Florida Woman Arrested in Murder of Matthew Dunmire, Shot and Killed in Cuyahoga Valley National Park in March

Update: The FBI has arrested 31-year-old Chelsea Perkins in Florida for the murder of Matthew Dunmire, who was found shot and killed in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park this spring.

Authorities pieced together the investigation after talking to Dunmire's coworkers, with whom he was out the previous day. They told investigators that Dunmire was picked up by a woman from out of town outside of the bar they were at. Surveillance video footage from a nearby gas station where Dunmire and Perkins stopped that evening showed the vehicle's license plate.

FBI agents tracked the car's movements via other surveillance cameras and license plate readers and matched the movements with GPS pulled from Dunmire's phone. They additionally found four witnesses who had seen either Dunmire and Perkins or just Perkins in the Terra Vista Natural Study area where his body was later found with a single gunshot wound to the back of the head.

The car came back registered to a U.S. Coast Guardsman in Arlington, Virginia. His wife, Chelsea Perkins, was identified as the suspect matching descriptions provided by Dunmire's coworkers and the witnesses at the park. Additionally, her DNA matched samples taken from under Dunmire's fingernails and on his genitals.

A search of their residence found three guns, one of which investigators say is the murder weapon based on testing.

A copy of the criminal complaint is below.



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(Original story 3/15/21): The FBI, Valley View police and National Park Service agents are investigating a homicide after a man's body was found last Tuesday in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park in a wooded spot near the Terra Vista Natural Study Area.

Officials say the victim, 31-year-old Matthew Dunmire, died from a gunshot wound to the head and had been deceased a few days before being discovered.

“He didn’t deserve that whatsoever,” a friend told Cleveland 19. ”He just went missing. He was supposed to hang out with some people and the last words I heard from him were ‘I’ll see you Monday,’ and I didn’t see him Monday.”

In a Friday evening statement, the Cuyahoga Valley National Park said, "There was a discovery of a deceased person and there is an ongoing investigation."

Anyone with information is asked to call 1-877-FBI-OHIO.