it be nothing than have something bad happen.” After a bit, the officer’s were satisfied that everything and everyone was okay and they left. Jason rode his bike to Ezra’s car and talked to Alex briefly before Ezra drove away with Alex in the passenger seat.
Just over three hours later, Ezra was on Don Sipple’s porch. When she spoke with police, she told them she couldn’t remember much. She said all she could remember was being afraid of Alex. She told them she couldn’t even remember her name but kept giving them Jason’s name to call. She had three cuts on her hand, which weren’t very deep and the word “boy” cut into one of her forearms. She had scrapes near her underwear and scratches on her thigh and jaw which were both gone a couple of days later. When questioned about the injuries, particularly the “boy” cut into her arm, she told them Alex did it. Hospital staff was confused and concerned, because it seemed like her injuries were self-inflicted.
Sooo, the police are like, well, we should probably find Alex and see what he has to say about all of this. They looked at his house, work, anywhere he was known to frequent, and he was nowhere to be found. They reached out to his family and friends, hoping he had made contact with them, and they might be able to point them in the right direction, but no one had heard from him.
With no leads as to where he might be, they returned to Don Sipple’s farm. They were driving and passed a dirt road with a gate on it that was unlocked and easy to pass through. They stopped there and looked up the muddy road and saw footprints. They walked down the road and up a hill and used binoculars to look further ahead. That’s where they spotted Ezra’s car, stuck in the mud.. With a body hanging halfway out of the back seat.
When they got to the car, they confirmed that the body was that of Alex Woodworth. The crime scene looked to them like Alex had been the victim of a brutal attack. He was stabbed 16 times in the head, neck, and groin. Investigators went back to Ezra and told her they found a crime scene, and she told them that she can remember stuff now. She said she stabbed Alex in self defense. According to Ezra:
Alex grabbed her arm and started to cut the word “boy” into her arm. He did this because it was a nickname of sorts that he used for her due to her history of trying different pronouns in high school. Police were not buying it though, since Alex would have had to reach across himself and carve it upside down. It was carved so it could be read if Ezra looked down at it, not as if someone else did it and faced it towards themselves. When police pushed her on it, she admitted that she cut it into her own arm, but when asked why, she had no reason or response.
Ezra said that the two were in the back seat where Alex started to attack her, trying to cut her clothes off and sexually assault her. She said that during this, she grabbed the knife by the blade, which gave her the cuts on her hand, and then began to stab Alex to get him off her. Everyone who saw the cuts on her hand called bullshit on this, since the cuts were only superficial, and if she had grabbed a knife with enough force to get it away from someone, the cuts would have been much worse.
Ezra claimed she started stabbing Alex in the car, but all the evidence pointed to him being outside the vehicle when he was attacked. There was blood everywhere on the ground outside the car. When they looked at Alex’s body, he had no defensive wounds.
Police believed that Ezra attacked Alex from behind while they were outside the car, and left him there. To them, it looked like he had tried to climb into the car to get away. He had a scarf that was wrapped around his neck, which to investigators looked like he did himself to try to stop the bleeding. One expert would testify and say that it could have taken upwards to half an hour for Alex to succumb to the wounds, and that if he had received medical treatment in a timely fashion, he would have likely been able to survive the attack. When Ezra left him there though, she took his phone as well. It was smashed up and in pieces, and she told investigators that when she was trying to walk to the road, she fell and it broke.
All of the evidence pointed to Ezra being responsible for the death of Alex, and two weeks after the attack, she was arrested and charged with first degree intentional homicide.
The Trial
Ezra’s defense painted the picture of Ezra being a victim. They said that Alex was obsessed with Ezra and was cold and calculating, manipulating Ezra in to sexual acts she didn’t want to participate in. At the trial, Ezra’s story changed from what she initially told the police though. She claimed that instead of grabbing the knife, that she kneed Alex, resulting in him dropping the knife. Then she grabbed the knife and started stabbing.
Ezra claimed that she wasn’t trying to kill Alex, but she just wanted to get him away from her so she could escape. The defense claimed that the shock and trauma from the attack caused her to black out the event, and while in this blacked out state, she carved “boy” into her arm.
