Anna Repkina: A KFC Receipt Helped Solve Her Murder Case
A double life, love triangle and time travelling
After getting out from a 7-year-old relationship, in search of love again, 27-year-old Russian Anna Repkina went on a dating site and met 26-year-old William Hargrove from the States. Immediately, they hit it off. They shared thousands of messages and in December 2016, Anna decided to come over to the United States to meet William. Despite flying to the wrong Portland (Portland, Maine instead of Portland, Oregon) when they finally met, Anna had an amazing time with him.
During the weeks that she was there, William even proposed to her.
Little did she know, the beautiful engagement ring belonged to another man’s wife.
When Anna was falling for this man, William was and always had been involved with another man’s wife, Michelle Chavez. She was stuck in a loveless marriage and William made her felt seen and loved. Michelle even rented a room out from the house that she, her husband, and her two children were living in for just $300. As the matter of fact, Anna herself lived there during her short stay before returning to Russia.
As a promise that she would leave her husband, Michelle gave her engagement ring to William but it wasn’t fast enough. According to William and Michelle’s mutual friend, Jamie Klotz, William was dating Anna to make Michelle jealous. Perhaps to push her to leave her husband sooner.
In March 2017, a happily engaged Anna packed up her stuff, left her office job in Russia, and moved to the US. They rented a small apartment not far from Michelle’s place and her beautiful engagement story was supposed to begin.
But, Anna began to notice that William was not as around as she would like and even resorted to asking William’s friend about his location. In actuality, William was spending some of his nights at Michelle’s. One day, Anna even received a bizarre Facebook message from Michelle about sharing William but Anna was under the impression that Michelle was just a past clingy girlfriend of William. She remained clueless about the truth.
On the day of the wedding, Anna wore the wedding dress that she brought all the way from Russia but her wedding plans were stumped when William said that the officiant could not make it to their wedding. He was on the phone, mad at the officiant but records showed that the calls were all to video game stores. He never got an officiant nor a marriage license. On that day itself, a CCTV in Walmart caught William on the phone as he shopped for a wedding ring. He was on a call with Michelle and was discussing whether would he come over that night.
William was having a problem with his car insurance policy. If he doesn’t pay up by 16th midnight, he would lose his loan. Unhappy with his new fiancée, Michelle also gave him an ultimatum whether it was her or Anna. Like Anna, she was also deceived by William, saying that it was Anna who desperately clung on to him.
On Easter Eve, he sent Michelle a message,
“I will have this permanently fixed by 18:00 tomorrow.”
On Easter evening, William met up with Michelle where he told Michelle that he got into a fight with Anna and Anna finally left him. Before William head back to his place, he made a stop at a gas station where he withdrew $200 from Anna’s account. He also broke down in tears to the gas station’s employee where William revealed his girlfriend left him. Arguably, some believed that William was trying to build an alibi but why would he withdraw money from her account, knowing that it could be easily traced back to him. He also made another stop at another bank to withdraw another $600 from Anna’s account which ‘coincidently’ solved his insurance problem.
On April 17th, the next day, Anna’s body was found by chance by a local caretaker in a remote logging area in Alsea. She was shot from the back without any attempt to hide nor cover her body. She was just heartlessly dumped there with no identification on her and oddly, the detectives found trash such as cigarette packs, candy wrappers, and fast food bags near her. It was just a small random pile of trash but among the trash, the detectives found a KFC receipt which was paid by card.
Following that trail, the detectives found Kevin Thomas who revealed that he did indeed went to the KFC drive-through with his friend, William and he happened to have a Russian girlfriend and has yet to return his shotgun.
During questioning, William played down his relationship with Anna that he had only 2 dates with her but she was the psychotic lady who then posts on Facebook that they are engaged when he tried to break it off. When the police investigated William, they found his screenshots on how to time travel and records of him even asking strangers on Whatsapp to undo the mistake of his ‘friend’ made and was willing to trade his soul for it. His cellphone also pinged him at the crime scene and his fingerprints were all over the murder weapon, the borrowed shotgun.
Despite the mounting evidence against him, he pleaded not guilty during the trial and blamed it on Michelle Chavez. During the ultimatum, Michelle sent William a message that if Anna was,
“not gone by Thursday, I’m building a snowman.”
It was an inside joke where it meant killing someone and hiding the body in a snowman that never melts, hiding the body forever. Also, Michelle Chavez was found with Anna’s cell phone but Michelle said that it was to her given by William the night before and she had no idea it belonged to Anna.
Only William was arrested as only his fingerprints were found on the shotgun. The juries found him guilty of first-degree murder, identity theft, and two counts of second-degree theft and sentenced him to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 25 years. Things have not been easy on Michelle as well. She was under scrutiny from the public and tried to take her own life in June 2018.
Thank you for reading! Here are more of the author’s work: