Pretty in Pink

Ezra McCandless was 20 in early 2018. She had been in a sexual relationship with Alex Woodworth, 24, which she later said ended in late February, and she was also involved with her former boyfriend, Jason Mengel.

On the afternoon of March 22, 2018, McCandless, barefoot and covered in mud and blood, knocked on a dairy farmer’s door near Spring Brook in Dunn County. At first she said she could not remember what had happened. Later she claimed Woodworth had attacked her in the back seat of her car. The next day, investigators found Woodworth’s body hanging halfway out of a rear door of her Chevrolet Impala, which was stuck in a muddy field nearby. He had been stabbed 16 times. The heaviest bloodstains were on the ground beside the car rather than inside it, and a medical examiner testified that McCandless’s own cuts looked self-inflicted.

At her October 2019 trial, McCandless testified that she had acted in self-defense. Prosecutors argued she killed Woodworth to stop him from interfering with her relationship with Mengel. On November 1, 2019, the jury convicted her of first-degree intentional homicide. On February 7, 2020, she was sentenced to life in prison, with eligibility to petition for extended supervision after 50 years. The Wisconsin Court of Appeals upheld her conviction in September 2025.