In the sun-drenched suburbs of Southern California, Michaela Rylaarsdam lived what appeared to be an ordinary life as a devoted wife and mother of three. She balanced family routines in the San Bernardino County area with a hidden world that few outside her inner circle knew about.
Under the professional name Asshley SinCal, the 32-year-old operated as an escort and OnlyFans content creator, advertising high-end fetish and kink experiences on platforms like Secret Hostess. Her husband, Brandon Rylaarsdam, not only knew about her work but actively supported and helped manage the business, allowing her to charge premium rates for specialized sessions that catered to clients seeking intense BDSM encounters.
What seemed like a controlled side hustle turned tragic in April 2023, when one paid fantasy ended in the death of a client, exposing the fragile boundaries between consensual adult play and irreversible harm.
The client was Michael Dale, a 56-year-old man from Escondido who reached out to Rylaarsdam in March 2023 after seeing her online.
BDSM is an umbrella term for a range of consensual adult practices and relationship dynamics involving power exchange, restraint, sensation play, or roleplay. It includes acts like Bondage, Dicipline, Dominance, Submission, Sadism and Masochism.
In all, activities that can include in BDSM include tying someone up, roleplaying authority dynamics, giving or receiving pain in a controlled way, or psychological forms of dominance and submission.
But at its core, BDSM is an act that requires consent. This is why participants typically discuss boundaries, limits, and safety beforehand, often using "safe words" to stop or pause activities immediately if needed.
People engage in BDSM for many different reasons, including trust, intimacy, emotional connection, excitement, exploration, or physical sensation. It exists on a wide spectrum, from light roleplay to more intense practices, and not all participants engage in every aspect of it.
In this case, Rylaarsdam and her client, Dale, started kinky.
Dale agreed to pay more than $11,000 for an elaborate, multi-hour fetish session at his home on April 17.
While Rylaarsdam admitted to have had never practiced sadomasochistic sex before, court records showed that her client specifically requested extreme forms of restraint and sensory deprivation. And as a professional. Rylaarsdam came prepared to deliver on those hidden desires.
She began by tying Dale's limbs, then meticulously wrapped his entire body in layers of Saran Wrap, a popular brand of thin, clear, stretchy plastic film used to seal food in containers or wrap it directly to keep it fresh. She continued doing so until he resembled a mummy, rendering him almost completely immobile.
Duct tape was then used sealed his mouth shut.
Things didn't stop there, because she poured adhesive directly into his eyes to glue them closed, eliminating his vision.
Women's boots were glued onto his feet as part of the customized scene.
These acts aligned with the intense mummification and objectification elements Dale had sought, but prosecutors would later argue that the session crossed a deadly line when additional measures were introduced.
As the encounter progressed, Rylaarsdam placed a plastic bag over Dale's head and secured it tightly with duct tape. The bag remained in place for at least eight minutes while Dale lay on the floor, struggling visibly for air. During this time, she continued filming the scene on her phone to generate content for her OnlyFans platform.
With a vibrator in hand, she performed sexual acts nearby, capturing explicit material that blended the client's restraint with her own performance.
Rylaarsdam event sent images of the act to her husband.
The session stretched for hours, before Dale's distress from lack of oxygen became unmistakable. The man stopped responding.
Rylaarsdam finally removed the restrictive materials, called 911, and began performing CPR until emergency responders arrived.
Dale was rushed to a hospital where he was declared brain dead.
He died the following day from asphyxiation caused by oxygen deprivation, a death the medical examiner officially ruled a homicide.
The case not only concluded a murder of a man, but also revealed details about Rylaarsdam's double life emerged.
To neighbors and family acquaintances, she was the everyday mom sharing moments of domestic normalcy. But behind the scene, behind the persona she portrayed to those who know her, her escort work and adult content creation provided a lucrative income stream that her husband helped facilitate.
Investigators found that Dale had communicated extensively with Rylaarsdam in the weeks leading up to the session, outlining his desires for heavy bondage, mummification, and sensory overload. While much of the play followed his requests, prosecutors emphasized that the prolonged use of the plastic bag over his head went beyond what had been explicitly agreed upon, particularly as he fought to breathe.
Rylaarsdam maintained that the entire interaction was consensual and that she had no intention of causing harm, let alone killing him, insisting she acted within the parameters of a paid fantasy experience. Yet authorities highlighted her decision to keep filming and delay intervention as evidence of reckless disregard for his safety.
Investigators who collected evidence from the scene, found the Saran Wrap, duct tape, adhesives, and the plastic bag that had contributed to Dale's suffocation. Phone records, text messages, and financial transactions confirmed the payment of more than eleven thousand dollars and the pre-arranged nature of the fetish play.
Rylaarsdam was arrested in February 2025, nearly two years after the incident, and initially charged with second-degree murder.
The charge reflected the belief that her actions demonstrated a conscious disregard for human life during the encounter. She pleaded not guilty at first and spent time in custody at the Las Colinas Detention Facility while the legal process unfolded. Over the following months, negotiations between her defense team and the San Diego County District Attorney's Office led to a plea agreement.
On May 6, 2026, Michaela Rylaarsdam entered a guilty plea to the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter.
The plea acknowledged that she had acted with criminal negligence and disregard for Dale's life without the intent to kill him.
As part of the deal, she accepted a stipulated sentence of four years in state prison, the maximum term for that offense. Sentencing is scheduled for early June 2026, after which she will begin serving her time.
In the end, what began as a lucrative session for one woman's platform ended in the loss of a man's life and the dismantling of another family's stability.
While Dale's family mourns a life cut short by a fantasy taken too far, the rise of platforms like OnlyFans has made niche sexual services more accessible than ever, with encounters like these often hidden behind private messages and anonymous social media profiles.