Do you ever wish you had a “do over” button? Or maybe a magic remote that could control time like in the movie Click or that one episode of Weird Science? It’s a pretty common trope in science fiction stories, so clearly a lot of us would love the ability to instantly reverse time once in a while. And unlike Adam Sandler, we’d all actually use the remote correctly.
I mean seriously, the dude got a magic remote that gave him power over the flow of time, and he used it to fast forward through time with his family so he could do more work. What sort of sociopath does that? How about you freeze time so that you can get your work done and maybe take a quick nap, then enjoy time with your family afterwards like a normal human being?
How do you take a cool superpower like that and put it in the hands of the dumbest person in the world? It would be like creating an entire comic book franchise based around intergalactic soldiers with magic rings that can manifest literally anything they can imagine into reality, then having the main character only use his ring to create things like giant green mousetraps or fishing poles.
But I’m getting off track here. Let’s say the ability to reverse time did exist. How much would you be willing to pay for it? There’s no monetary value you could assign to technology like that, as it would be immeasurably more valuable than all of the money in the world. So what if the cost you had to pay was your soul? And Simon, before you dismiss that by saying of course you’d agree to the deal because souls aren’t real, just assume that they need to exist in order for this transaction to be possible.
Regardless of whether or not souls exist though, backwards time travel does not. Despite his “best” attempts, today’s convicted murderer was unable to go back and stop himself from leaving his house on that fateful day. There was no way to undo what he had done, and Anna Repkina’s blood will forever be on his hands…allegedly. That’s right, thanks to a retrial being granted on appeal for evidentiary procedural reasons, I still have to say that he is allegedly a murderer. Stupid due process.
Looking for Love
It was a typical summer evening in 2015. Michelle Chavez, a 33 year old taxi driver, was parked outside the Peacock Bar and Grill in Corvallis, Oregon. It was a slow time of year for the area’s taxi industry, probably because everybody got the Hell out of Oregon for their summer vacations, so she was just waiting outside the bar for somebody to need a ride.
Her fare that night was Will Hargrove, a 25 year old man who was every woman’s dream. He was the total package: short, fat, and bald. In fact, Michelle even said that her first thought upon seeing Will initially was “God he’s short”. But what Will lacked in good looks, he made up for in charm.
Will worked as a mechanic at a nearby car dealership, and he frequently spent his nights at that bar playing pool and drinking with his friends. All of Will’s friends thought highly of him, even referring to him as their brother. Part of this was because they were such close friends, but it was also in part because of their experiences serving in the military. Or at least that’s what his friends thought.
It turns out that Will was a bit of a liar, and despite telling his friends that he had been stationed in Russia, he had never served in the military at all.
But I guess it was easy to believe the lies that came out of his mouth because he was so charismatic. One of his friends even said that random women at the bar would come up to Will and start chatting him up when they were playing pool because he was just so friendly and personable.
Anyway, Will and Michelle quickly hit it off on the drive back. According to Jamie Klotz, Will’s roommate at the time and eventually a mutual friend of Will and Michelle, “He was willing to give her what she needed. Affection, attention.” Eventually, that chance encounter at the bar turned into a full on relationship.
That all could have been a very sweet story, there was just the small matter of what happened that night after Michelle dropped Will off. She drove back home to Albany, Oregon where she lived with her husband and two children.
Of course, Michelle said that by that point her marriage was essentially over. She and her husband happened to sleep in the same bed, but they barely even spoke to one another. Even if that was true, her situation was hardly ideal for starting a relationship. But there was a simple solution to make Michelle’s life better. If she was happy with Will but unhappy at home, well why didn’t Will just move in then.
In 2016, Will started renting the spare bedroom in the house, which made things easier for their relationship and probably a whole lot harder for the rest of the family. To be clear, nobody seems to know what, if anything, Michelle’s husband knew about the reality of this situation. Personally, I find it hard to believe that he could have possibly been oblivious to everything.
If nothing else, the fact that Will was only paying $300 per month in rent would have been suspicious as fuck. Hypothetically speaking, I would literally murder someone if it meant I could live somewhere for only $300 per month. Average rent in Albany, Oregon is $1,500 right now, and even that is insanely cheap compared to here.
And if we’re being even more specific, Michelle said that rent was $300 plus he had to buy his own food, “unless he liked whatever it was we were making at the time.” So Will was free to join them for family dinners and play footsie with Michelle under the table, and we’re to believe there’s a chance her husband wasn’t totally aware what was going on? I’m not buying it, but that’s just me.
