Ga., Calif. cops discuss deaths linked to alleged prostitute

ATLANTA, Ga. - California police and Georgia police are meeting up to discuss and compare notes on Alix Tichelman, the alleged prostitute who is charged with manslaughter in the death of a Google executive, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Police arrested Tichelman, 26, in July. Investigators believe she injected Forrest Hayes, 51, with heroin in Santa Cruz, Calif. last November and left him to die of an overdose.

Shortly after the arrest, California police reopened the case of the death of 53-year-old Dean Riopelle, the owner of a concert hall who was dating Tichelman at the time of his death in Georgia in September 2013.

Riopelle, 53, died of a heroin overdose in Milton, 30 miles north of Atlanta, about two months before Google executive Hayes died of an overdose on his yacht.

Milton police said that Tichelman called 911 to report that Riopelle, her boyfriend, had overdosed. She told investigators that he had been drinking and using heroin throughout the day, and that she found him on the ground after she got out of the shower.

After hearing the news of Tichelman's arrest in July, Kimberly James, a friend of Riopelle's, told Crimesider she thought: "Oh my God, she killed somebody else."

California police are meeting with north Fulton County authorities this week to discuss the cases, reports the Journal-Constitution.

Tichelman has not been charged in Riopelle's death.

She is being held on $1.5 million bail as the investigation continues.