SANTA CRUZ >> In previous years, court caseloads in Santa Cruz County lagged during the restrictive conditions enacted under the coronavirus pandemic, mirroring a national trend.

In 2024, however, Santa Cruz County Superior Court has continued to return to business as usual, exemplified in two recent homicide trials that flew to conclusion inside a year, as well as in two aging cases that returned to the forefront.

Jurors spent an at-times harrowing six weeks listening to testimony in the homicide case involving the December 2023 death of Capitola outrigger paddler and software engineer Alice “Alyx” Herrmann, 61, before unanimously finding musician and software engineer Theobald Lengyel, also self-styled as Milo Stone, guilty of murder. Lengyel, 54, of El Cerrito, was a founding member of the experimental alternative rock group Mr. Bungle, whose lead singer Mike Patton later went on to front the band Faith No More.

Jurors were given a somewhat unique lens into the Lengyel case when an audio recording taken on Herrmann’s phone of her last several hours of life was recovered mid-trial. The case, which concluded in November, remained under appeal with the 6th Appellate District Court at year’s end after Lengyel was sentenced to a prison term of 25 years to life.

Another trial that, atypically, came and went within the year was the homicide case of 44-year-old Todd Kolibas, a man experiencing homelessness who was fatally stabbed April 19 during an encounter with a fellow homeless person, 31-year-old Joseph Young, at a DeLaveaga Park grove. The case was supercharged when defense attorney TJ Brewer helped bring to light new evidence that forced the Santa Cruz County District Attorney’s Office to modify Young’s charges from murder to involuntary manslaughter. Young was sentenced to two years of probation and jail time served in November. Young pleaded guilty to the new charges soon after they were filed and quickly went on to rack up additional misdemeanor violations for alleged drug-related crimes while released, a case set out to April for trial.

A case that struck a deeply melancholic note for the community nine years ago came when 15-year-old Adrian Gonzalez murdered his 8-year-old neighbor, Madyson “Maddy” Middleton in his mother’s apartment. That case has returned to the forefront this year. In a jury trial that began last month and will resume after a break on Jan. 21, the community is being asked to assess whether the treatment given thus far to Gonzalez, who is now 25 and eligible for release as part of the juvenile justice system, has been sufficient to show that Gonzalez is no longer considered a threat to the public’s safety. Weeks of trial testimony this month leaned heavily on mental health service providers weighing in — either with direct treatment knowledge or analyzing from afar — on how Gonzalez, now 25, has progressed through his years of treatment while incarcerated.

Just kicking off before the end of the year, one of the county’s oldest remaining untried homicide cases concluded jury selection this month and has set attorneys up for their opening statements early next year. Four co-defendants charged in the matter, including Joshua Camps, Stephen Lindsay and brothers Kurtis and Kaleb Charters, were headed toward a joint murder trial this year when defense attorneys’ efforts to sever the cases into stand-alone proceedings proved successful. Lindsay, 25, is the first to head to trial, represented by attorneys Marsanne Weese and Jamerson Pittori and prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Michael McKinnley.

The case revolves around Pleasure Point entrepreneur Tushar Atre, who was trussed up and robbed in his home in October 2019 before he followed his assailants out into the street and was scooped into his friend’s BMW and taken up to his Soquel San Jose Road property and fatally shot. Atre, 50, founded the web design agency AtreNet and later cofounded Interstitial Systems, a licensed Santa Cruz-based cannabis manufacturer.