But as great (albeit awkwardly) as their relationship seemed to be progressing, it wasn’t enough. Michelle promised Will that she was going to leave her husband for him, but she was taking her sweet ass time in doing so. This is a cliché that comes up in true crime stories all too often, though admittedly usually with the genders reversed. It never ends well, and if anyone watching this is dating a married person who keeps promising that they’re going to leave their spouse for you, no they’re not.
They never do. At least they almost never do, though I have to admit Michelle seemed pretty sincere in her promise. She even went so far as to give Will her wedding ring as proof that she intended to leave her husband.
Despite all this, Will wound up venturing into the world of online dating while he was living in Michelle’s house. Although he had never been stationed in Russia with the Marines like he claimed, Will does for some reason seem to have been fluent in Russian. Given his love of Russia, it only made sense for him to look for love there. And it was on a dating app that he first met Anna Repkina, a 26 year old woman from Moscow.
A number of sources like to refer to Anna as a mail order bride, but that’s in no way accurate and honestly pretty dismissive of her as a person. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you nearly as much about Anna as I’d like to be able to, because there’s very little information available about her, even on Russian websites.
What I can tell you is that Anna was born on September 24, 1989. She was born and raised in Moscow, eventually attending the State Academy of Slavic culture. It was there where she earned her degrees in linguistics and intercultural communication, as well as becoming extremely fluent in English. Both her English fluency and intercultural communication degree were extremely helpful in landing Anna what seems to be a pretty sweet office job working for Ikea’s corporate offices in Moscow.
She was making good money, much better than Will, and she loved to travel, spend time with her cats, and go to metal concerts. Since she was so intelligent, skilled at English, and the daughter of a teacher, she also spent some of her free time tutoring the kids of her friends and family in English. And for the previous seven years, she had also been in a serious relationship with someone in Russia. When the couple broke up, she decided to search for love on the internet. And that’s where she met Will.
As I said earlier, despite not being particularly attractive, Will was charming. And he knew how to sell Anna on the type of life that she wanted. He showered her with attention and affection, just as he had done with Michelle, often sending her gifts like flowers mailed from the US. The two hit it off, and they messaged back and forth every day.
Those daily text messages turned into daily video chats, and Anna quickly fell in love. By the end of 2016, it was decided that it was time to come visit. Anna was going to travel to Oregon to spend ten days with the man she loved. After one minor hiccup, that is.
A Whirlwind Romance
It was finally December 2016, and Anna’s plane touched down in Portland. She was so excited to finally meet Will and be in his arms, but instead of meeting him at the airport she sent him an angry message on Facebook: “Who knows you have two damn Portlands”? That’s right, she had overshot her flight by over 3,000 miles, flying across the entire United States and landing in Portland, Maine instead of Portland, Oregon.
I can certainly excuse her for making this mistake, but Will’s reply of “Honestly, I didn’t even know that” is a bit concerning. Portland is the biggest city in Maine, and probably the only one most people can even name. Not to mention that she presumably gave him her flight information so he could meet her at the airport, at which point he really should have noticed this mistake. This idiot probably thinks that Albany, Oregon is the only Albany in the US too.
But one more flight and God knows how many hours later, and Anna was finally in the right Portland, meeting Will face to face for the first time. And from the airport, it was time to drive back to Michelle’s house in Albany where Will was still living and the couple would be staying. Definitely not a terrible idea at all.
According to Jamie (Will and Michelle’s mutual friend), she believed that Will was trying to make Michelle jealous. She had promised to leave her husband, but she was taking entirely too long to do it. Perhaps if Will could make her jealous, Michelle would speed things up. That’s Jamie’s speculation and it certainly makes sense, though Will’s actions at the end of the trip make me question if that was really the case.
Anna and Will spent the vacation seeing the sights of Oregon and having a wonderful time together, with most of the time they spent back at Michelle’s house being exclusively in Will’s room. It wasn’t until they were about to go out for the night on New Year’s Eve that Will even introduced Anna and Michelle. This was pretty much the end of the trip, so by the time she was even properly introduced to Anna she had endured what I can only assume was a week of sex noises coming from her spare bedroom. But hey, at least now she knew how her cuck husband felt.
But all good things must come to an end, and after ten days it was time for Anna to fly home. Before she left though, Will had a present for her. He wanted to propose to her, and he did so using something deeply sentimental to him. It was a ring that had been passed down to him from his grandmother. The ring was very special to Will, and he wanted Anna to have it.
