Amy Preasmyer is a California woman who, at age 16 and 15 weeks pregnant, orchestrated the August 1997 murder of her 21-year-old boyfriend Richard “Ricky” Cowles Jr. in their Lancaster apartment. She was convicted of first-degree murder in 2007 and sentenced in 2008 to life in prison without the possibility of parole. On December 10, 2025, the California Board of Parole Hearings granted her parole at a youth offender suitability hearing.
The Killing in Lancaster
On the evening of August 12, 1997, Cowles came home from his job as an electrician at the Antelope Valley Fairgrounds to the apartment he shared with Preasmyer on Gadsden Avenue. William “Billy” Hoffman, a store clerk Preasmyer had recruited, was waiting behind the bedroom door. Hoffman struck Cowles with a claw hammer, shot him between the eyes with a .32-caliber semi-automatic pistol, and hit him twice more with the hammer.
Preasmyer and a friend, Sara Chapin, had been driving around that evening. They returned to the apartment just before 10 p.m. and called 911, saying they had found Cowles in a pool of blood. He was taken to a hospital in critical condition but never regained consciousness and died on the morning of August 14, 1997. Cowles worked for his family’s electrical business and helped maintain the power grid at Edwards Air Force Base.
Motive and the Conspiracy
Prosecutors said Preasmyer blamed Cowles for the pregnancy and for upending her life. Deputy District Attorney Michael Blake told the court she “despised” him and had told others he “ruined her birthday and ruined her life.” A letter she wrote shortly before the killing complained about fights over alcohol, drugs, and respect. After the funeral, she told a friend named Kandice Orr that because Cowles was dead, he could no longer buy her the car he had promised for her birthday. By August 1997, prosecutors said, she was “actively looking for someone to kill him.”
Jennifer Kellogg, a friend who had been staying at the apartment, asked Hoffman whether he would be willing to kill someone. Kellogg and Preasmyer brought Hoffman to the apartment, handed him a photograph of Cowles, showed him the layout, and walked him through Cowles’s daily schedule. Because they expected Cowles to fight back, they decided Hoffman should disable him with the hammer before shooting. Hoffman expected between $500 and $1,000 for the killing. He was never paid.
Why the Case Took Nearly a Decade to Charge
Hoffman was arrested and tried first. At his 1999 trial, he blamed another man and denied Preasmyer’s involvement. Investigators could not establish a clear motive without his cooperation, and Preasmyer was not charged.
In 2002, Hoffman wrote a letter to Cowles’s parents confessing his role and recanting his trial testimony. He cited a conversion to Christianity and a desire to “make it right,” and said he was willing to testify against Preasmyer. With his account and testimony from others, prosecutors charged Preasmyer, Kellogg, and David Ashbury in 2005.
Convictions and Sentences
The co-defendants were resolved first. Hoffman had been convicted of murder in 1999 and was serving life without parole. Ashbury, who supplied the .32-caliber pistol, pleaded no contest to being an accessory to murder in October 2005 and was sentenced in January 2006 to two years. Kellogg pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and received 17 years.
Preasmyer went to trial in 2007 in Los Angeles Superior Court. After more than two weeks of deliberations, the jury convicted her of murder with special-circumstance findings of lying in wait, conspiracy, and solicitation of murder. Because prosecutors had not sought the death penalty, the conviction carried a mandatory sentence of life without parole, imposed in 2008.
The Appeal
Preasmyer appealed to the California Court of Appeal. In an April 2010 decision, the court reversed the solicitation of murder conviction as time-barred and ordered minor sentencing modifications. The first-degree murder conviction with the lying-in-wait special circumstance was affirmed, leaving the life-without-parole sentence in place.
How She Became Eligible for Parole
Preasmyer was 16 at the time of the killing, and that age is what eventually opened a parole path. California’s Senate Bill 394, effective January 1, 2018, was passed to bring the state in line with the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings in Miller v. Alabama (2012), which held mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juveniles unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment, and Montgomery v. Louisiana (2016), which made that ruling retroactive.
Under SB 394, a person sentenced to LWOP for a crime committed before age 18 becomes eligible for a youth offender parole hearing during their 25th year of incarceration. The Board of Parole Hearings must give “great weight” to the diminished culpability of juveniles, the hallmark features of youth, and the individual’s growth and maturity since the offense. The law does not guarantee release; the Board can still deny parole if it finds the person poses a continuing danger. At passage, SB 394 was estimated to affect about 290 people in California prisons.
The 2024 Denial and 2025 Grant
Preasmyer, held at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, first appeared before the Board of Parole Hearings on May 15, 2024. The Board denied parole and set the next hearing three years out. A subsequent suitability hearing was held earlier than that schedule, on December 10, 2025, and the Board granted parole. The grant is subject to a review period under California Government Code procedures before any release can occur.
Hoffman, the man who carried out the killing, is no longer in prison. Then-Governor Jerry Brown commuted his life-without-parole sentence, and he was released in 2020.