Woman gets 26 years to life for fatal stabbing of retired nurse in Rolling Hills Estates

A 47-year-old woman was sentenced Friday, Feb. 6, to 26 years to life in state prison for fatally stabbing a retired nurse in the parking structure of a Rolling Hills Estates mall during an apparent robbery attempt in 2018.

Torrance Superior Court Judge John J. Lonergan handed down the sentence to Cherie Townsend, ending a nearly eight-year saga for Leeds’ family, which endured Townsend’s original arrest in 2018 and then could only watch as she was released and went on to sue Los Angeles County and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department while demanding then-Sheriff Jim McDonnell publicly declare her innocence.

The homicide was the first in Rolling Hills Estates in nine years; in 2009, a prominent attorney was ambushed and fatally shot outside his home while retrieving his laptop computer from his car’s trunk.

Townsend was arrested again in August 2023 after sheriff’s detectives uncovered more evidence against her. Following a week-long trial, a Torrance Superior Court jury took four hours that year to convict her.

Prosecutors painted Townsend as a mother who struggling financially and desperately wanted enough money for her, her daughter and three of her daughter’s friends to fly to Orlando, Florida, where her daughter had a cheer competition.

Prosecutors displayed text messages, Google searches and notes on Townsend’s phone showing her level of desperation. At one point, she asked a former football coach of her son if he knew how she could get a fake ID and also posing as her son in messages to the coach saying she might do something drastic. Google searches included how to crack open washers and dryers at laundromats to get coins, and whether Walmart would check ID for a credit card purchase.

On May 3, 2018, prosecutors said, she Googled the Promenade at the Peninsula mall, in part to learn if it included an Equinox gym. She arrived in the parking structure after 9:30 a.m. and stayed for nearly three hours looking for a vulnerable victim.

Leeds, who had parked across from Townsend, returned to her white SUV after shopping at the Gap and picking up food from a Rubio’s restaurant.

Townsend went around another car to attack Leeds from behind the open driver’s door minutes after 12:10 p.m., stabbing her 17 times and leaving her throat slashed vertically before getting into her gold Chevrolet Malibu and making a hasty exit. Passersby first discovered Leeds just after 12:20 p.m. and first responders arrived at 12:26 p.m., prosecutors said.

Leeds’ checkbook, bank and credit cards were found by investigators in her SUV, but a black bag containing her blood sugar monitor was missing. Detectives also never found Leeds’ cellphone, though they did obtain GPS data that showed the phone moving in the same general direction as Townsend’s car after she left the parking structure.

Townsend’s cellphone was found underneath Leeds’ SUV, which her attorney argued could have been from her kicking it by mistake after dropping it while in the structure. Townsend went to a Verizon store in Carson about an hour after the stabbing to try to close her account.

Townsend told other cheer moms that she and her daughter were set to fly out to Florida on the day of the murder, but that night, she sent Facebook messages to some of them saying something horrible had happened and she “could not get on that plane tonight.”

She was arrested two weeks after the murder, but was released six days later after the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office asked for further investigation. Following her 2023 arrest, detectives noted changes in her story about what she was doing at the mall that day.

Leeds’ stepchildren, speaking at a hearing in January, remembered her as the “glue of the family” and a kind, gentle caretaker who always took time to remind people to smile and be happy. She comforted without judging, made others feel safe and seen and she loved baking cookies and finding new activities to do with her grandchildren, they said.

She lived with Type 1 Diabetes and would often encourage others living with the same diagnosis, they said.

Lastly, they said, had Townsend asked Leeds for help, she would have provided and then some.