Anna agreed to marry Will, and I’m sure she found it incredibly sweet that he used his grandmother’s ring to propose. Unfortunately, what Anna didn’t know was what a lying sack of shit her new fiancé was. The ring that she wore back to Moscow to symbolize Will’s promise to marry her was the same ring that Michelle had given him to symbolize her promise to leave her husband. That’s right, Will proposed to his fiancé using his girlfriend’s wedding ring.
Now that the couple was engaged, it was only natural that Anna should return to Oregon permanently so that the two could begin their life together. Plans were made, and on March 1st Anna would come back to America permanently. Sort of. She was flying back on a guest visa which would allow her to stay for six months, but if the couple got married then she would of course get to stay permanently.
If you’re wondering why Anna came on a guest visa (which doesn’t allow you to work here), that’s because she believed she no longer had to work. Will had promised her that he would provide for her completely and that they were going to start a family together, so Anna believed that she was going to live the dream of every 1950s American housewife.
Was this a promise that Will could actually keep? Eh, probably not. Even though Anna was more successful than Will, it’s not like mechanics make bad money, especially mechanics at dealerships. But in this economy and with Oregon having one of the highest costs of living in the United States, it doesn’t seem likely at all. To make matters worse, there was also the very foreseeable problem that Michelle wasn’t just going to sit there and take this shit.
To Michelle, Will was still her boyfriend. And it’s not like their relationship hadn’t continued as normal after Anna flew back to Moscow. Michelle hadn’t been thrilled when Anna came to visit the first time, but she was able to mostly ignore it. But now her boyfriend planned to have his new fiancé come live with him permanently? Not in her fucking house he wasn’t. He could kiss that sweet $300 per month rent goodbye and go get an apartment somewhere else.
Unable to continue staying at Michelle’s as a couple, Will and Anna rented an apartment in Corvallis. However, Will continued to split his time between the two women in his life, often staying the night at Michelle’s with Anna back alone at their apartment. He justified his long absences by just saying that he worked a lot, but Anna began getting suspicious.
She wasn’t an idiot and could tell that something was going on, but she didn’t know about Will and Michelle specifically. Will had gaslit her into believing that Michelle was just a crazy ex-girlfriend who wouldn’t leave him alone. When Will disappeared for too long (by which I mean like a full day at a time), Anna would message his friends on Facebook asking if they knew where he was or why he was disappearing all the time.
This was Anna’s life for her first three weeks living with her fiancé, but it wasn’t enough to dissuade her from seeing this through to the end. Even though she believed something was going on, she was still blinded by love and wanted to spend her life with Will. She had flown back to Oregon with a wedding dress from Russia, and the wedding date was set for March 25th.
They were going to drive out to the coast and get married on the beach, and it was going to be fucking miserable. Seriously, I know that the Pacific Ocean isn’t the icy pit of despair that the North Atlantic is, but a beach wedding in March still sounds like a terrible idea.
Before that could even happen, however, Anna was going to get an unexpected message on Facebook. She and Michelle had become Facebook friends, allowing Michelle to see the picture of her wedding ring on Anna’s hand. But again, Anna had been convinced that Michelle was just a crazy ex that couldn’t let go. She told Michelle to “stop being a bitch” and to get out of their lives, ignoring the comments about how they were currently sharing Will.
Three days later, Anna and Will drove to the beach for their wedding. On the way, they stopped at a Walmart so Will could purchase a couple wedding bands for the day (classy), and then they arrived at their destination. But oh no! When they got there, the officiant didn’t show up.
How could such a thing have happened? It turns out that it’s easy for the officiant to forget to show up to your wedding when you never hire them in the first place. Will had picked a date and location, but he never actually filed for a marriage license or tried to book an officiant for the ceremony. And he knew all of that going in, so he made Anna put on her wedding gown and drive with him to the beach for literally no reason.
Once they were at the beach with no one to conduct the ceremony, Will took out his phone and called a local Gamestop for some reason. I get that his plan was just to put on a show for Anna and their witnesses to make it look like he was having an angry conversation with the officiant, but why not just call your voicemail or something? Retail jobs already suck enough, there’s no need to harass them with angry phone calls that have literally nothing to do with them.
But if there was a silver lining to this day, which there was not, at least Anna got a beautiful picture taken of her in her wedding gown. And by a beautiful picture, I mean shitty black and white security footage from the McDonalds drive through that they went to after the beach. That is the only picture of Anna in her wedding dress. I know that Will is supposed to be this excessively charming guy and that she was in love, but holy fuck.
Then again, Anna had no reason to believe that the entire day was a sham. I mean, what sort of man would put on a tux, make her put on a wedding dress, then drag her and two of his friends to the beach for a wedding that he knew wasn’t going to happen? Only a deranged sociopath would do something like that, certainly not the man she wanted to marry. The day may have been a bust, but as far as she knew the officiant had to cancel because he got sick.