The prosecution claimed that the attack was premeditated. Ezra had taken the knife used in the attack from her dad before she left for Eau Claire; it was in the console of her car when she went to see Alex. They said that Ezra had intended to kill Alex from the start. Their theory was that as they were driving down the dirt road, the car got stuck in the mud. They got out of the car to see how bad it was, and when Alex’s back was turned, Ezra attacked, stabbing him in the head and neck. They said that with his body being half way out of the back seat that either he tried to climb in to save himself from Ezra, or that at some point he managed to get in the back seat and after the attack, Ezra tried to drag his body out but wasn’t able to. Once Alex was dead though, Ezra spent the next few hours trying to rearrange evidence at the scene to support her claim that Alex attacked her. None of the stab wounds Alex suffered were fatal, meaning that like we mentioned earlier, if he had received medical attention, he would have likely survived.
They called Jason to testify at the trial and he recounted their relationship from the time it started up until he saw Ezra the morning of Alex’s murder. In the 48 Hours episode he said the whole time he testified was just weird. He said that when he walked in, it was like Ezra locked on to him. She would smile at him and she kind of perked up when she saw him. Others noticed too and said that it was clear she still has or had a desire to be with him. Ezra was wearing a pink sweater, but at a certain point, she took it off and revealed that she was wearing another sweater underneath. It was a dark green sweater that Jason had given her while they were together. Jason said afterwards that it was just weird, like she was trying to communicate to him, just a very odd experience all together.
When all was said and done, the defense and prosecution rested and it went to the jury to determine Ezra’s fate.
After only three hours of deliberation, everyone was called back to the courtroom. On November 1st, 2019, Ezra McCandless was convicted of first degree intentional homicide in the stabbing death of Alex Woodworth. She was held at the Dunn County jail until her sentencing date, February 7th, 2020.
One juror said that a deciding factor for her was “The stab wound to the head and that she said that, “That’s where I stabbed him first.” … That’s an intentional act – to, to kill somebody.” When asked how she perceived Ezra on the stand, she said that Ezra did herself no favors on the stand. She said “I would expect more—more emotion, more something.” The interviewer asked her if she expected remorse, and she said “Yeah. Yeah. Definitely remorse. There wasn’t any of that.”
At her sentencing hearing, Alex’s family spoke of him fondly and gave impact statements of how their life had been affected by his sudden and tragic death. Ezra was given the opportunity to speak as well and she said:
Hi. I would like to address your honor, and the courts, and Alex’s family. Most of all Alex’s parents. I want to say how sorry I am that they have lost their son. But sorry doesn’t cut it in my mind. That word is not enough and never will be enough for this loss and I recognize that. I don’t think I could ever find words that will be enough to express this, especially to them. The pain they feel is unimaginable. I want to express how sorry I am for this loss because it is such a great loss. I recognize and completely acknowledge this pain and I’m so sorry. I loved Alex very much and I also feel a great loss and I am so sorry. And thank you for letting me say this. Thank you.
After her statement, the judge started to explain how sentencing works in Wisconsin. He said normally, the courts consider probation, but that wasn’t applicable in this case. Since Wisconsin isn’t a death penalty state, that was also not in play. He then explained how in the past in Wisconsin, a person sentenced to life would have to serve around 13 years, then they would be eligible to apply for parole to a parole board. He said on average, people would serve 18-19 years of life sentences at that time. He next went into how the state started to get tougher on crime after that and referenced “Life means life,” meaning that a life sentence should be just that. After that, it turned to the courts determining when someone would be eligible for parole. It changed again after that and the people became eligible to petition the courts for extended supervision release. It’s similar to parole in that the person is supervised while released and has to maintain several things to remain free.
The judge laid out three options: 1. Release to extended supervision after 20 years. 2. Eligible to be released to extended supervision on a date set by the court. 3. No eligibility for release to extended supervision.
As he spoke, he mentioned what many were thinking, that Ezra’s statement seemed insincere. He made it a point to tell her that. He then sentenced her to life in prison, with the ability to petition for release after serving 50 years. His reasoning was that if in 50 years, she applied for release, Alex’s parents would most likely be deceased, and they wouldn’t have to live through the heartache of seeing her possibly be released. Ezra is currently incarcerated in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. There is an instagram account that is run by her mother that sells her artwork to help fund her appeals.
24 year old Alex Woodworth was laid to rest in Dresser, Wisconsin in the Peace Lutheran Church Cemetery.