They were just going to reschedule, and she could finally marry the man of her dreams and start a family together.
Michelle, on the other hand, was less thrilled with all of this. I’m not sure if she even was aware that the fake wedding had been scheduled, but she was sick of Anna being in her way. She and Will texted and called each other constantly, and she kept going back and forth between wanting him to clean the rest of his shit out of her house and leave for good and wanting him to get rid of Anna so they could be together.
It had been a month since Anna had moved to Oregon, and Will had been splitting his time between her and Michelle. But enough was enough, and it was time for an ultimatum. Michelle said that Will had to choose one and only one of them, and he said that he chose her. With that promise made, they set a mutual deadline of April 19th. By the 19th Will had to leave Anna, and Michelle had to leave her husband.
Over Before it Began
The next couple weeks were undoubtedly tense. Will kept delaying things with Michelle, telling her that he kept trying to get Anna to move out but that she refused to. And just like Anna had at the beach, Michelle believed his lies. She thought that he really was trying to throw Anna out and make her go back to Russia, but as far as Anna knew they were a happy couple that were planning to reschedule their wedding.
On April 15th, just a few days before the looming deadline Michelle and Will had agreed upon, Michelle was supposed to come over to Will’s apartment for dinner. I’m not really sure what the fuck Will was thinking when he made these plans, because he was very much still living with Anna. She wasn’t working, so unless she was at the gym or out with Will, there wasn’t anywhere for her to really be except for that apartment. At 8 pm that night, Will texted Michelle to cancel their dinner, saying that Anna (who Michelle thought had finally moved out) had come back and refused to leave.
They argued over text for a while, with Will finally sending a text that read, “I will have this fixed by 1800 tomorrow.” It’s weird that he said it like that instead of just saying “by 6 tomorrow” or “by tomorrow night”, but I guess he had spent so many years lying about being ex-military that it was habit now. He then shut off his cell phone and grabbed the landline, because he had an urgent situation that needed to be dealt with.
Will was behind on his car insurance payments, and at midnight the next night his policy was going to be canceled for nonpayment. This was a big deal, because the moment his insurance lapsed he would lose his car loan and the dealership would be able to immediately repossess his car. Will spent the night trying to negotiate with the insurance company, asking for a five day extension so he could pay them using his next paycheck.
Whether or not that was a reasonable request depends on exactly how far behind on his payments he was, but either way there was nothing the insurance agent could do. She said that once an account was marked as pending cancellation for nonpayment, the system wouldn’t allow them to change dates. He had just over 24 hours to pay them, or his car was gone. And since the next day was Easter Sunday, it’s not like he could talk to his work and try to work out an advance or something like that.
But while Will was dealing with his money problems, Michelle was dealing with what she perceived as the end of their relationship. Even though he promised to have the problem fixed, once Will shut off his phone she assumed it meant that they were done. She left him multiple voicemails early that morning, crying and saying that she’d leave him alone, but that she just wanted to know why. However, it turns out that she had misread the situation.
The next day, Will and Anna left their apartment at about 11:30 am and drove to a remote wooded area in Alsea, about 30 miles from their home in Corvallis. Alsea was a logging and fishing community with just over 200 residents at the time (and about half of that now), and the wooded area they drove to was extremely desolate. Occasionally it was used by locals as a range for target shooting, but in general nobody ever went there. It was the sort of place you could leave a body and have it go undiscovered for weeks, maybe even longer.
There’s no way to know what Anna was thinking during all of this, what lies Will had told her about why they were traveling to the middle of nowhere for Easter. But once they got out of the car, Will allegedly grabbed a shotgun from the backseat and shot Anna in the back of the head. He then decided that this would be a good time to clear out his car, so he dropped a bag of trash on the ground that contained multiple receipts and cigarette butts.
At 4:35 pm, Will called Michelle. She was celebrating Easter with her family and her friend Jamie, but she wasn’t having the best time. She had spent the entire night crying over Will, but this phone call was about to change everything. Will fed her some line about running off the road to avoid a deer and getting a flat tire, saying that he needed help and for her to come meet him at a convenience store in Alsea. Michelle immediately left her family dinner to go see him.
Will went into the convenience store to buy a soda, candy, and pack of cigarettes, then waited for Michelle to arrive. Once she got there, she went to talk to Will, seemingly unconcerned with the fact that his car clearly didn’t have a flat tire. Will told her that he and Anna had a horrible fight that day. He had said such mean things to her that she grabbed her suitcases and left, implying that she had finally moved out for good and was presumably headed back to Moscow like Michelle had always wanted.
To celebrate, Michelle got into the car with Will so they could go park somewhere a little more private and then they fucked in the front seat of the car. It’s worth noting that in the security footage of Will inside the convenience store, there were several dark spots on his head. These spots didn’t exist in any other photos, meaning that they weren’t moles or any other permanent marks. Though it can’t be determined for certain, it’s quite likely that the spots were blood.
If true, this would mean that Michelle left her family’s Easter dinner to go fuck her boyfriend who was literally covered in Anna’s blood. Unsurprisingly, her ex-husband now has full custody of the kids.
After the sex, Will dropped Michelle back off at her car and the two drove home. When Michelle got home, Jamie noticed how her mood had dramatically shifted; she was suddenly so much happier than when she left. But Will had a few stops to make on his way home. First he stopped at a gas station to withdraw $200 from the ATM.
Obviously he didn’t have $200 since he couldn’t pay his car insurance, so he withdrew the money from Anna’s bank account instead. He then started talking to the gas station employees, crying about how his girlfriend had just left him. One of the employees even gave him a hug.
From there Will then drove to a second ATM to take another $600 from Anna’s bank account. That night, he deposited $160 from what he had stolen from Anna into his own bank account, then he called his car insurance company to make the necessary payment so that his car wouldn’t get repossessed. He then began sending texts to Anna’s phone, begging her to come back or to at least let him know that she was safe. But rather than leaving Anna’s phone in her pocket or purse, possibly fearful that it would allow police to track her, he had given the phone to Michelle.
In some regards Will’s behaviour comes across as clearly premeditated, and in others it seems completely impulsive and astonishingly stupid. It’s hard to tell how much he had thought the alleged murder through, but his internet history the next day showed that he was having serious second thoughts about something. Will began doing an internet deep dive on time travel, through any means necessary. Science, magic, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he needed to go back in time to change what had happened.
This search eventually led to Will contacting a stranger through Whatsapp, who I guess claimed to be able to use a magic spell to send Will back in time. When asked what the reason was, Will explained that “his friend” made a horrible mistake, and he had to travel back to 11:30 am the previous day to stop himself from leaving the house so that none of it would happen. Specifically, he said, “I want to go back to keep from losing the [woman] that should be my wife.” As payment for this arcane magic, Will offered his soul.
But the Whatsapp stranger stopped replying.
Needing to distract himself, Will went to Walmart with the cash he had stolen from Anna to buy some video games, candy, and an expensive Lego set. We can say for certain that distraction was his motivation, because he texted his friend Kevin Thomas and explicitly said so. He added that he was spending money he shouldn’t, though he neglected to mention that he shouldn’t because the money was stolen from Anna.
Luckily, Will wasn’t going to have that long to distract himself. Like I said, the area where Anna’s body was left was extremely remote. Her body should have gone undiscovered for a long time, possibly long enough that there would be no body left to find. But while Will was researching time travel and buying toys, police were already investigating Anna’s murder. A local caretaker in Alsea stumbled upon Anna’s body the morning after she was killed while he was out walking his dog.
It was pure random chance, as this was far from where the route where the caretaker normally would have been walking his dog. But for whatever reason, that’s where he happened to be on that morning. When he first saw the body he assumed it was a mannequin or something, but it’s never a mannequin. After touching Anna’s hand and realizing that it felt human, he immediately called the police.
The Legal Ramifications
Because of the isolated location in which Anna’s body was found, police weren’t sure what to make of the scene. Obviously they knew it was murder, but what about all the trash that was around her body? Was that a clue, or was it just unrelated trash some asshole left there? They didn’t know, but it was the only lead they had to go on.
And they were in luck. They found a receipt from a KFC in Corvallis that had the date and time of the order, and it was only a few days old. If the trash was connected to Anna’s killer, this receipt should lead them right to him. There was another fast food receipt among the trash as well, though it was likely to be too old to be of any use.
It was dated March 25th, and was the McDonalds receipt from Anna and Will’s supposed wedding day; a heartbreaking reminder of the disappointing reality of behind all of Will’s lies.
But as for the KFC receipt, security footage from the KFC showed that the receipt was from one of two orders placed by the same car. One was paid for with cash, but the other was paid for with a credit card under the name Kevin Thomas. Police brought Kevin in for questioning, but he didn’t seem to think much of it. And why would he?
He hadn’t done anything wrong, and he hadn’t been informed it was part of a murder investigation. As far as I can tell, all he knew was that the police found his KFC receipt near a crime scene and were just trying to see if was connected.
When asked if he knew anything about the receipt, Kevin said that he and his brother went to KFC every Friday. He then gave his brother’s name as Will Hargrove, because Kevin was another one of Will’s supposed brothers in arms. The police talked with Kevin a bit longer about Will and how they knew each other and whatnot. Overall it was a pretty laid back interview. They still had no idea whether or not the trash was even related to Anna’s death, so there was no reason to put the screws to this guy yet.
But because it was such a friendly conversation, Kevin let his guard down. He didn’t make the connection between the police being so interested in their trash and Will’s recent texts about blowing money he shouldn’t to distract himself from something. And so, while describing what good friends he and Will were, Kevin volunteered that a couple weeks earlier Will had asked to borrow his shotgun and still hadn’t returned it. When the police asked why he wanted to borrow it, Kevin told them that Will said he, “was gonna go up and go shooting in the woods and just kind of blow off some steam.”
Armed with this new information, the police headed straight to Michelle’s house where Will was staying. Will answered the door and was told that his name had come up in an investigation. He told the officers that he and Michelle had driven up to Alsea on Easter Sunday together, stopped at the convenience store, picked up some cigarettes, and driven home. They asked if he dumped any trash there, and he claimed to have dropped the bag off on the side of the store.
At this point Will probably recognized that he was fucked, but he at least could have told a better lie than that. You know they found your trash, so say that you threw it out of the window while you were driving or something like that. That way at least it might be plausible for it to have blown away to the murder location. Saying that he dropped the box off on the side of a store a reasonable distance from the murder is real fucking stupid.
Speaking of really fucking stupid, after this brief little conversation at Michelle’s house, the detectives asked Will to come down to the sheriff’s office for a proper interrogation. As he was getting ready to drive down to the sheriff’s office, Will sent a text message to Michelle stating, “Picked you up at your moms drove to alsea general store and drove back.” You know, because there’s no way that the police would ever look at your phone records.
Once the official interrogation began, the discussion quickly turned to Anna. Will tried to lie and say that he barely knew her. According to his statements to the police, he had met her in downtown Corvallis and the two had only gone on two dates together. He claimed that she was psychotic, and that he broke things off with her after two dates because she posted on Facebook that they were engaged. He also claimed to have not seen Anna since mid-March, about a month earlier.
The detectives weren’t buying Will’s story for a moment. They explained that his trash was found at a murder scene and that his story was full of inconsistencies. At that point, Will indicated that he wasn’t going to keep talking without a lawyer. And that’s totally fine.
We always say that you should never talk to the police without a lawyer present even if you’re innocent, and Will absolutely had the right to request a lawyer. Of course, that request wasn’t going to change the fact that the detectives had both the authority and sufficient cause to tell Will to stand up and put his hands behind his back, because he was under arrest for the murder of Anna Repkina, so that’s exactly what they did. But hey, at least Will didn’t have to say anything else until his lawyer got there.
It wasn’t until 2018 that he would be formally indicted, and the trial didn’t begin until October 2019. That seems like a long time, but it gave the prosecution plenty of time to find evidence linking Will to the murder. Just a few days after his initial arrest, police found Kevin’s shotgun in the back of Will’s truck. There was only one set of fingerprints on the gun, with those prints belonging to Will.
That’s not surprising, but it was a big deal considering what the defense’s strategy was. They planned to pin the blame on Michelle, saying that Will arranged a meeting in the woods so that Michelle and Anna could talk, and that Michelle grabbed the shotgun from his truck and killed Anna. To say this was a bold strategy would be a colossal understatement.
The defense would have known that Michelle’s DNA and prints were nowhere to be found on the gun. They would have known that security footage from the convenience store in Alsea showed Will making a purchase and waiting in the parking lot until Michelle finally drove up quite a while later. And most importantly, there was the GPS information.
On the day of the murder, Will made a phone call asking Michelle to come meet him in Alsea. According to the GPS information, this call was made while Michelle was at her family’s Easter dinner and while Will was standing over Anna’s dead body. Or at least standing somewhere in that little clearing.
Though the defense could try to argue that Anna was still alive at that point, it was going to be a pretty tough sell. Will was caught on a number of different CCTV cameras over the course of his drive, showing him driving to Alsea with Anna sitting beside him in the passenger seat. When he met Michelle after making the phone call, he was clearly alone in his vehicle. While all of the evidence in this case may have been circumstantial, it was still a very strong case.
The trial lasted for a month with roughly 70 witnesses testifying. That number honestly seems extraordinarily high considering how few people were genuinely involved in this story, but a lot of witness testimony was based on establishing Will’s state of mind before and after Anna’s murder. But perhaps the most compelling evidence regarding Will’s state of mind was the aforementioned Whatsapp conversation with some anonymous sorcerer. Will admitted that he needed to “correct a horrible mistake”, and he was willing to sell his soul to do it.
After the lengthy trial had finally concluded and both sides made their closing arguments, all that was left was for the jury to deliberate. In complex murder cases this can take days or even weeks. For Will’s case, it took three hours. He was found guilty of murder, identity theft, and two counts of second-degree theft (the other three charges being related to using Anna’s ATM card to steal her money). He was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years.
Unfortunately, that’s not where this story ends. On August 16, 2023, the Oregon Court of Appeals ruled on Will’s case. The defense appealed on seventeen assignments of error, but the most important ones involved that Whatsapp conversation.
Search warrants can be a difficult thing, especially in the digital age. Most people know that search warrants need to be extremely specific about what evidence police are allowed to seize, but also that there is a “plain view” exception. For example, if a warrant only allows police to search your house for illegal firearms, but they notice that you left a bunch of 8 balls and your lucky crack pipe on the nightstand in plain view, well they can seize those two.
But what about a digital search? If they have a warrant for your phone and all electronic communications between you and a specific person, is everything else that happens to be on your phone considered in “plain view”? As with all things related to the law, the answer is “it’s complicated”. But the short answer is no.
Because of the massive amount of personal and sensitive information stored on electronic devices, courts have generally been extremely restrictive on what investigators are allowed to take from them.
Honestly, that’s for the best. Imagine how fucked up it would be for the prosecution to be going over digital communications sent between a person on trial and their alleged accomplice, only for them to suddenly say, “By the way, check out this dick pic he sent his girlfriend. Would an innocent person send a picture with such poor lighting? And why is it so small?” Obviously that’s a ridiculous example, but hopefully the point is still clear.
Unfortunately, this meant that some of the digital evidence, specifically including the time travel conversation, was improperly obtained. That wouldn’t necessarily be enough to reverse the verdict by itself, as improperly obtained evidence can still ultimately be deemed harmless. In this case, however, the appeals court ruled that it was definitely not harmless.
Although there was a lot of indirect evidence and second hand testimony regarding Will’s state of mind from his guilt, the Whatsapp conversation was the only direct evidence of his state of mind and was thus far more powerful than the other evidence. Not only that, but both the prosecution and defense referenced this conversation in their closing arguments (with the defense claiming that Michelle was the “friend” that did a bad thing), indicating that both sides clearly felt it was an important piece of evidence for this case.
So, thanks to fucking time travel, Will was granted a retrial for the murder charge and thus is only allegedly a murderer despite his prior conviction. On the bright side he’ll be awaiting that second trial from prison, because the other three charges were upheld. And even without the few pieces of digital evidence that will be excluded from the retrial, unless his defense team can come up with a much more compelling strategy this time, I find it hard to believe that the verdict is going to be any different the second time around. Because in my personal opinion, Will is guilty as fuck.
Wrap Up
Anna Repkina was an intelligent, kind woman who was just trying to find love. She thought she had found it with Will, so she abandoned her stable and prosperous life in Russia to move halfway across the world for the man with whom she believed she was going to start a family. Sadly, everything Will told her was a lie, including how he got the ring he used to propose to her.
That said, it’s hard to know exactly how much blame Michelle needs to share with Will, if any. If the original verdict was correct and Will was in fact Anna’s murderer, as all the evidence seems to suggest, then obviously the brunt of the blame is on him. Michelle didn’t put the gun in his hands, nor did she ever explicitly tell him to kill Anna. Whether or not she implicitly told him to is a matter of debate, but either way she was definitely putting a tremendous amount of pressure on him to take care of things one way or another.
On the other hand, Will was already dating and living with Michelle. And her husband. And their kids. It was a weird and fucked up arrangement, but he had full knowledge of what the situation was when he signed up for it.
There shouldn’t have been any reason for him to join a dating app and involve Anna in any of this mess in the first place, and one could argue that Michelle’s level of anger and jealousy over the situation was completely justifiable. I’m not sure that I would personally go that far, but I can at least see the argument.
But we’re not here to provide you with answers to those sorts of complex moral questions. Whether or not she is in some part morally responsible, there is no evidence to suggest that Michelle would be in any way legally responsible. That allegedly falls entirely on Will, who with any luck will die in prison. Hopefully soon.
Key Takeaways
- Will Hargrove murdered his fiancée Anna Repkina in a remote Oregon wooded area on Easter Sunday 2017 after she moved from Russia to marry him.
- Will was simultaneously involved with Michelle Chavez, a married taxi driver whose wedding ring he used to propose to Anna.
- Police linked Will to the murder through trash receipts found at the scene, shotgun evidence, and GPS data showing his location over Anna’s body.
- Will’s bizarre WhatsApp request to a stranger for time travel magic—offering his soul to undo the murder—became key trial evidence.
- An appeals court granted Will a retrial in 2023 because this digital evidence was improperly obtained, though his other convictions stand.
Dana Ortiz covers prosecutorial mechanics, evidentiary procedure, and how investigations unwind decades after the original case file went cold.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Anna Repkina and what was her background?
Anna Repkina was a 26-year-old woman from Moscow, born on September 24, 1989. She attended the State Academy of Slavic culture where she earned degrees in linguistics and intercultural communication. She became extremely fluent in English and worked for Ikea’s corporate offices in Moscow. She loved to travel, spend time with her cats, and go to metal concerts, and also tutored children of friends and family in English.
How did Will Hargrove and Anna Repkina meet?
Will Hargrove met Anna Repkina on a dating app. Will was fluent in Russian and had a love of Russia, so he looked for love there. They started messaging daily, which turned into daily video chats, and Anna quickly fell in love with him.
What happened when Anna first flew to Portland to meet Will?
Anna accidentally flew to Portland, Maine instead of Portland, Oregon, overshooting her flight by over 3,000 miles. She sent Will an angry Facebook message saying ‘Who knows you have two damn Portlands’. After another flight, she finally arrived in Portland, Oregon and met Will face to face for the first time.
How did Will propose to Anna and what was significant about the ring?
Will proposed to Anna using a ring that he claimed had been passed down from his grandmother and was deeply sentimental to him. However, the ring was actually the same one that Michelle Chavez had given him as proof she intended to leave her husband. Anna didn’t know she was wearing her fiancé’s girlfriend’s wedding ring.
What happened on Will and Anna’s planned wedding day on March 25th?
Will and Anna drove to the beach for their wedding, stopping at Walmart for wedding bands. However, the officiant never showed up because Will never actually hired one—he never filed for a marriage license or booked an officiant. He made Anna put on her wedding gown and go to the beach for no reason, then pretended to call a Gamestop angrily about the officiant canceling. The only photo of Anna in her wedding dress was shitty black and white security footage from a McDonald’s drive-through.
What was the ultimatum Michelle gave Will and what was the deadline?
Michelle gave Will an ultimatum that he had to choose between her and Anna. Will said he chose Michelle. They set a mutual deadline of April 19th—by that date, Will had to leave Anna, and Michelle had to leave her husband.
How and when was Anna Repkina killed?
On April 16, 2017 (Easter Sunday), Will and Anna drove to a remote wooded area in Alsea, about 30 miles from their home in Corvallis. After getting out of the car, Will allegedly grabbed a shotgun from the backseat and shot Anna in the back of the head. He then dropped a bag of trash containing receipts and cigarette butts.
What did Will do after allegedly murdering Anna?
After the murder, Will called Michelle claiming he ran off the road to avoid a deer and got a flat tire, asking her to meet him at a convenience store in Alsea. He bought soda, candy, and cigarettes at the store. After Michelle arrived, they had sex in his car. Will then withdrew $200 and later $600 from Anna’s bank account, deposited $160 into his own account to pay his car insurance, and began texting Anna’s phone (which he had given to Michelle) begging her to come back.
He also went to Walmart to buy video games, candy, and an expensive Lego set to distract himself.
What was Will’s internet search history after the murder?
The day after the murder, Will did an internet deep dive on time travel through any means necessary—science, magic, etc. He contacted a stranger through Whatsapp who claimed to be able to use magic spells to send him back in time. Will explained that ‘his friend’ made a horrible mistake and he needed to go back to 11:30 am the previous day to stop himself from leaving the house. He specifically said, ‘I want to go back to keep from losing the [woman] that should be my wife,’ and offered his soul as payment.
Why was Will granted a retrial on appeal?
The Oregon Court of Appeals granted Will a retrial on August 16, 2023 because some digital evidence, specifically including the Whatsapp time travel conversation, was improperly obtained. The appeals court ruled that this evidence was not harmless error because it was the only direct evidence of Will’s state of mind and was referenced by both prosecution and defense in closing arguments. However, the other three charges (identity theft and two counts of second-degree theft) were upheld, and he will await retrial from prison.
Sources
- Original Casual Criminalist video: The Murder of Anna Repkina
- Hero image source by Tschubby / openverse, by-sa.
